Review of The Monster Club (1981) by Ani A — 02 Sep 2011

The last film by Amicus Productions, now making films under the name of Sword and Sorcerery. This is a very tongue in cheek horror comedy divided into 3 segments, punctuated with music and a load of veteran actors very game to do something like this.

It's a very peculiar film indeed, but it KNOWS it's a cheesy film, and it is effective in places. This has horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) being approached by the mysterious Eramus (Vincent Price), who invites him to the titular Monster Club.

Which is a club for all different kinds of supernatural creatures, alot of hybrid creatures too. Eramus decides to tell Chetwynd-Hayes about what they're like. He tells him about a Shadmock, a hybrid vampire called Raven (James Laurenson) who can kill people by whistling, then there's the story of a hybrid vampire (Richard Johnson) who is hunted by a team of bureaucratic vampire hunters led by Pickering (Donald Pleasence), and then there's the tale of American film director Sam (Stuart Whitman) who is location scouting and finds himself in a village inhabited by a rare species of ghouls.

It's a very odd film, and it's a shame Price doesn't appear more in it, as he is always good at this sort of thing. But, this is punctuated with musical performances by UB40, B. A. Robertson and The Pretty Things.