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FILM:


V/H/S: Viral - 2014
see link for writing & directing credits

The V/H/S series combines two of the riskiest elements of horror -- found footage and anthology -- to what has generally added up to a more successful sum than one could reasonably expect.  The hungry young bucks of low-budget scares have by-and-large broken away from the hammy, winky traditions of EC Comics influenced shorts, and make a genuine effort to present their pieces with a certain amount of realism -- at least until they go completely batshit-outta-Hell.  The first two V/H/S films are kind of like an online personality test for horror fans.  Different shorts appeal to different fans, well, differently.  I, personally, didn't really care at all for the one in V/H/S 2 that was most lauded by the most self-righteous of horror fans

I, again personally, feel that this third installment is actually the best one yet, although I'm sure that won't be a unanimous opinion.  The narratives are better developed over all.  The visions are more unique.  And after the virtually cut-and-pasted framing device in V/H/S 2, the mythology finally evolves a little, in scope if not in clarity.  This V/H/S seems like it might actually be trying to say something.

The first film (not counting the framing story, to which I will return) is Dante The Great from director Gregg Bishop.  It's presented documentary-style, but plays fast and loose with the found footage premise when the action picks up.  The story is about a not-so-great wannabe magician who discovers a fabled cape capable of empowering real magic.  He rises rapidly through the ranks with tricks that no one else can fathom, but as his private collection of videos shows, there is a price to pay for that power.

Of all the segments in Viral, this is the one most capable of expansion into a full-length feature, and I imagine that Bishop must have considered it for that at one time.  Dante's career arc is glossed over, as is his relationship with Scarlett, his most recent assistant and potential rival.  Their battle for the cape is cool as hell and I easily could have watched 10 more minutes of that alone.  If Marvel Films hadn't already hired a director for Dr. Strange, this would be a stunning audition tape.  It really isn't scary, but then so little is.  It's clever and fun and showed me new things.  That's all I'm askin' for.

The next film is by far the strangest.  Parallel Monsters by Nacho Vigalondo is the video record of one man's secret experiments with a gateway intended to reach a parallel universe.  On this, his third effort, the gateway opens into a mirror image of his own basement laboratory.  Peeking through, he discovers a mirror image of himself.  They're both delighted by this breakthrough.  Neither one can restrain his curiosity, and they agree ("I was thinking the same thing!") to trade places for 15 minutes to see how the other side lives.

As it turns out, there are more differences than everything being a reflection.  Their cultures have some radically different bases, and then there's... that other thing.  After creeping along for a while, then getting weird and uncomfortable, this one suddenly stomps on the gas to get things over with in a way that didn't quite make sense and could have been much better paced.  However, once the Hell breaks loose, the viewer is more concerned with "WTF?!!" than the finer points of narrative pacing.  It's definitely a concept that could be expanded in another context, if it hadn't gotten into such a hurry to tie things up in a bloody little bow at the end.  There are definitely some surprises here, and I like the way it didn't feel obligated to answer every question it raised, simply allowing things to remain texture in the alternate dimension.

The third segment is the least developed and most over-long, which isn't to say that there's nothing to like about it.  Bonestorm by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead is made of footage shot for a couple of skateboarders intent on becoming the next internet sensation, so much of it comes from GoPro cameras on their boards and helmets.  Between you and me, that isn't the best place for them.  A big chunk of the segment simply involves them falling off their boards, bitching at their videographer and getting chased out of public places.  Eventually they decide to head down to Tijuana to skate a drainage ditch (because they don't have drainage ditches in California?), so then we get footage of them wandering around TJ and finally finding a ditch to ride.  This ditch just happens to have all kinds of freaky witchcraft symbols and totems all over it.

Soon enough, one of the skaters spills a little blood on the symbol and as soon as it starts to smoke, the cultists show up and attack.  The skaters spend an awful lot of time killing cultists that might better have been spent getting the hell outta Dodge, but the cultists aren't done with them yet.  There really wasn't anything I'd strictly call a story here, just a series of events and a lot of filler.  There's some fun to be found in the skater dudes' characters and the final bouts of violence, but those both become as tiresome as the rest of it.  The thing I appreciated most about it was the way that its themes of internet fame and unearned ambition tied in with the wraparound story's.

