Episode 66 of Elvira’s Movie Macabre, The Monster Club, was broadcast on February 6, 1983. That date matters to me for two reasons. It was one day before my 14th birthday, and it is the first episode of Movie Macabre I consciously remember watching.
I may have seen Elvira before then, but this is the one that stuck.
And I loved The Monster Club.
The 1981 British horror anthology stars Vincent Price as vampire Erasmus and John Carradine as horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, who is invited to the titular Monster Club. From there the movie unfolds as a series of stories about different varieties of monsters, interrupted by visits to the club itself. It's a peculiar combination of horror anthology, comedy, nightclub act, punk and New Wave music, and wonderfully ridiculous monster mythology.
For a kid already becoming obsessed with horror movies, it was irresistible.
More than thirty years later, I'm still collecting things associated with the movie.
One of my favorite pieces is the British quad poster designed by Graham Humphreys. Humphreys was fresh out of art school when he got the assignment and reportedly had little more than production stills to work from. As a result, his wonderful painted poster doesn't particularly resemble the movie it advertises. If anything, that makes me like it more.
I've never even removed my copy from the package in which it arrived. One of these days I'll finally have it properly framed.
I also own The Monster Club soundtrack on vinyl.
And it is awesome.
The movie has a surprisingly memorable soundtrack, with performers including The Pretty Things, B.A. Robertson and Night. It's part of what makes The Monster Club such an artifact of its moment. It isn't merely an old horror anthology. Somehow the whole thing feels like somebody put a British horror movie, a comic book, and an early-1980s nightclub into a blender.
But there is one Monster Club collectible I want more than any other.
The Monster's Genealogical Chart.
The chart, drawn by British comic-book artist John Bolton, lays out the wonderfully elaborate system of monster interbreeding described in the film: vampires, werewolves, ghouls and their various hybrid descendants.
I once contacted Bolton's wife, who handled the business side of his work, and learned that the original chart had actually been sitting in their basement. Unfortunately, it had been discovered and sold only a few months before I contacted them.
I didn't ask what it sold for.
There are some things you're simply better off not knowing.
But learning that the original artwork actually existed—and had survived—gave me hope that perhaps someday it might surface again.
John Bolton and Dez Skinn also produced a graphic adaptation of The Monster Club. A copy appeared on eBay once and I passed on it, figuring another would eventually turn up.
The genealogical chart is different.
That feels like a singularity.
As for the movie itself, I don't have any complicated critical defense to offer.
I love it.
Every time we pass the title-loan shop housed in a former Taco Bell that, for a while, was a Video Outlet, I point it out to Jenny. That's where I got the copy of The Monster Club that I dubbed from one VCR to another and subsequently watched more than 150 times.
I still own that tape.
There are better horror movies. There are scarier horror movies. There are certainly more sophisticated horror movies.
But there probably isn't another one that could ever mean quite what The Monster Club means to me.
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