Just a Sucker for...The Monster Club

When I find myself lacking in creativity and inspiration, it's somewhat ironic that I'm drawn to kicking my feet up and settling down in front of a film that shares those self same deficits.

The 1981 anthology film, 'The Monster Club' is a last gasp effort from the remains of the Amicus group, by now no longer called Amicus, and with Max J Rosenberg having been elbowed out long ago, it is however, identifiably Amicus. A rather flimsy framing story provides the bare bones on which to hang three tales, and in true Amicus fashion they are great, awful and middling. If there is one thing that really damages 'The Monster Club', it's the simple fact that a film like this had no right being made in 1980. Woefully out of step with what else was going on in horror cinema, this was after all the beginning of the video nasty boom, 'The Monster Club' is a 'Dracula AD1972' for the 80s. In one sense, you have to give the producers credit for going to the effort of preparing a vehicle that they thought would be a hit with the teenagers and young adults of 1980. Regularly in the British film industry of the mid to late 70s, and early 80s, nobody was going to any kind of effort to produce something original and inventive. What is presented here though is 'this is what the kids will like' through the eyes of people who had already been in the industry for thirty or forty years and could barely remember their own youth, let alone imagine what would engage the minds of adolescents in a time of punk and rebellion.

Despite my opening, I do have a fondness for 'The Monster Club'. It is trying, whilst being trying on your patience. There are familiar faces on screen, old hands behind the camera from the heyday of British horror, and when the film works, well then you could just be watching 'From Beyond the Grave', or 'Asylum'. When it doesn't work, there isn't a sofa cushion big enough to hide behind in embarrassment. If you ever wanted to know what a dreadfully old John Carradine, crippled with Arthritis, looked like dancing to middle of the road soft rock music, then your answer is provided in 'The Monster Club'.

'The Monster Club', should you have any difficulty with your imagination, is a club. For monsters. Better yet, it's a nightclub, with the kind of music that no-one with any sense was listening to in 1981, or any other year quite frankly. Vincent Price, playing the vampiric Eramus, is a member of the club, and when he is caught short without blood whilst out and about, he sinks his fangs into R Chetwynd-Hayes, as played by John Carradine. Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes was of course a celebrated author of horror stories, and his stories provided 'From Beyond the Grave' with it's meat, and indeed 'The Monster Club' too, but here he is an emaciated Carradine, preyed upon by Price. Realising quite what he has done, and who he has done it to, Price is suitably mortified and invites Carradine back to his club, by way of apology.

Immediately upon entering the club, Chetwynd-Hayes' heart must sink like ours as the viewer. The paucity of the set, the small handful of extras, and the costumes, makeup and visual effects work leave you under no illusions as to what the next 90 odd minutes will deliver. It's especially sad considering that all of this is in the hands of Roy Ward Baker, an incredibly skilled director who gave us 'A Night to Remember', and genre favourites 'Quatermass and the Pit' and 'Asylum'. Throughout the 70s he'd been kept in work by ITC and it's slew of TV action series, while finding time to helm some of Hammer's more ill-advised projects. 'The Monster Club' was a return to the big screen, and when the final credits roll, you can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy. Where he can, he injects as much style and atmosphere as the screenplay and accompanying budget will allow, but expecting a 64 year old to know what to do with the tepid rock/pop numbers is clearly a step beyond. The music video was a new medium in 1981, and almost as clumsy as the crash zooms and shots of people dancing out of time that we're treated to here, although I defy anybody to creatively find a way to get through a BA Robertson tune. So, the club with it's never-ending supply of non-hits from the soundtrack album that didn't sell, provides a shaky framing device for three tales from the pen of the real Chetwynd-Hayes.

First up, and to provide a sense of optimism that's quickly dispersed by the second story, is a segment that wouldn't be a bit out of place in Amicus' finest offerings, 'Asylum' and 'From Beyond the Grave'. Conveniently Eramus sits Chetwynd-Hayes down next to a framed family tree. Of monsters. A curious Chetwynd-Hayes asks about the heritage of all the creatures on display, providing two of the three stories with a starting point. We start with a Shadmock, and despite a childhood of seeing this film on ITV of a Friday night every six months for about six years, I can't remember what mates with what to produce a Shadmock. What I do know is that they are creatures capable of great emotion, and they have a unique way of expressing that emotion. A lethal whistle. Simon Ward crops up in this segment, as an indicator of how far his stock has fallen since 'Young Winston', and by association, what a mess the British film industry was in by this time. This is good stuff, and while never scary, it has that chill factor that is associated with the better efforts from Amicus.

