Director: Roy Ward Baker
Writers: R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Edward Abraham
Stars: Vincent Price, John Carradine, Anthony Steel
Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/3iNaGhI also on Shudder
Synopsis
R. Chetwynd-Haynes is a horror author, walking down the street who runs into Eramus, a down-on-his-luck vampire who hasn’t eaten in a week. He offers to help Eramus, who drinks what he needs. Eramus is a fan of Chetwynd-Haynes’ books. “Everybody likes to read about themselves and their own kind.” Now Eramus owes him something, and he offers material for his next book. He has four very unusual friends that would love to meet Chetwynd-Haynes. It’s at the “Monster Club.”
It’s a club full of people in monster masks. There’s a live band playing monster songs, and most of the staff are vampires. Eramus complains about horror movies educating people about vampires and monsters. Eramus goes into a long spiel about the monster evolutionary chart, ending in the Shadmocks, the lowest in the monster hierarchy; Shadmocks only whistle.
“Shadmock Story”
We fade into the first tale. A couple of young criminals look for work in the paper; they find a job at a huge house working for a rich man, and they think they can get in there and rob him. Mr. Raven answers the door, and his house is full of antiques that need to be catalogued. She freaks out and leaves him, but comes back later; she needs the work. He says he can never leave the house or go outside the grounds. He loves to feed his birds outside, but he doesn’t see the cat coming onto the property.
Raven soon starts giving Angela flowers; he likes her too. Angela starts feeling sorry for him, and she wants out of the plan. A cat kills one of his birds, and we see the Shadmock whistle– the cat is melted with his ultrasonic blast. Raven proposes to Angela. She can’t do it. He admits that he’s a Shadmock, and that he must never whistle. She agrees to marry him, and she notices the safe combination as he gives her a ring.
There’s a masked ball, and all Raven’s freaky relatives are there, all covered in masks, of course. She runs off in the middle of the dance and opens the safe, not realizing that Raven is following her. She calls him horrible and screams at him. He whistles, and the party stops. Angela returns home to her boyfriend, and her face is… gone.
“Vampire Story”
A young boy is warned by his mother to not to talk to strangers. They live in a big, isolated house, and his father sleeps all day. That night, the father wakes up– he’s a vampire. His wife nags at him about getting too bloody- someone might think he was a butcher, although he does dress like a waiter. “Feed without greed” is his motto. He must always be on the lookout for men carrying violin cases. His son waves goodbye as he goes out for the evening.
The next day at school, we see a man dressed like a priest watching the son. He offers him some candy and offers to walk him home. Men with violin cases start following them. The boy gets curious and goes down into the basement to see where his father sleeps; he’s not allowed down there, but the priest has convinced him it would be OK. He sees the father and runs off, only to be grabbed by the violin-case men. They are “the B-Squad, a special branch concerned with blood crimes.”
They all go downstairs and find the vampire asleep. They open up their violin cases to reveal stakes and mallets. They stake the vampire, but he reaches up and bites the vampire hunter Pickering before dying. His men want to stake him now, as he immediately sprouts fangs. They stake him and carry the body back out to their van. The sad music plays as mother and son go back down to the crypt to find father still with a stake in his heart– no, he sits up and is fine. He’s wearing a stake-proof vest filled with ketchup!
“Humegoo Story”
A humegoo is a cross between a human and ghoul. We start out with a film director working on a horror film. He wants to make a horror film in an eerie atmospheric village. He’s going to go out and do some location scouting himself. He drives to Loughville, a place that looks interesting on his map. He drives over a foggy bridge, and on the other side is an abandoned village that looks just perfect for a horror film. It got a cemetery, ancient-looking buildings, and no one lives there.
Suddenly, there are dozens of creepy people, all dressed in gray, and naturally, his car won’t start– his engine’s been trashed. They insist he spends the night at the inn. They force him inside, and the innkeeper’s daughter brings him some rabbit stew. Her name is Luna. She says her clothes came from the boxes. The boxes come from the cemetery on gathering night. They get their food from there as well, but there’s no more boxes in the cemetery. She’s a Humegoo; her mother was human and her father was a ghoul. She explains, “We must have our food!”
He runs and hides in the church, and they can’t follow. He finds a book that tells the story of this cursed town. The town priest rescued a ghoul, cleaned it up, and took it into his own household– until he found it feeding in the cemetery. They drove it away, and twelve more returned.
Luna joins him inside the church. She says there will be no escape once the elders come. They run for the bridge and the mists. They make it through the mist, but Luna gets hit by a thrown rock and dies. He flags down the police, and they take him right back to the town. The elders always get a police escort when they return to Loughton…
Eramus thinks these would make great stories, and he wants to put up Chetwynd-Haynes for a membership in the club. He’s a human, the greatest monster of them all. Eramus gives an impassioned speech about the horrors of humanity. His membership is quickly approved and celebrated. Time for one more song – “Welcome to the monster Club.”
Commentary
The songs in the club are long and not really all that entertaining, but they are a unique feature of this film. Not necessarily in a good way, but they are memorable. The performers are all real musicians, just none that ever had a successful career that I can tell. The clients in the club are pretty ridiculous, a bunch of people wearing really cheesy rubber masks– they didn’t even seriously try with them– it’s hilarious.
The whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek and has a lot of humor. The wraparound story is silly fun. The Shadmock and Humegoo stories aren’t funny, but the Vampire Story is just pure comedy without a bit of seriousness.
The stories are long enough to have a lot going on, but are not long enough to become boring, which always seem to be hard to accomplish with an anthology.
I remember seeing this one when it first came out, and it’s pretty much exactly what I remember: a fun anthology that was well-made and fun to watch. Vincent Price and John Carradine needed a paycheck and this was a fun way for them to cash in, but it’s all worth it.