The Monster Club (1981)

Description

A fictionalised version of author R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) is approached on a city street by a strange man (Vincent Price) who turns out to be a starving vampire named Eramus. Eramus bites the writer, and in gratitude for the small "donation", takes his (basically unharmed but bewildered) victim to the titular club, which is a covert gathering place for a multitude of supernatural creatures. In between the club's unique music and dance performances, Eramus introduces three stories about his fellow creatures of the night. The Shadmock A young, financially struggling woman (Barbara Kellerman) takes a job at a secluded manor house owned by Raven (James Laurenson), a hybrid creature called a Shadmock, who leads a troubled and tragic existence and is notorious for its demonic whistle. As time goes by, the girl, Angela, develops a friendship with the mysterious Shadmock, named Raven, and he eventually proposes to her. Alarmed, Angela refuses but her controlling boyfriend (Simon Ward) forces her to go through with it to gain the Shadmock's vast wealth. At the night of the engagement party, Angela is caught robbing the Shadmock's safe, and screams that she could never love him. Heartbroken, the Shadmock whistles and destroys Angela's face. Upon seeing her, her boyfriend is driven insane and locked away in an asylum. The Vampires The timid son (Warren Saire) of a peaceable family of vampires lives a miserable, lonely life where he is bullied at school and his father (Richard Johnson) spends little time with him. The son discovers his father is a vampire, being relentlessly, if ineptly, hunted by a team of bureaucratic undead-killers led by Pickering (Donald Pleasence). The hunters break into the house and stake the vampire father, but the tables are turned when the father bites Pickering, meaning that he will now have to be staked by his own assistants. A chase ensues and Pickering is staked. After his men take his body away, the timid son and his mother (Britt Ekland) return to the basement to find that the father faked his death using a stake-proof vest filled with tomato ketchup. The Ghouls A movie director (Stuart Whitman) scouting locations for his next film pays a horrifying visit to an isolated, decrepit village, Loughville near Hillington, Norfolk, where the sinister residents refuse to let him leave. He discovers to his horror that the village is inhabited by species of corpse-eating demons called ghouls who unearth graves for food and clothes. And now there are no more graves to plunder and the ghouls are hungry for flesh. While imprisoned by the ghouls, he meets Luna (Lesley Dunlop), the daughter of a ghoul father (Patrick Magee) and a deceased human mother,making her a Hum-ghoul. Luna advises him to hide in the church, as ghouls cannot cross holy ground. Whilst in the church, the director discovers the terrifying truth of Loughville; centuries before, a swarm of ghouls invaded the village, mated with the humans and made their nest there. With the aid of Luna, the director attempts to escape and almost succeeds - only for Luna to be killed by the ghouls and the director captured again and returned to the village by ghoul policemen. At the end of the film, Eramus cheerfully lists to the other club members all the imaginative ways that humans have of being horrible to each other, and declares that humans are the most despicable monsters of all. Thus Chetwynd-Hayes is made an honorary monster and member of the club.