The Monster Club

(1980) *



The backdrop for this anthology of stories based on R. Chetwynd-Hayes is a night club filled with monsters. Picture the cantina in the Star Wars Holiday special, only with costumes purchased at K-Mart in 1980. Vincent Price and a guy who's even older than Vincent Price at the time host 3 spooky tales, each one barely better than the last. To wash the bad taste of suck out of your mouth, each segment is followed by a musical number featuring post-punk/pre-new wave artists including a young UB40. The songs are consistently atrocious but they're still enjoyable as they are a sign that you're making progress. Each of the three stories feel like they were 3 hours long and they might very well have been. It took me several days to get through this movie.

I must apologize as I blocked the first story out of my mind in self-preservation. This story centers around a creature known as a Shadmock who kills by whistling. According to my notes, "Tremendously painful (ineligible) faced heroin addict looking guy whistles, kills cat".

The second story follows a poor lad who gets picked on in school. His father is a flamboyant vampire who sleeps in a coffin. Donald Pleasence reluctantly plays a clergyman intent on killing the vampire. He drives a lame stake into his lame heart but gets bitten in the process. His cohorts have no choice but to drive a stake through his heart now, which they promptly do. Somehow the dad survived and the family lives stupidly ever after.

In the third and only passable yarn, a movie director sets off to find a remote setting for an atmospheric thriller. He gets more than he bargained for when he suddenly finds himself in a foggy village crawling with 17th century ghouls. After a hard-fought escape to the present, a police escort drives him straight back to his doom.

Let us never speak of the Monster Club again.