Prime Time: The Monster Club (1981)

An Amicus anthology horror movie in almost every way, apart from the fact that it came along a few years after Amicus was no longer active, The Monster Club is a mixed experience for fans of these films, and fans of the stars involved.

John Carradine plays a horror writer who has some blood drawn from his system by a polite vampire (Vincent Price) before the grateful drinker invites him along to the titular club. There, in between a number of stage acts, he is told three spooky stories. The first is all about a creature known as a Shadmock (played by James Laurenson), the second is a comedic tale about a vampire (Richard Johnson), and the third is all about a village full of ghouls.

Carradine may be playing an onscreen version of R. Chetwynd Hayes (the author of the source material, even if the stories changed a fair bit from book to screenplay form, the latter written by Valerie and Edward Abraham), and there may be some obvious winks and gags for horror film fans (such as a character named Lintom Busotsky, a crude and simple play on the name of producer Milton Subotsky), but it's a great shame that the majority of the film avoids other opportunities for some meta humour. What we get, instead, are some moments that show director Roy Ward Baker doing his damnedest to prove that he could supply entertainment for modern horror audiences who had turned their backs on the comforting bloodshed supplied by the likes of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, etc. I might find it amusing to watch a song performed by B. A. Robertson, and there's a great gag involving a stripper (although the film is a pretty tame affair with no nudity shown), but it's hard to imagine anyone viewing the film in 1981 leaving the cinema with anything other than a sense of disappointment. I have always had a soft spot for it, but that's because I first saw it as a pre-teen.

Price is as much fun as he usually is, Carradine spends most of his time looking around in mild bemusement (no surprise, considering the strange assortment of masks being worn by the people pretending to be monsters in the club), and the best performance in the three tales comes from Laurenson, playing a sweet and tragic, but also dangerous, creature. Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward are also involved in his story, and both do well enough to make it the most consistently enjoyable one. The second tale, featuring Johnson, is a big step down, with Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasence wasted in their supporting roles, although it's at least fun to see Pleasence given much lighter material in the genre than he was usually given. Stuart Whitman, Lesley Dunlop, and Patrick Magee star in the third, and final, tale. They do well enough, but it's more about the atmosphere, with the main village feeling like a small British counterpart to the location features in The City Of The Dead.

The execution of the material is fairly clumsy, the humour is a lot more childish than viewers may expect (making this a surprisingly okay choice for a family viewing), and it's a far cry from the past glories of the British horror movie industry. Having said that, you get to spend time with some enjoyably familiar faces, the penny-pinching doesn't remove the sheer sense of fun, and there's actually a pretty good punchline to round it all off. It's not a good movie, but it has a charm to it that may lead to you occasionally thinking as fondly of it as I do.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Primal Rage (2018)

Primal Rage is a near-textbook example of how to take a decent idea, and a smattering of fun moments, and fumble it in numerous ways that leaves you with a disappointing end result. It's not awful. It just ends up throwing in too many elements that drags it down.

Things start off well. The two lead characters are quickly established as Ashley (Casey Gagliardi) picks up her partner (Max, played by Andrew Joseph Montgomery) after an unfortunate stint in prison. While driving through some quieter areas of the countryside, they hit a wounded man. That's not good, especially as Max was drinking a beer while in the passenger seat. Things go from bad to worse, leading to both of them stuck in the woods. And they're not alone. There's a group of gun-toting locals hunting there. And something else.

I was happy with the opening section of Primal Rage. I liked the leads, I liked the small character details in the script, and I thought I was in for a tight, economical horror that was going to make good use of a sasquatch. Then things started to go downhill.

There's a story strand involving a local Sheriff (Eloy Casados) and his deputy (Justin Rain) that starts off interesting but then takes far too long to get to the main point, in time for the grand finale. There's a strange mix of comedy and menace with those gun-toting locals, undermining what could have been some straightforward moments of tension. And there are the initial appearances of the sasquatch, (unintentionally?) comedic as it pops up in various places like a crappy wood-dwelling stalker.

Director Pactrick Magee, who also co-wrote the film with Jay Lee, makes very good use of his budget. There are fine practical effects on display here, from the kills to the main creature to an ancient-looking witch, the cast all do well, and the shooting style usually manages to keep up with the action without ever being too frenetic or choppy.

The biggest problem, and I feel bad for having to point it out, is that the script has one or two ideas too many. There are two very different potential movies here, they just happen to be meshed together into the one feature. Primal Rage is a film that would work best as a fairly short, brisk, fun creature feature that takes time to build characters up before killing them off in some impressively splattery moments. It's a shame that Magee didn't see that when he turned his 80-90 minute movie into something that feels far too overlong at 106 minutes.

5/10

Here is a better, similar, film for you to buy. 
Americans can buy it here.

The Masque Of The Red Death (1964)

A film that remains, arguably, the high point of Roger Corman's career, The Masque Of The Red Death is a fine adaptation of material by Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent Price gives another fantastic turn in the lead role, the supporting cast all do great work, and the whole thing has a style and mix of the fantastical with the genuinely horrifying that should please most horror fans.

Europe is plagued by the "Red Death" and nobody is safe from it. Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is a cruel man who is determined to keep himself healthy and alive, and so decides to throw a ball for invited guests at his death-free castle. He believes that his home is a refuge from the plague, although it is not a refuge that he is willing to share with everyone. Will everyone stay safe? Even young Francesca (Jane Asher), a young woman taken by Prospero from a local village for his amusement?

