Film Review
There's an understandably end-of-term feel to
The Monster Club, the last and
zaniest in a series of portmanteau horror films made by the British
film production company Amicus. It turned out to be Amicus's
final film, the company finally bowing to the inevitable as the British
film industry went into meltdown in the early 1980s. This one is
made more for laughs than thrills, the horror content being ludicrously
mild for the time. The framing story is pretty weak although it
does offer the chance to see two veteran horror icons - Vincent Price
and John Carradine - taking the Mickey out of the genre that made them
famous. Hard to believe, given his long association with horror,
but this was the only occasion on which Price played a fanged
bloodsucker on screen. The musical links between the stories
(provided by minor new wave British pop bands of the time) are an
unwelcome distraction but have contributed to the film's present
standing as a cult favourite.
The stories themselves are, as ever, a mixed bag. The first
offers an unusual departure into Gothic romance which, whilst lacking
in substance, has an eerie charm and concludes with the film's most
shocking image. The second story is by far the weakest, a
stuttering (and hideously scored) comedy involving vampires in suburbia
which is only just redeemed by its final twist (vampire-killer Donald
Pleasence gets a taste of his own medicine). It is, as usual, the
third story in the anthology that makes the film worth watching, a
creepily atmospheric human-versus-ghouls stand-off that looks like an
affectionate homage to Hammer's
Plague of the Zombies
(1966). After this effective little blood-curdler we're dragged
back (kicking and screaming) to the dreary Monster Club for a rather
tedious lecture by Price on man's inhumanity to man. Do we need
to be reminded that humankind is the worst monster of them all?
Definitely not Amicus's finest hour but it's a weirdly fun way to bring
down the curtain on a popular series of films.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Roy Ward Baker film:
The October Man (1947)
Film Synopsis
One evening, the author Chetwynd-Hayes is walking the streets when he
runs into a courteous old vampire named Eramus. In return for a
small blood donation, the vampire invites the writer to his favourite
night-time haunt, the Monster Club, a place where fiends of all
persuasion gather to let their hair down after a hard day's
monstering. Having described the different varieties of creature
that can result from cross-species couplings of vampires, werewolves
and ghouls, Eramus tells the tale of a Shadmock, a sad being whose only
monstrous feature is his whistle. The Shadmock hires an
attractive young woman, Angela, to itemise his vast collection of
ornaments in his secluded mansion. Unaware that Angela intends to
rob him at her boyfriend's behest, the Shadmock falls in love with her
and makes a proposal of marriage. When Angela carries through her
scheme she learns that a Shamock's whistle is worse than any vampire's
bite...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.