Unfortunately, as good as the Shadmock tale is, with James Laurenson putting a neat little performance as the titular creature, there is always the lurking dread that when it ends you'll be back to the nightclub linking story. And the music. 30 years on watching 'The Monster Club' has numbed me to the pop and rock numbers, but I can't imagine how hellish they must be to someone watching and listening for the first time. The visuals don't help either, with the camera stubbornly sat staring at these has-beens and never-will-bes for the entire duration of their respective numbers. Unfortunately the middle segment, concerning a vampire trying to live the quiet life in suburbia, almost makes you pine for a synthesiser heavy melody. Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasance get to slum it in this comical short. Except, the comedy is thin on the ground, and perhaps the only amusement to be found is in wondering how Pleasance will top each of his increasingly hammy appearances. With the script he's been handed, you can only empathise.

A young boy, relentlessly bullied at school, and desperate to see more of his rather camp and eccentric father, is harrassed by the Bleeney. Who or what are the Bleeney, you may wearily ask? They're the Sweeney, but looking for blood sucking creatures of the night, hence 'Bleeney', by which I mean they've just clumsily bolted 'Bl' onto 'eeney' hoping you'll fill in the gaps. God knows what American audiences (plural?) made of this mangled slice of slang. Anyway, the Bleeney, led by Pleasance are sure the child's father is a vampire and carry out undercover surveillance before unleashing their masterplan. I've probably made that sound more grand than it is. They just hide in shop doorways on a depressingly early 80s high street.

Back to the musical numbers. This section at least features some wit and a little imagination, as we are treated to a Monster Club stripper. To end, 'The Monster Club' raises it's game again, and gives us another chilly unsettling episode that would and could have sat in any of their better offerings. Rent-an-American Stuart Whitman (presumably Shane Rimmer was busy) plays a typically irritable film director, who decides to scout his own film locations. He winds up at a village that lurks beyond a wall of fog, and also seems to exist in a different time entirely. Lucky us, we get Patrick Magee as a strangely dishevelled Innkeeper to show Pleasance how hamming should really be done. In fact, everything and everyone in this village is strangely dishevelled, and before long it's evident that Whitman isn't going to get out alive. He finds an ally in a young girl, and forming an escape plan they take shelter in the village church where he discovers some uncomfortable reading that explains what happened to this creepy little hamlet. Roy Ward Baker handles this story with a gusto that almost takes you back to the glory days of Amicus. Best segment by far, it trumps the others with a sequence of illustrations by John Bolton (he of the Hammer comics) that manage to be scarier than anything else in the picture. We even get a nice little twist, after some slightly comedy escaping. Well, Stuart Whitman does have rather bandy legs, and shooting him running in long shot was always going to end in tears.

So, with the film seeming to end on a high, you'd think they'd wrap it up here, with an exchange of dialogue between Price and Carradine, and then credits rolling. They don't. The film slots in another musical number which feels like it runs for easily 2 hours, as we all stare in horror at Vincent Price dancing with a fat lady. In the background Carradine dances, limbs contorted with Arthritis, and you don't know whether to weep or just close your eyes until you can't hear the music any more.

'The Monster Club' remains a curious mix of tones, and lurches from good to bad to appalling to great to awful with a palpable air of 'we don't know who we're making this film for'. The uncertainty and desperation is apparent throughout, and you can't help feeling that a further couple of polishes with the screenplay might just have eradicated some of the more damaging problems with the film. Or perhaps not. When you start off with a premise of a nightclub for monsters, you're already giving yourself a big hole to climb out of. So, tonally uncertain, mixing the genuinely creepy with toe-curling comedy, and musically criminal. The budget barely covers the picture, and when it looks cheap, boy does it look cheap, 'The Monster Club' is the epitome of 'a mixed bag'. Credit where credit is due, they tried something different, pulled in a couple of genuine horror stars, and that they largely failed miserably is some of the fun of this picture. I come back to it time and time again. Whether that says more about me, than the few delights this film offers, I just don't know.