Now, about that wraparound story; Vicious Circles directed by Marcel Sarmiento.  The first two V/H/S films essentially had the same framing device, where someone broke into a seemingly empty house and watched a series of weird videotapes (thus the name) about horrific stuff happening, then being eliminated one by one by unknown persons or dark powers.  Viral does evolve this concept, starting out with a modern internet-savvy couple who feel obligated to record far too much of their lives.  When a big ol' LA police chase hits their neighborhood, the guy heads out to try and get some footage of it, and in the process, his girlfriend disappears, evidently scooped up by the speeding ice cream truck leading the police in circles.

Between the other segments, the chase continues, reflected in footage from other sources where other incidents occur.  It seems that the truck is spreading madness in addition to mayhem.  While the narrative is distinctly less clear that the frame has been in the past, and the relationship to the segments more vague, I found it to be more artistically creative, and I believe it was actually trying to say something about the toxic power of our ubiquitous fame-chasing internet culture.  It certainly evolved the concept, taking the dark powers mobile, spreading the doom rather than merely luring others to it.

The VHS conceit had been beaten and abused in the past, given that many of the films acknowledged a digital recording context, but as Viral makes so much more of being digital and the nature of digital media, the VHS textures seem even more out of place.  I don't suppose a lot of people will notice or care, because those are much spookier textures that speak to something out of the past, but the talents involved in the next V/H/S would do themselves a favor to look at the way that a film like ETXR makes use of digital textures as they move forward.  The V/H/S title may become anachronistic, but that doesn't mean the film needs to be.  Perhaps the series becomes "Viral" from this point on.

And despite the internet nerd rage, I really hope that the series DOES go on.  This is a great format for letting a younger generation of low-budget horror directors try a few things out and stretch their wings.  I'm really curious to find out more about the entity behind the videos; certainly more than I ever have been about some mere franchised serial killer.  I think each entry shows the next round of directors places where they can challenge themselves and what kind of things just aren't cutting it like they were following Blair Witch.  As our cultural relationship with homemade video evolves, it makes sense that our cultural response to that should evolve as well.


Currently on Video On-Demand.  Opens in select theaters November 21.

Press Eject

The Houses October Built - 2014
see link for writing team
Directed by Bobby Roe

In 2011, Bobby Roe made a documentary about the changing face of Halloween scare houses in the (mostly Southern) United States.  This year, he turned that concept into a found footage film about pretty much the same thing.  He and his friends visit a series of haunted house attractions looking for "real" scares.  This has an additional fictional storyline about them seeking out an underground horror house that turns out to be a little TOO real for them.  Essentially, it's Blair Witch all over again, but with the South instead of the woods, annoying bickering and whining leading up to an unsurprising doom included.  When people say "Ugh, another found footage horror movie" this is what they're talking about.

Murdered by Numbers

I'm closing out "Anthoholic," my week of horror anthologies with a double feature of sequels (sort of) to movies discussed previously in the week.  I really never expected to watch this many anthologies, but the two that I most enjoyed, 4BIA and Three... Extremes both had sequels (again; sort of) so that encouraged me to extend the feature-within-a-feature.  But honestly, let's get this thing over with already.  I'm ready to get sick of werewolves.

FILM:

Phobia 2 - 2009
see link for complete writing & directing credits

Now me, I like the ghost stories, and evidently Thailand does too because their horror movies tend to skew heavily toward creepy tales of haunting.  As such, we have gotten along just fine so far.  Granted, I largely have the directing team of Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom to thank for this.  Their films Shutter and Alone are top-notch spookers, and they seem to be the heart of the group responsible for the previously discussed 4BIA (Phobia) and its sequel Phobia 2 (which I still call 5BIA for my own enjoyment and no one else's).  Phobia 2 has five stories to the four from 4BIA, thus enhancing the impression that it should be called 5BIA.  Many of the other segment directors in 4BIA and 5BIA were producers on Shutter and/or Alone as well, so it would appear to be a tight-knit group.  Now, on with the show...

This second installment seems to have more uniquely Thai flavors in it, which I appreciate, and that impression is most strongly encouraged by this first segment, Novice, directed by Paween Purkitpanya.  It concerns a troubled teenage boy who is already haunted by his history of bad choices and tragedy.  In order to lay low while the heat dies down back home, his mother has taken him to a secluded monastery in the forest.  This is sort of the Thai version of boot camp for poorly raised American kids.  They're meant to learn discipline, but in Thailand they get a crash course in Buddhist fundamentals rather than force as a problem-solving method.  As is my understanding, it's not at all uncommon in Thai life for someone to check out of society and check into a monastery or nunnery for a while to get their heads on straight.

