Aramus Perterberator

I have been invited to join a Dungeons and Dragons campaign starting this Tuesday. The only rub: they're playing 5th Edition, and the last time I played we were playing first edition. So, I bought a 5th Edition Player's Handbook, and the changes are substantial, but seemingly all for the better in terms of clarity and ease of play. The Dungeon Master wants me to begin at 6th level, so I found a character generator software online and created Aramus Perterberator, combining the character from The Monster Club with the song I was listening to at the time on a friend's synthwave list on Spotify. 

Aramus Perterberator 

Jenny offered to draw Perterberator, and asked what he looked like. I didn't know, so I said offhandedly he looks like Timothy Dalton in Flash Gordon. 

I had that movie and soundtrack on my mind because I bought the vinyl soundtrack earlier in the week. This is not my copy. 

I'm really trying to get up to speed before Tuesday night, but I created a fighter character on purpose so I could just whack at things and keep it simple.

Right now I'm going to go get my cup of tea and read the Player's Handbook some more and wait to see if the kid got her black belt at karate. 

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Shadmocks, Mocks, and Humghouls

Roy Ward Baker directed many movies, and R Chetwynd Hayes wrote many books, but The Monster Club is the movie where the talent of these two British horror meisters intersected. Although maligned for a long time as cheesy and not scary at all, The Monster Club has in past years begun to receive the credit it deserves as a fun and well-crafted entry into the horror anthology genre.

The Monster Club, based on the book of short stories of the same name by Hayes, weaves three stories of semi-gruesome horror around performances by contemporary British bands in a subterranean club being attended by Vincent Price and John Carradine.

Carradine, Price, Pleasance, Chetwynd Hayes and Roy Ward Baker. Critics of this movie were always off base. If the criticism is it wasn't scary the proper response is so what. It was meant for a broad television audience. It most definitely is PG13 at worst and in my opinion appropriate to watch with your family at Halloween. Cheesy? So what? If you're not familiar enough with Vincent Price's work enough to know that 99% of his performances were cheesy then you shouldn't be offering an opinion in the first place.

Most American audiences who hadn't rented it on video saw The Monster Club for the first time on Elvira's Movie Macabre on the evening of Feb 6, 1983. It was episode 66. That's when I saw it. We all learned a lot about monsterdom from this movie.

We learned that there are the primate monsters, vampires, ghouls, and werewolves, but we also learned that these primate monsters interbreed, creating hybrid monsters, and that these hybrids also interbreed with the primate monsters, other hybrids, and even humans. Price says "The results are almost always disastrous, but they will do it." 

"What do they do?" Carradine rejoins, and Price launches into the setup for the first story, about a lonely creature called a Shadmock that isn't scary in any real way except one...

Shadmocks, Mocks, and Humghouls from The Monster Club

Two of the three stories involve Shadmock and Humghouls, two of the lowest creatures in the monster hierarchy. Humghouls seem to have even less powers than a Shadmock. None in fact according to the third story. Perhaps they enjoy a little human flesh once in a while, but they get that from the ghoul side of the family. 

All three stories in The Monster Club are entertaining, but what is even more entertaining about this movie is the music, the set up interludes where Price and Carradine speak, and the soundtrack. With the success of the Netflix show Stranger Things, and a resurgence in interest in electronic music, fans of this musical genre will want to check out Alan Hawkshaw's songs here, including Ghoul's Galore. 

Those who have bad-wrapped The Monster Club in the past should give it another chance, and all fans of horror should definitely give it a first chance.

2026 update: I had a humghoul moment last week at the post office. No one was there when I arrived but a few moments after I started trying to send a package through customs I turned and there were like ten of them.

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Thriller Video: The Human Duplicators

The Human Duplicators is on Ebay for the first time in the four years that I have collected Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I have never seen the movie, and it's unlikely I'll watch it on this tape as the bidding is already at $76.00 with an entire week left in the auction.

The box design of the Human Duplicators is one of twoI know of that differ from the other 21 boxes in the series. The other is Natas:The Reflection. 

The back of the box isn't much different from the other videos in the series. This copy, the only one I've ever seen, appears to be in good shape. The movie is about an alien from a distant galaxy who comes to Earth to take over by creating an army of zombies shaped like pottery. I guess that description sounds kind of interesting, but I doubt I'll rush out and try to find a way to watch it after this. 

The movie was released in 1965, and I see Hugh Beaumont is in the cast. How awesome is that? Probably not 150-250 dollars worth, which is what I estimate this video will go for. 

The Human Duplicators on VHS

Between VHS and Beta versions, I have 21 of the 46 movies released on Thriller Video and hosted by Elvira. My favorites are The Monster Club and The Silent Scream. Many of them come from episodes of Hammer House of Horrors, which was a one hour television series, so they had to pad those with additional footage. The Silent Scream was actually one of those episodes, as well as The Thirteenth Reunion and Guardian of the Abyss. These are generally high quality stories and well-written and acted. 

