Although Amicus broke up in 1975, Milton Subotsky carried on producing, making works like this and 1977's "The Uncanny" Amicus anthologies in a spiritual sense.
Having said this, The Monster Club really is a horror movie at the end of an era. Most of these films look incredibly tame and dated in today's context and always struggle with the line between terror and camp. But The Monster Club is a film that genuinely attempts to be not only wilfully silly, but even post-modern, as the title quote suggests. Two of the three segments involve the movie industry, including a film within a film.
Of those segments, then the final one, with a village of zombies-by-any-other-name is quite good, even though it does feature one of the most inexplicable moments in horror, the hero of the piece hailing down a police car and then not informing them that there's a dying girl just around the corner.
What's most surprising though is how overt the comedy becomes. When I initially saw the inside of the titular Monster Club, with a hoard of completely unrealistic "monsters", I'd assumed it was some new wave club with humans wearing masks. The end of the film reveals that they are, in fact, supposed to be genuine creatures of the undead.
Each of the three segments are breached by a musical number, all of which are pretty good, but feel like they belong in a different picture. Vincent Price delivering a monologue about the evil of man to the skinny tie brigade may feel like an anachronism, but just three years later he was further cementing his status as an icon with his vocal performance on Thriller.
Placing The Monster Club in an historical context reveals much. Old-school horrors like grown men wearing plastic fangs can compel because of the innate classiness of the production, but there's no such sophistication here. I'm no major fan of the slasher genre, but when you consider that guest star Donald Pleasence had made Halloween just two years earlier then it throws into perspective how antiquated Monster Club was.
As for the likes of B.A. Roberton as the musical performers, then just two years later Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow was derogatorily calling him a "hippy" and telling him his interview show was "s***". The old crashes uncomfortably into the new, and The Monster Club tries unsuccessfully to marry the two in a brief window of opportunity.
Having said this, The Monster Club really is a horror movie at the end of an era. Most of these films look incredibly tame and dated in today's context and always struggle with the line between terror and camp. But The Monster Club is a film that genuinely attempts to be not only wilfully silly, but even post-modern, as the title quote suggests. Two of the three segments involve the movie industry, including a film within a film.
Of those segments, then the final one, with a village of zombies-by-any-other-name is quite good, even though it does feature one of the most inexplicable moments in horror, the hero of the piece hailing down a police car and then not informing them that there's a dying girl just around the corner.
What's most surprising though is how overt the comedy becomes. When I initially saw the inside of the titular Monster Club, with a hoard of completely unrealistic "monsters", I'd assumed it was some new wave club with humans wearing masks. The end of the film reveals that they are, in fact, supposed to be genuine creatures of the undead.
Each of the three segments are breached by a musical number, all of which are pretty good, but feel like they belong in a different picture. Vincent Price delivering a monologue about the evil of man to the skinny tie brigade may feel like an anachronism, but just three years later he was further cementing his status as an icon with his vocal performance on Thriller.
Placing The Monster Club in an historical context reveals much. Old-school horrors like grown men wearing plastic fangs can compel because of the innate classiness of the production, but there's no such sophistication here. I'm no major fan of the slasher genre, but when you consider that guest star Donald Pleasence had made Halloween just two years earlier then it throws into perspective how antiquated Monster Club was.
As for the likes of B.A. Roberton as the musical performers, then just two years later Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow was derogatorily calling him a "hippy" and telling him his interview show was "s***". The old crashes uncomfortably into the new, and The Monster Club tries unsuccessfully to marry the two in a brief window of opportunity.