So our young man, Pe, is dropped off with the monks, shorn of his hair, and not altogether happy about the situation, but even less happy about what he's done.  The monk's diet is a light one, and Pe gets the pangs at night, when the monks are specifically forbidden from eating.  He remembers a place in the forest where offerings have been left for some restless neighborhood ghosts and eats some of the food despite the admonitions and interference of a senior monk.  Sure enough, this theft stirs the ire of the spirits, and Pe finds himself caught between the vengeful nature of the haunting spirits, and the haunting guilt upon his conscience.

Novice bled into Ward in such a way that I hadn't even realized a new segment had begun for the first minute or two.  Novice had a key plot point that involved a motorcycle and a crash, and Ward begins with the sounds of a motorcycle and a crash, so it was a curious choice for juxtaposition.  That being said, once I got my bearings, Ward, directed by Visute Poolvoralaks (a producer on Alone & Shutter) unfolded a seemingly straight-forward haunting with an outstanding twist.

Like Novice, Ward is about a young man who has a strange spiritual encounter with monks and Buddhist cosmology.  Arthit, our young man, was in a motorcycle accident (thus the opening sounds) and is in the hospital recovering.  The room he's placed in is already occupied by a comatose old monk who is expected to die soon.  A group of other monks come to visit and make final arrangements, suggesting that the old monk is highly revered.  Then, he starts haunting Arthit, before he's even dead.

I so want to tell you the twist and discuss all its implications, but I'd feel terrible about myself if I spoiled it for you.  Suffice to say that it makes Ward a pretty unique story of haunting that really highlights what is special about being exposed to other cultures' spiritual perspectives in international horror.

The next segment, Backpackers by director Songyos Sugmakanan is unique among all the tales in 4BIA and 5BIA in that it isn't a ghost story.  Two young Japanese backpackers (evidently Japanese backpackers say "bro" a lot too) hitch a ride with the drivers of a passing box truck.  From the start, something clearly isn't right with the situation.  The young man who seems a little bit stylish for a truck driver admonishes the older one behind the wheel for picking them up.  They're hustled for more gas money than they'd hoped.  Cell phone calls quickly push the driver toward irate behavior, and then there are the noises; lound banging from the back of the truck, then silence...

The drivers stop to check the back of the truck, ordering their passengers to stay put.  They find that the back of the truck is full of dead bodies, which is at least one thing that neither of them expected.  After dragging them out of the truck, the younger man cuts into the stomach of one body (a lovely scene involving strawberry jam) to retrieve what is now a burst condom of drugs.  This is about the time where the backpackers have had enough of this shit, sneak out of the cab and manage to get their hands on the one gun available.  They get the drop on the drivers, but rather unexpectedly, one of the bodies behind him gets up and takes a bite out of the Japanese boy's neck.  For you see, this is not a ghost story, but a zombie story.

It's not a particularly original zombie story, but hey, for Thailand, it's just not as well covered ground.  it ends as (apparently) zombie stories must; with the hopeless promise of worse to come.

Getting back to ghosts, Parkpoom Wongpoom brings us Salvage, about a woman working for a used car dealership that isn't particularly forthcoming about the complete histories of all the cars she sells.  Evidently, most of them have been in pretty bad wrecks in the past, but cleaned up and resold to unsuspecting customers.  Our dealer, Nuch, is fairly ambitious and puts in long hours, allowing her young son to run around the lot with his remote control car until she's done for the day.  On the night in question, her son, Toey, is suddenly nowhere to be found.  Nuch reviews the security footage to find where he's hiding, coming to find that the last place he's been seen is somewhere she's already looked... so where could he be, and why does it look like there's a woman in that locked car?

Salvage is a pretty straight ghost tale with some disturbing imagery.  I had a pretty good idea how it would end and I wasn't wrong, but that didn't make it any easier to take when it came.  Gyah.

The final segment is the money shot here.  Clearly I wasn't the only one who really enjoyed the character interplay between the four boys in 4BIA's In The Middle, because director Banjong Pisanthanakun brought them back for In The End.  This time around, they're a film production crew shooting "Alone 2" with Marsha Wattanapanich from Wongpoom & Pisanthanakun's Alone.  If you're getting the impression that they're not taking this entirely seriously, you're right.  In The End is an hilarious combination of character comedy, inside baseball on film making, and meta humor about horror tropes.

