Many years ago this reviewer subscribed to fantasy-horror magazine 'Starburst', then in its infancy and rivalling 'Fangoria' for its lurid colour photos of blood, guts and exploding latex. One such issue covered new release The Monster Club, and to this 10-year-old it looked utterly brilliant, with its gallery of werewolves, vampires and ghouls. There was even a woman with a melty face! <br /><br />Yet if pre-teens had actually been allowed to see it, they might have found it less impressive. The monster masks alone, fashioned by freelance designer Vic Door, who also worked at a milk processing plant, are laughable when compared with those from the Mos Eisley Cantina just three years before - lending understandable succour to the myth that they were made by producer Milton Subotsky's milkman.<br /><br />Amicus Studio's death-rattle, and a homage to the 1970s glory years of its portmanteau horrors, if The Monster Club has accrued a certain cult status it's mostly down to its sheer awfulness; yet, bafflingly, The Monster Club, adapted from Chetwynd-Hayes' 1976 novel of the same name, does in fact boast a highly experienced and occasionally impressive pedigree.<br /><br />In director Roy Ward Baker it had the man behind cult horrors like The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires, The Vault Of Horror, Asylum - and, most famously, Quatermass And The Pit. As a screenwriter, Amicus co-founder Subotsky had also penned a number of culty items, including I, Monster and Dr Terror's House Of Horrors. Cinematographer Peter Jessop had shot the schlocky likes of Frightmare, Venom and Schizo. But most importantly, it stars a real horror triumvirate of greatness:- Vincent Price, John Carradine and Donald Pleasence - along with veterans from past Amicus films Britt Ekland and Geoffrey Bayldon (here reprising an earlier role as an asylum keeper).<br /><br />This may have been made in 1980, but tonight they're going to party like it's 1973. To a frightful new wave soundtrack supplied by UB40 and BA Robertson who sings "I'm just a sucker for your love." Oh yes, a strange concoction indeed. But ranged against the likes of classic Amicus anthologies such as From Beyond The Grave (another Chetwynd-Hayes miscellany) even its dubious cult status is unwarranted - although the song "Monsters Rule OK" is pleasingly jaunty, and you do get to see Vincent Price and John Carradine disco dancing.<br /><br />In keeping with the Amicus tradition, the film features a handful of not-very-creepy tales, plus a 'comedy' story for light relief, linked by a story-within-a-story - here played out between Price's vampire Eramus (his fangs are retractable when not in use) and horror writer Chetwynd-Hayes himself, played by Carradine. After necking his favourite author, Eramus ferries him to his members club by way of an apology, where they're subjected to forgotten new wave bands ("down at the monster club/a zombie and a ghoul can do the monster dub"), along with "every kind of monster you could ever imagine... and some far beyond the imagining of mere mortals" - which is just not true, unless you're actually incapable of imagining a one pound joke shop mask.<br /><br />Price also inducts him into the arcane mysteries of monster genealogy, handily illustrated on a wall-chart (scroll away at leisure): "A vampire and a werewolf would produce a werevamp, but a werewolf and a ghoul would produce a weregoo. But a vampire and a ghoul would produce a vamgoo. A weregoo and a werevamp would produce a shaddy. Now, a weregoo and a vamgoo would produce a maddy, but a werevamp and a vamgoo would produce a raddy. Now, if a shaddy were to mate with a raddy or a maddy, the result would be a mock." Once we've waded through that gibberish (and how it must have pained the eloquent and mellifluous Price to utter it) we sample the delights of a stripper who takes her performance all too literally, and are told three tales, the first and most atmospheric of which is about a 'shadmock' (the lowest on the monster food chain) who possesses a deadly whistle - the Roger Whittaker variety, not the referee's aid.<br /><br />In the second, a vampire dad foils a vampire killer with... "a stake-proof vest!" The final story concerns a remote village of human-munching ghouls. Having convinced the author of the inherent humanity of his kind ("there is nothing sadder than the agonised grief of a tender-hearted monster"), Price counters that the 'real' monsters are humans. And to that we must add, jaded screenwriters.