THE MONSTER CLUB (1980) *1/2 They're definitely shooting for funny and camp, I'm just not sure exactly where. It's one of those three stories interrupted by a conversation in a bar between a vampire (particularly lispy Vincent Price) and a novelist. One problem is that it's about the lamest bar I've ever seen; there's not a single bar in New Orleans less likely to be inhabited by vampires and werewolves, and I doubt that there are many in Omaha. The only scary thing about the film is how comprehensively the band in the bar anticipates every single thing that will be horrible about the worst decade in American music history (not counting Guns N' Roses and Prince). They're insipid, superficial, self-absorbed, banal, and vapid. Impressive, I suppose, in some vulgar way, for someone somewhere with nothing to do but practice nihilism and halitosis. And they don't just cut after a line or two, which would be at least less of an insult to everyone involved including the musicians, they let 'em go on every single time, three times!; like the length of a music video. Arf. The stories are a little better: the first one has a good one-line premise but then goes further, and the third-well, you at least know that there won't be another one after the third. The middle one has a funny ending is even otherwise slightly better than the others, perhaps at least because the familiar faces of Donald Pleasance and Britt Ekland assure you of the existence of a reality beyond the film. Not that the film was ever so absorbing that anything else was ever in doubt.
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