When the actress playing the ghost girl comes down ill during shooting, they guys argue about coming up with a new "twist" ending, thus riffing on horror conventions including the twist in their own segment in 4BIA and setting up the series of twists that will close out their story here.  I just loved the crap out of this one.  It definitely won't be AS funny if you're not familiar with at least 4BIA, but it doesn't hurt to have seen Alone and Shutter too (which is just good advice in general).  It's only a tiny bit scary, but that's so not the point, and I'm grateful to Pisanthanakun for making that choice.  The cast have incredible chemistry, and I would gladly watch anything this team decided to do together.  [As a matter of fact, it looks like they DO reunite in a film called Pee Mak directed by Pisanthanakun, which is classified as a horror/comedy/romance and already sits in my film queue. Can't wait!]

I enjoyed the Thai-specific approach to Novice, but it didn't particularly knock me out.  Not to be the dumb guy, but I would have preferred a little more exposition to place things in a context that made the ending clearer.  Ward was very simple, but with a brilliant and thought-provoking twist.  Backpackers really didn't do that much for me, but then I'm pretty over zombies.  There was some good tension, but since I generally assume that everyone is going to die in a zombie story, some of the tension is deflated when you have no hope for the characters.  Salvage was a simple but effective haunting by angry spirits and In The End was laugh-out-loud and love-these-guys funny and fun..  Don't be afraid of the subtitles.  See 4BIA and Phobia 2.



And now for a somewhat less enthusiastic endorsement (but stick with it 'cause we're going somewhere)...

Three (AKA 3 Extremes II) - 2002
see link for complete writing & directing credits

Yesterday, I wrote about the brilliant Three... Extremes, which was actually the sequel to this, known originally as Three.  However when Extremes turned out to something of a minor sensation stateside, the company then released the original Three as a sort-of sequel, calling it Three Extremes II, which is really pretty easy to do given the anthological nature of the films.  Extremes employed some big-name directors, where Three's talents are somewhat less big, as are the results.  Again, we have three directors from three different Asian nations.  This time it's Kim Jee-Woon (Tale of Two Sisters, The Good The Bad and The Weird and the brutal & amazing I Saw the Devil) from Korea with Memories, Nonzee Nimibutr from Thailand with The Wheel, and Peter Chan (producer of The Eye) with Going Home.  Strap in.  It's going to be a bumpy ride.

In Memories, a man has apparently blocked out the trauma of his wife leaving him.  He seeks a psychiatrist's help in hopes of unlocking his memories of why she left and where she may have gone.  Meanwhile, his wife wakes up laying in the road, evidently unsure of who she is and where she belongs.  The man is nagged by images and objects that seem related to the mystery.  The woman is drawn to places and unable to connect with the people she encounters.  This goes on and on, and between you and me, the mystery ain't all that much of a mystery.  As such, "on and on" becomes ON AND ON AND ON AND OH MY GOD WILL THIS EVER END?  Even though the end was clear very early on in the story, not only are we dragged at a glacial pace to the obvious conclusion, but then the ending is still obscured by moody presentation and vagary.  VERY frustrating.  Very disappointing, coming from the director of the relentless I Saw The Devil.

As if to punish the viewer for daring to think that Memories was slow and obvious, along comes The Wheel to salt the wound.  When a Thai puppet master (and actual master performer of puppetry, not a grand manipulator) is dying, he orders that his puppets be drowned in the lake, for anyone else who should use the puppets he's imbued with his spirit (the metaphorical being taken literally here) shall be cursed to a miserable death.  The second in command in the troupe, apparently comes from a rival discipline, that of masked dancing, which harbors extreme resentment at the money and respect afforded to the puppeteers.  He thinks it foolish to waste the puppets.  The troupe is really full of petty rivalries and power struggles, all of which explode under the influence of the curse and a foul ending is assured for most if not all.  Unfortunately, it just takes way too long getting to that end, and it's way too vague on why things happen exactly the way that they do, other than the obvious curse.  Like I said above about 5BIA, I do enjoy the cultural specificity, and The Wheel certainly delivers that, and yet it does nothing to prevent it from being absolutely agonizing to watch.  Like 5BIA's Novice, this is a case where a little more exposition might have helped, but instead we just get a lot of meaningful glances that aren't all that meaningful.  I wouldn't mind it being so slow if it actually did something with that time, but it just doesn't.

