I Had No Luck With Her

To kick off, here's a screenshot from a recently repeated episode of 'Top of The Pops' originally broadcast in 1980. It features the backing singers for a performance of Jona Lewie's quirky electro pop hit 'You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties'. 

Left hand lady is the much missed Kirsty MacColl, of course, but I have been unable to identify her co-worker. This task has been made harder by the fact that neither of them actually sang on the record, they were just in the vicinity when needed for the telly. They really remind me of the girls I used to like as a young man: attractive, feisty, not interested.  

More Interesting People

The Monster Club, Part Two (Or Is It Three?)

Story two is ‘The Vampires’. It’s played for laughs, which is never good in films like this, but the central idea is quite interesting in the way it places the supernatural into a banal, everyday setting. 

Basically, it’s about a family where the father happens to be a cape wearing, slick backed hair Transylvanian vampire. His wife and son are fully supportive of this, and live a fairly ordinary life, aside from the fact that Dad is under constant threat from a gang of bowler hatted bureaucrats (Anthony Valentine, Neil McCarthy and leader Donald Pleasence) who want to bang a stake into him. 

It’s a nice idea to combine suburbia with vampirism (Dad’s trips out for blood are treated as if he were commuting to work), but the relentlessly smug execution soon becomes very tiresome. If it’s funny, it’s funny, you don’t have to leave gaps for laughter or keep mugging to the camera. Yes, I mean you, Donald. 

Finally, we come to ‘The Ghouls’. Ostensibly the scariest of the stories, it features a secluded village of ghouls in crisis because, after hundreds of years, they have finally run out of corpses to eat. When a film director (Stuart Whitman, sucking in his gut a la Robert Mitchum) turns up scouting for locations, he quickly finds himself in very deep shit. The story is too busy and confusing to really grip you, although the mass of ravenous villagers pressing in does evoke some mild claustrophobia. In Italian hands, it would have been grisly and gory and oppressively unpleasant, in British hands it just looks like the queue for the lunch van and, no matter what else you try and do, having a crowd of ghouls with Nana from ‘The Royle Family’ in it is never going to be terrifying.

In the end analysis, for all its faults (B.A Robertson), ‘The Monster Club’ is the last of its brilliant kind and is worthy of respect if not adulation. It ends with the revelation that man is the most monstrous monster of all and two iconic figures dancing and making tits of themselves. And I like that in a film, I really do.

Interesting People

‘The Monster Club’ was the last in Amicus’ superlative series of horror portmanteau films, neatly putting a full stop to their most productive decade with its release in 1980. I’ll start by saying that I don’t like it as much as their other films in the same line but, even so, I like it well enough. It’s main issue for me is that the stories are simply not strong enough – nor are they aren’t particularly well-executed. There’s also not enough of them. Oh, and the music, by The Pretty Things and B.A Robertson among others, is fucking awful. On the plus side, Vincent Price is in it, which almost makes up for B.A Robertson but not quite. Actually, it in no way makes up for B.A Robertson.

The stories are all from the Welsh writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, a horror author I’m not overly familiar with but who seems to be well regarded by people who are familiar with him. The linking sequences, in which the writer himself (played by John Carradine, his poor hands gnarled by arthritis) is introduced to the delights of a disco for supernatural beings by vampire Vincent Price has a fair few amusing moments - and some cold sweat ones. If you have ever wanted to see two elderly horror stalwarts awkwardly grooving to cod-reggae, before copping off with a couple of fat birds, however, then this is the film for you.

Story one is ‘The Shadmock’. According to Chetwynd-Hayes, a Shadmock is a fairly low grade monster, a bit of a mongrel. It’s one defining feature is that it can emit a piercing whistle in times of stress, and the whistle is powerful enough to kill.

 

Our Shadmock is a bit of a nerdy fellow who lives in a big house with nothing but loads of money to keep him company. When a ‘normal’ young woman comes into his life he dares to dream that they could marry and that his solitude could be over. She’s just after the cash, of course, so when he finds her robbing the safe on their wedding night he whistles at her and melts her face.

Atmospheric in parts, especially the ballroom dancing and plastic masks of the wedding reception, this story is probably the best of the three, although it delivers little in the way of real chills. The main issue for me is that I kept thinking that most of the Shadmock’s problems were of his own making: he has plenty of readies, a great big house, so why not get himself a decent haircut and a sun bed? Put a Hawaiian shirt on, for fuck’s sake, buy a helicopter, get a big telly and a little dog. And open a window, let some fresh air in. Then, when you’ve done all that, go out and get a girlfriend – and aim up, so get a vampire or something, or at least a Vamgoo (a vampire-ghoul cross). That's what I did, anyway.

PART TWO TOMORROW!

The Monster Club

 

Watching, Waiting & Wanting

I've tried on many occasions to write something about 'Saturn 3' but, ultimately, have realised that there isn't much to say. I can usually work with bad films, but vapid, pointless films, made up of plundered parts poorly put together, are more difficult. The scenario is dull and drearily executed, the actors are boring and wooden and, in Harvey Keitel's case, dubbed. We also get to see Kirk Douglas' 52 year old dimpled derriere. It's not a favourite of mine, if I'm honest. The film or the arse.

There is one funny thing about the production. The name of the idiot who wrote it.

Saturn 3

Twit Of The Week

from 'Action' comic, 1980

Tony Sannio from Birmingham says:

"Twit of the week (any week) is Dr Who. I wish he'd trip over his long scarf and stop him being so daft. Anybody else would choke himself while fighting while wearing it to his toes. In any case, I think it's dangerous for kids to copy him in this fashion as it could happen to them. I only watch it for the monsters anyway. Maybe Knowall knows why?"

What an angry little boy.

