A writer of horror stories is invited to a "monster club" by a mysterious old gentleman. There, three gruesome stories are told to him; between each story some musicians play their songs. In the end, it's recognized he's the greatest monster of all!
Vincent Price is a horror legend and to have him as the 'host', so to speak, of an anthology style movie with musical interludes from the likes of UB40 and The Pretty Things, well that's just solid gold stuff for me.
The Monster Club was the final installment in Amicus studios portmanteau series and concerns R.Chetwynd-Hayes(John Carradine)a noted horror writer who runs into an elderly Vampire named Erasmus (Vincent Price) .Erasmus duly takes his fill of the authors blood and after recognizing him becomes all apologetic and invites him to The Monster Club where he hopes Chetwynd-Hayes might garner some new ideas for a new book.As the guest of Erasmus, Chetwynd-Hayes is regaled with three stories of the macabre.
In the first, a young couple George and Angela are hard up for cash, so they answer an advertisement in a newspaper looking for someone to help catalogue antiques in an old manor. Angela goes and meets the owner who as it turns out is a Shadmock, kind of a Vampire/werewolf hybrid, Angerla is scared of at first but soon settles in to her job. Angela soon becomes friendly with the soft spoken and thoughtful employer but comes under increasing pressure form George to steal something from the house, and she decides to take advantage of an invitation to a masked ball with the Shadmock's family at the manor to fulfill her objective.
The second story concerns a Vampire stalking the London underground being chased by the B-squad a team of vampire hunters lead by Pickering, (Donald Pleasance). Pickering uses the vampires son who unknowingly leads the B-squad right to his father.
In the final story Stuart Whitman plays Sam an American movie Director scouting the English countryside for the perfect location for his upcoming movie. He stumbles across a fog bound town full of Ghouls where he befriends a Humghoul (Human and ghoul hybrid) and struggles with her help to make his escape from his living nightmare.
In the first, a young couple George and Angela are hard up for cash, so they answer an advertisement in a newspaper looking for someone to help catalogue antiques in an old manor. Angela goes and meets the owner who as it turns out is a Shadmock, kind of a Vampire/werewolf hybrid, Angerla is scared of at first but soon settles in to her job. Angela soon becomes friendly with the soft spoken and thoughtful employer but comes under increasing pressure form George to steal something from the house, and she decides to take advantage of an invitation to a masked ball with the Shadmock's family at the manor to fulfill her objective.
The second story concerns a Vampire stalking the London underground being chased by the B-squad a team of vampire hunters lead by Pickering, (Donald Pleasance). Pickering uses the vampires son who unknowingly leads the B-squad right to his father.
In the final story Stuart Whitman plays Sam an American movie Director scouting the English countryside for the perfect location for his upcoming movie. He stumbles across a fog bound town full of Ghouls where he befriends a Humghoul (Human and ghoul hybrid) and struggles with her help to make his escape from his living nightmare.
The shadmock story was the best and most original, its nice to have a different monster and this one was a rather a nice chap and I felt for his pain at the end, but it was definitely a missed opportunity, the idea of a masked monster ball I find intriguing, but Ward obviously only used this as a means perhaps to save money on Monster make-up. The second story is played for laughs which is a shame and is by far the least of the three stories. The Ghoul story I found to be the best, and full of atmosphere with a nice twist at the end. The in between segments with Price and Carradine are a little below par and full of very bad monster make-up and cheesy but slightly enjoyable, these two great horror legends were fine, considering the quality of script, but they deserved a bit more.
If your a fan of this style of horror, its a must watch and and a lot of fun.
6/10
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