Redemption comes in the end.  The third segment is absolutely brilliant, and would have been better off developed as a standalone movie.  Going Home begins with a recently widowed police officer and his young son moving into a run-down and nearly empty apartment building in Hong Kong.  The building, like the officer, have clearly seen better days.  His son is constantly vigilant for ghosts, becoming nearly petrified at the sight of doors that might possibly harbor spirits.  When he comes home from school, he continually finds that the doors to vacant apartments on his floor are wide open again and he slams them one by one with admonitions for any spirits lurking within.  The only other person he seems to see around is the little girl who lives across the way.  At first he's afraid of her too, but in time he comes to accept an offer from her to come and play.

That night, his father awakens from an after-work nap to realize that his son still isn't home.  He searches all over the apartment building, finding not a sign.  The next morning, he concludes that the strange and nervous man across the way knows more than he's letting on.  After all, didn't he lie about not having a daughter?  Hadn't his son said that there was a girl that lived there?  Waiting until the neighbors drags out another pungent, soggy bag of garbage, he lets himself into the apartment to find out just what the hell is going on over there.  He winds up unconscious and wakes to find himself bound to a chair.  It wasn't what he thought...

What it is is something altogether unexpected, and the tale that unfolds is both creepy and deeply moving.  This easily could have been a feature on its own, with an expanded interplay between the two men, and a lot more attention to what happened to the children in the meantime.  "Heartbreaking" isn't a term we often have reason to use in relation to horror movies.  Going Home makes the case that it really should be.

Extremely... Disturbing

FILM:

Three... Extremes - 2004
see link for writing credits
Directed by Fruit Chan, Chan-wook Park & Takashi Miike

Not that this was a contest, but the contest is over.  Three... Extremes wins.  I don't expect to see a horror anthology better than this.  That's not to say that it's perfect, but nothing else that I've seen in the category has been this thoughtful, this mature, this creepy and this beautiful.

It's a low-concept anthology with three high-concept segments.  It gathers three Asian directors -- Fruit Chan from Hong Kong, Chan-wook Park from Korea and Takashi Miike from Japan and turns them loose to tell a self-contained short story.  Three... Extremes is actually the sequel to a similarly arranged film called Three, but when Extremes proved to be something of a success on the foreign circuit in the US, Three was released here as a sequel, Three Extremes II.  I explain this now on the off chance that someone else might find themselves saying "Hey... how was the sequel released in 2002?"  Alright, down to business...

The first segment is Dumplings by Fruit Chan.  If you're a Chinese cinema buff, the title alone is apt to bring to mind images of Dragon Gate Inn.  You be half right.

Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung Chin Wah) is a former actress (it's not uncommon for Chinese actresses to retire when they marry) concerned that her husband's affections are waning.  This may or may not have more to do with her own self-valuation than it does with his.  Mr. Li (Tony Leung Ka Fai) seemed perfectly willing to make of the whoopie with Mrs. Li, but he's a wealthy businessman and business requires him to travel regularly, which she interprets as abandonment.  In order to stave off the imperceptible ravages of time, Mrs. Li seeks out the maker of Hong Kong's most expensive dumplings, which are said to have restorative powers.

This brings her to the door of Auntie Mei (Bai Ling).  Mei runs a small, the-lower-the-profile-the-better operation out of her apartment, crafting these extraordinary dumplings by hand.  The old folk songs from her girlhood (evidently longer ago than anyone suspects) and dumpling-centric philosophy come free with purchase.  Mei requires one very special and difficult to come by ingredient for her dumplings, but they're guaranteed to fill one with youth.

I'm not going to go any farther with that because that's where the mean of the story comes into play, so to speak.  Not only did this story have subtext, such as Mrs. Li's aging issues, but it even had a subplot, about a customer of Auntie Mei's other small business.  Chan managed to fit an incredible amount of depth into a rather simple story, although he evidently didn't fit in as much as he'd wanted to, because he ended up reworking Dumplings into a full length feature shortly after Three... Extremes.  I wouldn't call this segment scary, but then I'm not sure I'd call any of them scary.  But I'd definitely call it disturbing... and insightful, maybe shocking, certainly sensuous, a little sad, even sexy, and totally engaging film making.

Next up is Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy, Thirst, Stoker) with Cut.  Having really enjoyed Park's vampire movie Thirst, I got all excited when Cut appeared as though it was going to be a vampire tale from a different angle, then suddenly, that turned into a movie in a movie, and the director became the center of the real story.