Almost all the movies in this series are PG13 or tamer, and Elvira refused to host any movies that had graphic violence or animal cruelty, but as I type that I realize the topic of The Silent Scream was animal cruelty. Nonetheless, the movies are all rather harmless and good fun. The Monster Club is no doubt the most fun movie in the series. I'll write an update about this video in seven days.

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Watching The Monster Club Again

The heat and humidity has returned in force, and I'm here at the apartment again for the night, and after five hours the air conditioner has barely put a dent in the humidity. It's enough to make a Shadmock whistle. 

We went to the fireworks display at Davis Park last night. Dragged Jack the entire way there in a wagon. At first he wasn't interested, but he ended up thinking it was awesome. We have to be vigilant about his ears because he has hearing loss in one ear. Had a taco, then we headed home. 

Watching The Monster Club again. tried to watch Dead Pit earlier, and I remember liking the colors in the past, but it was a German dubbed version and I couldn't get into it. I feel like I should read the book by R Chetwynd Hayes some time. Probably could be done in an evening. This is the only blog I'm working on today, and it has no point.

An unexpected thunderstorm would be nice. But I don't expect it.

If my mammy was a shammy, and my daddy was a raddy, I wonder what kind of monster I'll turn out to be. Saw some Thriller Video tapes on Ebay today that I don't have in my collection, but I'm strapped for cash. 

The Two Faces of Evil was the one I wanted the most

The Two Faces of Evil from Thriller Video

This is the only blog I still use the font Arial on. I was once quite fond of it. Now I'm largely indifferent. I really circled the drain this afternoon. All the gravity was sucked from my Universe and I almost went down the hole. But I held on. A few days ago I could have floated away, but I stayed here. I may have another cup of tea. 

oh, someone bought five copies of The Blood Dark Sea today, the book of outlaw poetry I just published, and I thought it was a mistake, so I contacted the customer and he said it was a legitimate order, he intends to give them away as gifts. A fine gift of a great book. 

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The Monster Club: There's a Two Drink Minimum, But That's Not the Bad News

The bad news is Count Dracula is the bartender!

Monsters rule OK.

I usually play The Monster Club on an almost continuous loop when I'm at the apartment. I have had the same VHS tape since 1991 when I made a copy of the Thriller Video at Video Outlet on Riverside Blvd. It was then a Taco Bell for a long time, and now, like every other building in Rockford, it is a payday lender. Also, Taco Bell was voted Rockford's #1 Mexican restaurant in a poll conducted by the biggest newspaper, and I couldn't make that up. 

Apparently this is a blog about the movie The Monster Club. This monster's genealogical chart I posted above is a holy grail collectible item for me as a Monster Club collector, and a couple of years ago I almost managed to buy it. I contacted the artist's wife, who also acts as his agent, and asked her if it still existed, and she said they had found it in the basement a few months previously after believing it was lost, and sold it to a private collector. I didn't have the heart to ask for how much because I probably would have been heart broken. She then added there were some original sketched of the ghouls used in the third story in the movie. I should have bought those, but I was so crestfallen that I had missed the chart by maybe weeks after so many years of no one caring that I went away in dejection.

I have the British quad poster, and the French poster, which has a snake on it even though there's no snake in the movie. The Thriller Video in Beta and VHS, the soundtrack, and the original book. Another item I recently passed on and regret is the graphic novel of the screenplay given to crew members at the wrap party. This one happened to be signed by Vincent Price. A bad choice not to buy it. We never remember the money, only the things we let slip away.

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Why I No Longer Show Up In the Google Search Rankings For the Search Term "The Monster Club"

I'm continuing to use Zombie Logic, and now not quite blank as pure blogs in the original sense that there is no theme or purpose except for me to be able to open them up whenever I feel like it and write down a thought, a list, share a video, a poem, a picture of something that arrived in the mail, whatever. In that sense I feel no responsibility to be interesting, whereas many of the other blogs like Outsider Poetry, Zombie Logic Review, The Hall of Bad Dudes, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, The Journal of Outsider Poetry, Zombiethong  etc have morphed into having very specific, often almost private themes. Jenny has always tried to convince me I should have done all of those blogs here, just created pages for them, but it felt more right to create a specific blog for each, compartmentalize them, and give them their own design.

Last night at not quite blank I wrote about finally have caught up to a to do list that just kept expanding and never seemed to dwindle no matter how hard I worked on it. I found myself at 2.am. finally able to cross off the last item that was really bothering me, and lament that I only had enough time to watch one movie. 

