Sunday, April 06, 2014

Movie review - "The Monster Club" (1980) *1/2

Not an Amicus film but very much in their spirit and produced by Milton Subotsky who was one of the two creative powerhouses at Amicus. It's an anthology piece, only three items this time, plus a linking story - and padded out with some ridiculous rock/pop numbers. Seriously they have whole numbers there.

Any idea I had that Roy Ward Baker was a good director went out the window with this movie - he makes a complete hash of three excellent stories from Chetwynd-Hayes, who was understandably upset at the final result. There's no atmosphere, or scares - just lots of dumb jokes and bad make up. All the stories had potential to be scary, thrilling, surprising, all that - they were all ruined.

An excellent cast is wasted: Vincent Price as a vampire, John Carradine as Chetwynd Hayes, James Laurenson as a Shamrock (awful, laughable make up), Simon Ward as a conman trying to get Barbara Kellerman to swindle Laurenson,  Stuart Whitman as a film director looking for a location who runs into ghouls, Richard Johnson as a vampire married to Britt Ekland, Donald Pleasance as a vampire hunter, Anthony Steel (looking as handsome and stiff as every) as a film producer.

A real darn shame - they should film more of Chetwynd Hayes' stuff. Just not ruin it.

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