When the director (Byung-hun Lee, called only The Director) arrives home that evening after shooting -- to a house that looks exactly like the film set -- his wife is still out, but he may not exactly be alone.  First the house's lights go out... then his do.

He awakens back on the film set (which looks exactly like his house) to find that his wife is there, gagged and bound by wires in front of a piano.  On the other side of the room, a young girl is bound and gagged on the sofa.  In between them, the director finds that his own hands are tied and he has an enormous rubber band connecting him to the wall of the soundstage so he can only reach the other two through great effort.  There's also a stranger, a manic little man, whom the director eventually recognizes as an extra from his films, and it is he who holds all the cards now.  The stranger (like the director, otherwise unnamed) has come to the conclusion that only the poor should be good people, and the rich and beautiful, gifted in so many ways, should be burdened with the flaw of being bad people.  This is the premise for his deadly game; the director must prove himself to be a bad person by strangling the little girl on the couch, or his wife (a pianist) would lose a finger every five minutes.

Cut is arguably the most actually scary film in the trio, but the first word I'd use to describe it would be tense.  The stranger is pretty unhinged and the director is kind of ineffectual, and from this dynamic hatch variations and revelations that keep the drama amping up all the way to the twisted finale.  It's not a perfect piece, and the momentum drags somewhat as we approach the conclusion, but it deals strongly in many of the emotional tones that ones hopes to find in horror, and the stranger is certainly one of the more memorable killers I've seen in a while.  I, personally, felt like the "twist" ending (with actual twisting) was a little unjustified and tacked on for the sake of poetic rather than realistic story arc, but that was a decision that Park had made long before the conclusion.

The last film is definitely the strangest, and that's saying something.  Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins) directs Box, a dreamlike (for a reason) exploration of the past and/or dreams and/or ghosts that haunt Kyoko, a young writer.  Every night she dreams that she's wrapped in plastic and buried in a box.  When she's given a music box with a familiar tune, it seems to have the effect of summoning the spirit of her dead twin sister.  This seems to expand the experience of her dreams, showing us more of her past (or is it just symbolic of her past?) and linking those events to the part where she's buried in the box.

The more I think about it, the less I'm sure than anything was what it appeared to be.  I can easily see the entire thing being symbolic of something else, something entirely unshown, that may be the true story.  I'm reluctant to try to describe the story any more because I don't want to taint anyone else's perceptions.  The film is beautiful and sensuous and creepy and then creepier, no matter what it means.  It's a very experiential film.

Due to its repetitive nature, it does seem to drag in places where you've already figured out where it's going, and due to its symbolic nature, it may be infuriatingly vague for some viewers.  Were I a younger man, I might have found it ever so slightly wanky, but as I am not, I now find it to be the right kind of wanky.  Yes, it's trying something and yes, it can be unclear, but so can memories, dreams and feelings, and that's part of the experience that Miike shares with us.

Three... Extremes is mostly just going to piss off the kind of horror fan that measures a film in gallons of blood or volume of shrieks, but for those like me who care about story, about seeing something new and different, about the thoughts and feelings with which they fill us, and about just plain creep factor, it's essential viewing.  I can't say it will be your favorite horror movie or even your favorite anthology, but it's certainly something that won't soon be forgotten.

Late Night Clubbing -- REALLY Late

FILM:

The Monster Club - 1981
Written by Edward & Valerie Abraham
from the Book by R Chetwynd-Hayes
Directed by Roy Ward Baker

It's interesting to me that The Monster Club was released only a year before Creepshow, because they're a generation apart in terms of presentation -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing for one or the other.

While not a Hammer Films production itself, it comes from production companies that did work with Hammer in the past, and falls at the end of the British horror arc defined by Hammer through the 60s and in-decline throughout the 70s, so that's the tradition of which it is a part.  As if in tribute to that history, it brings horror legends Vincent Price and John Carradine together as the vampire Erasmus and his (ahem) dinner guest, writer R Chetwynd Hayes, respectively.  Erasmus snacks on Hayes, but not enough to kill him or turn him, and then takes him out to The Monster Club to see how the night creatures enjoy the night life.  Curiously, in all of Vincent Price's career, this is the only time he ever played a vampire, and he was getting a little, shall we say... long in the tooth himself.