The Carpathian Eagle

In 'Carpathian Eagle' frumpy (glasses, pinafore dresses) writer Natalie (Suzanne Danielle) becomes obsessed with a 16th century Russian Countess who, after being treated rather shoddily by her husband (branding is mentioned), became a serial killer with a particular penchant for cutting out the still beating hearts of her male victims. So readily does Natalie identify with the crazy Countess she begins to wear a variety of skimpy outfits, and starts picking up men attracted to her purring voice and endless legs and, just as they are laying in bed expecting the night of their lives, she kills them. You ought to see their stupid faces.

Most of the blokes deserve it, though. There's Barry Stokes from 'Prey' who picks her up in his car after doing that 'Right, I'm having a slice of that' face; a horrible bloke in a winebar who says 'Andy's the name, randy's the game' before taking her back to his truly bizarre flat with big plastic feet at the end of the bed and a 'No Stopping At Any Time' sign above it; a well heeled twat who takes her to a friend's place 'the wife doesn't know about' (he escapes, unfortunately) and Pierce Brosnan, who was still Irish at this point and is extremely unsuave in his Fred Perry tracksuit. Still, you can't go about murdering people just because they're twats, can you? Can you? 

'Do you remember Mick?'

Frazzled Copper Cliff (Anthony Valentine) is on the case, however, and although he has his suspicions, he can't help fancying Natalie. He's an interesting character, actually, with his comb across and blazer, somewhat lonely and vulnerable but a bit of a geezer, as if Joey Maddox from 'Performance' (another Valentine part) had grown up on the right side of the law. Another surprising facet is his hatred of stereotypes: when a colleague mocks a drag act, talking about 'queens' and handbags, Cliff gets annoyed and says 'you still think in cliches, son'. He's a pretty liberal guy for a late 70's copper.

Suzanne Danielle dominates here, mainly because she is in a variety of extraordinary outfits, many of which are highly revealing. You may recall that her nickname was 'The Body', but what she exhibits is, more acurately, an early example of what would be known as a 'hard body': taut, strong, lithe - the total opposite of the fleshy, big breasted, ample bummed types that dominated the sex symbol stakes in the seventies. She's not a bad actress, really, but Hammer cover that by revealing her to be the killer almost straight away, as if they didn't trust her to not to give it away.

Not bad in an undemanding way, the story ends with a coda in which Natalie is about to start on a new book, and a new murder spree - and she's got a load of new underwear. I'm surprised this never became a series, to be honest.     

The Two Faces Of Evil

Hammer House of Horror is a series of much variety, particularly with regard to quality. ‘The Two Faces of Evil’, however, is an exceptional episode, not least because it is really scary.

Like all the best horror tales, ‘Two Faces Of Evil’ doesn’t mess about with exposition or, indeed, explanation. The ending is utterly inconclusive, but perfectly apt. What it does provide, however, is a world where something unearthly and terrifying is happening, and a nightmare of random violence, madness and death.

It begins with a cheery family unit (Martin and Janet Lewis and blond haired son, David) on their way to a holiday cottage in Buckinghamshire. During a sudden rainstorm they nearly hit a pedestrian, and then offer him a lift. Within seconds, the mysterious, silent man (dressed in a really creepy ensemble of bright yellow sou’wester and matching oilskins) attacks Martin, tearing at his face with his hand and, in particular, a single nasty, dirty pointed fingernail. Struggling for his life as Janet and David scream their heads off in the back, Martin flips the car over and everything goes black. 

Janet wakes up in that most sinister of locations, the Cottage Hospital, made all the more eerie by some interesting camera angles and shifty eyed staff. She’s alright, apart from a big bruise on her head, and David is unharmed. Martin, however, has undergone an emergency operation to remove some broken glass from his throat and is generally torn, scratched and battered (there's a particularly chilling scene where he raises himself up in bed and outstretches his bandaged hand in a gesture that is equal parts pitiful plea and evil monkey point. As he does so, blood slowly seeps through the bandage around his neck.) Nobody knows anything about the psychotic passenger - although, coincidentally, the authorities have found a corpse in the area that they have been unable to identify.

Janet finds that all of their luggage has been savagely ripped apart, and begins to have disjointed flashbacks to the immediate aftermath of the accident, seeing her husband fighting for his life (and theirs) against the frenzied onslaught of the passenger, who apparently lost a hand in the accident. 

Janet is asked if she can identify the corpse in the morgue and, although it is missing a hand, she cannot definitely say if it the body of their attacker although, bizarrely, it looks exactly like her husband.

Martin is discharged from the hospital and the family continue on to their holiday let. His throat is still bandaged, so he can’t speak, and he alternates between utter exhaustion and bouts of fury. One night, as he reaches to touch Janet's face, she notices he has a single nasty, dirty pointed fingernail. This Martin also has terrible teeth, in strict contrast to her 'real' husband’s pearly whites.

What follows is an increasingly frantic descent into the abyss, as Janet finds herself in a place that makes no sense and where everything she trusts and loves has becomes sinister and dangerous, including, eventually, her son, in an unforgettable moment that has haunted me for thirty odd years.

It is never explained why Martin has been ‘replaced’, or how. There's no quick tie up with some nonsense about aliens or doppelgangers or the compliant locals all being part of a coven. In actual fact, I don’t think there could be an adequate explanation, apart from the obvious answer that Janet is mad or concussed or dreaming, and everything that happens after the accident is a delusion, but I think that would be a cop out, and this is not a cop out sort of story – this is paranormal, primordial horror – urban myth, fairy tale, folk legend.     

One final note: in an apparently inexplicable story where a bizarrely dressed psycho stalks the land randomly ruining peoples lives, seemingly with the collusion of the authorities, is there possibly a clue to be had in the location?