Dripping with gorgeous little touches in almost every scene, and chock full of great lines of dialogue (with Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell being the men responsible for the script), this is a treat from start to finish for anyone allowing themselves to relax and soak up the whole experience. It's atmospheric, often quite bizarre, and all anchored by that rich Price performance.

While the leading man is the main attraction, in terms of the cast, he's not the only one doing a sterling job. Asher does well in her scenes, a sweet and innocent individual stuck in a terrible situation, and Hazel Court is mesmerising as the wicked woman, Juliana, who wants to be by Prospero's side. Patrick Magee as the selfish Alfredo (who ends up involved in the most memorable scene in the film). David Weston is the least interesting of the main characters, as Gino, but he's easy to root for as he sets out to rescue the lovely Francesca from Prospero's castle.

Although most horror fans are aware of, and praise, the Roger Corman movies that were developed from the works of Poe, it's still quite a pleasant surprise to revisit his earlier works and see just how different that output was compared to the many b-movies and creature features he has lent his name to in recent years.

It's a great shame that Corman transformed himself over the years, from a canny artist who had great business savvy into a businessman who buried any art in the quest to provide audiences with simple pleasures, but it's hard to criticise a man too much who has provided me with movies as enjoyable as this one before also, in his capacity as producer, providing me with schlock as enjoyable as Sharktopus.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Masque-Red-Death-Amazon-com-Exclusive/dp/B00A43NUY6/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1398997367&sr=1-2&keywords=the+masque+of+the+red+death

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Demons Of The Mind (1972)

Robert Hardy plays a smothering father in this bizarre, lesser Hammer film directed, with little enthusiasm or flair, by Peter Sykes. His son and daughter (Shane Briant and Gillian Hills) are kept locked up as much as possible, kept away from each other and kept in a weakened state thanks to some regular bleeding. Hardy is convinced that his children have inherited a family madness and hopes that a visiting psychiatrist (Patrick Magee) can find a cure. Meanwhile, local villagers are getting up in arms as yet another poor woman's body is found in the woods.

With a lame script by Christopher Wicking, horribly ham-fisted approach to the material, a lot of overacting and very little gore, this Hammer horror has very little in it to recommend to fans. It does have a soupçon of nudity for fans of Gillian Hills and Virginia Wetherell, and a few great utterances from the enjoyable Magee, but that's really all there is to it.

Most of the cast are completely wasted, with the notable exceptions of Kenneth J. Warren, who has fun in the role of a manservant often going above and beyond the call of duty, and the eye-rolling Magee. Hardy, Briant, Hills, Wetherell, Paul Jones, Robert Brown and even the great Michael Hordern, are all given pretty short shrift.

The ideas put forward, especially during the finale of the movie, are actually quite interesting and twisted for Hammer, but a good movie does not come from intriguing ideas alone. It may be as handsomely staged as ever, but this is one best avoided by anyone other than completists.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ultimate-Hammer-Collection-Disc/dp/B000HN31KQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372871091&sr=8-1&keywords=hammer+box+set

Tales From The Crypt (1972).

It’s an anthology horror movie from Amicus (contrary to popular belief the studio DID make other types of movies  but they will forever be tied to their portmanteau legacy) and based, of course, on the popular E.C comics of yesteryear. As well as Tales From The Crypt, the movie also takes some story ideas from The Vault Of Horror, another popular title, but I couldn’t tell you which story comes from which source as I am far from an expert in comic books.

What I can tell you is that Freddie Francis once again directs from a screenplay by Milton Subotsky, as was the case with Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, and the results are almost as enjoyable.

The framing story concerns a number of people who get lost while wandering around a crypt area, funnily enough, but the fun is to be had in the separate, twisted tales that The Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) reveals.
Story 1 – Joan Collins plays a nasty woman who bumps off her hubby on Christmas Eve but then finds herself trapped and unable to call the police when a madman dressed as Santa comes prowling around the house.
Story 2 – Ian Hendry plays a husband about to secretly leave his wife and kids until fate intervenes.
Story 3 – The ever-brilliant Peter Cushing plays an old man who upsets his affluent neighbours by not selling up his house, looking after a number of noisy dogs and being loved by the local children for the re-conditioned toys that he gives out to them. The affluent neighbour plans to spoil everything for the old man but things, inevitably, go too far.
Story 4 – A fun, knowing take on the classic horror tale, “The Monkey’s Paw”, that revolves around a husband and wife who may have found a way to make wishes come true.
Story 5 – Last, but by no means least, is the tale of Maj. William Rogers (Nigel Patrick), a man who becomes the head honcho at a care facility for the blind and who ends up causing so much upset that the residents (led by Patrick Magee) plan a particularly nasty bit of revenge.

Tales From The Crypt is one of the better anthology movies from this period thanks to it’s decent cast, the choice of tales and the fact that five stories are crammed into it’s 90-odd minute runtime so you’re never far away from either an enjoyable set-up or gleefully nasty punchline. The script and direction are acceptable, if unspectacular, but the main plus point here is in the delight the film takes in it’s own nastiness. This is a horror anthology movie a step or two ahead of the more austere entries in the subgenre and anyone meeting a sticky end meets a very sticky end indeed. Which makes for a lot of fun.

7/10. 

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