At the club, Erasmus delivers what initially appears to be a "chalice from the palace" schtick, explaining the hierarchy of the monster family tree, which turns out to actually be important to the three tales that are about to be told.  And therein lies the movie's main structure.  Price gets two outstanding monologues bookending three tales, each followed by a stage show at The Monster Club.

Erasmus' first tale is about a Shadmock, which evidently is not a very highly regarded crossbreed of monster.  Where "Vampires suck, Werewolves hunt and Ghouls tear" a Shadmock whistles, but "they don't do it very often," and so we will hear the story of what happens when one does.  The Shadmock in question is named Raven -- picture Javier Bardem in ghoulish stage make-up.  He has, seemingly despite his circumstances, made something of himself and lives alone in his mansion.  Having advertised for an assistant to alleviate his loneliness, he hires the beautiful young Angela, unaware that she is only there to case the joint so she and her loutish boyfriend can loot the place later.  With the soul of a poet but the face of a butt, Raven falls in love with Angela, and Angela is torn by conflicted feelings.  Somehow you just know that it's not going to end well for her ...when the Shadmock whistles.

The next story concerns an actual vampire and features actual Donald Pleasence as a by-the-book vampire hunter.  It's shown, however, from the perspective of a young boy who doesn't understand why his father sleeps all day and can't be around to play with him.  Bullied at school, he thinks he's found a sympathetic ear in the mild-mannered priest who's suddenly taken an interest in his home life.  Now granted, the sudden interest of a priest in a young boy is scary enough, but this isn't that kind of horror.  Sure enough, Dad's a vampire, and the priest is hunting him.  Will his businesslike approach to monster hunting be enough to save him?  And what of the boy?  Wha-a-at?

Getting back to the twisted genealogy of monsters, the final tale concerns a Humegoo, which is the result of a human mating with a ghoul.  An illustrated sequence (by John Bolton!) of the most action-packed part of the story explains how this came to be.  A Humegoo doesn't have any particular talents and really must lead a rather tragic life, trapped in the world of ghouls (essentially zombies in our modern context).  A film director was scouting locations when he found the most perfectly creepy isolated village, somewhere in the English countryside.  It wasn't until he decided that he needed to leave that he found out how creepy and isolated.  It turns out the village is largely populated by corpse-eating ghouls, who having cleaned out the graveyard, aren't too picky about making their own fresh corpses, given a chance.  He meets a young girl who speaks in Tonto-like broken English.  She's a Humegoo, and while she certainly has a taste for meat from the earth, she's not so sure about the killing.  Can the two of them, together, outwit a village full of ghouls?  Probably not.

Throughout the framing sequences, I kept expecting the monsters to chow down on Hayes at the end, so it came as a pleasant surprise when, in the most unexpected twist in the film, that the monsters had decided to offer him membership in the club.  This is where Price delivers his second great monologue, explaining that Man is the greatest monster of them all, with far more brutal sins to his credit than any old creatures of the night.  And thus, Hayes is inducted into their club and we get our last musical number.

Comparisons to Creepshow seem unavoidable, given their relative history and their contrasting approaches to story and humor (and that I watched Creepshow the night before).  The make-up and effects are a world apart, but where I found those to be the most redeeming factor of Creepshow, I wasn't really bothered by the antiquated stage make-up techniques and (really) old-fashioned effects in The Monster Club because the storytelling was so much better.  SO much better.

Make no mistake, The Monster Club IS still corny and the product of another time, but it manages to feel more classic in 2014 (not counting the musical numbers), where Creepshow just seems dated to me.  That being said, The Monster Club cares much, much more about storytelling and characterization.  The music is creepy and orchestral, creating classically ominous moods.  The tales have structure to them, allowing for a beginning, middle and end rather than just a set-up and a telegraphed twist.  Heck, the characters actually get just a little development, and although it's not strictly scary, it's a little bit sad when the Shadmock's heart breaks, or the boy Lintom is shoved around at school, or we recognize the loneliness of Luna the Humegoo.

While the stories tend to end as they must, they're not as blatantly predictable as Creepshow's obligatory "shock" endings.  The three tales show more variety as well, each playing on its own scale, relative to the characters involved rather than their ultimate fate.  The whole thing is just more human, more personal.

I certainly wouldn't make The Monster Club the staple of your Halloween night horror-fest, unless you're entertaining third-graders that you don't want to get overly jaded just yet.  But if you're hanging around in sweats some lazy gray Saturday afternoon, you could do a heck of a lot worse than to pass a hundred minutes with The Monster Club.