Because asking for sales or attracting readers to look at ads I get paid for isn't even one of my goals as a blogger, I can say whatever I work on is generally successful. Google takes it seriously. I'm able to externalize some fairly toxic anger, and not worry too much anymore if anyone likes it or not. I know how to get a million views over a one year period, and on one of the blogs I listed above, I've done it. I'm not overjoyed about what I had to do to get those kind of numbers, but I wanted to prove to myself if I too abandoned all principles I could get as many readers as I wanted. 

At one time Google was assuring bloggers that if they created a blog like this one, with a variety of topics and no particular dirty tricks going on to lure readers in through salacious or hollow content, they would be rewarded with good Google rankings. That is not the reality I have experienced. In general, if you want to take over a search term you need a blog very focused on that topic, making sure to say it over and over, but not too much. There aren't may keywords I have gone after that haven't been successful, but I am constantly perplexed by Monster Club, since my content about that movie was original, insightful, and unique, but then a bunch of other people with unrelated blogs came along and bumped me all the way out of that search term, seemingly forever. 

The outsider poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg riding a JC Penney bicycle from the 1970's behind Jenny Mathews roller skating and wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt sometime in June 2016

It's not even dark tonight and I'm relaxed enough to just free write like this. I read an article yesterday about a woman who was suffering from organic brain damage leading to dementia, and she wanted to keep a journal so she could remember herself. I think mostly that is what I have used my blogs for. Extensions of my internal memory, lists of of my memories, and roadmaps for me to return home later.


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Monster's Genealogical Chart: Ghoul

Ghouls fascinate me. Mostly because there's no clear definition of what a ghoul is, how a ghoul is created, or what their characteristics are. The most simple definition of a ghoul is one who is attracted to and ingests human carrion. 

By that definition one doesn't even have to be a supernatural being, or even an undead being, to be a ghoul. From my reading the most commonly held belief about what creates a ghoul is that a human who has partaken in a life of debauchery and depravity of the flesh degenerates into an undead being that in the afterlife is condemned to inhabit the places of the dead and feed on carrion. 

How that transformation actually takes place isn't very clearly described in any mythological text, but in the Arabic world there is commonly a Djinn involved that has deceived a human into committing  damning acts of depravity, then punishes the human by turning them into a ghoul. In The Monster Club, The Elders arrive at the end of the movie, but we never actually see them, so this depiction of a ghoul from a Monster's Genealogical chart never actually appears in the movie.

The Ghoul, from a Monster's Genealogical Chart

August 10, 2026 update: I had a real third story of The Monster Club experience at the post office last week. I had a package i needed to send overseas, and there's no easy way to do that anymore, and when I turned around there was a crowd of ghouls behind me like the scene with Stuart Whitmore in the third story of The Monster Club. 

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Monster's Genealogical Chart: Shaddy.

A monster's genealogical chart. The Shaddy. 

First published in 1976, R. Chetwynd-Hayes’s The Monster Club was adapted for a 1981 film starring Vincent Price, John Carradine, and Donald Pleasence, and both book and film have gone on to become cult classics. Told in a wry, tongue-in-cheek style, the tales in The Monster Club are simultaneously horrific, comical, and curiously moving. This edition is the first in more than twenty years and features a new introduction by Stephen Jones and a reproduction of John Bolton’s painting from the rare comic book adaptation of the film.

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A Werevamp and a Vamgoo Would Produce a Raddy

A monster's genealogical chart...

A werevamp and a vamgoo would produce a raddy

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The Monster Club: A Vampire and a Ghoul Would Produce a Vamgoo.

"First we have the primate monsters, vampires, werewolves and ghouls – but everyone knows about those. Now pay attention: A vampire and a werewolf would produce a werevamp. A werewolf and a ghoul would produce a weregoo. A vampire and a ghoul would produce a vamgoo. A weregoo and a werevamp would produce a shaddy. A weregoo and a vamgoo would produce a maddy. A werevamp and a vamgoo would produce a raddy. If a shaddy were to mate with a raddy or a maddy, it would result in a mock (which frankly, is just a polite name for a mongrel)." -Vincent Price from The Monster Club

 A vampire and a ghoul would produce a vamgoo. -R Chetwynd Hayes, The Monster Club.

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The Monster Club: A Weregoo and a Vamgoo Would Produce a Maddy

First we have the primate monsters, vampires, werewolves and ghouls – but everyone knows about those. Now pay attention: A vampire and a werewolf would produce a werevamp. A werewolf and a ghoul would produce a weregoo. A vampire and a ghoul would produce a vamgoo. A weregoo and a werevamp would produce a shaddy. A weregoo and a vamgoo would produce a maddy. A werevamp and a vamgoo would produce a raddy. If a shaddy were to mate with a raddy or a maddy, it would result in a mock (which frankly, is just a polite name for a mongrel). Just remember the basic rules of monsterdom: Vampires sup, werewolves hunt, and ghouls tear. Shaddies lick, maddies yawn, and mocks blow. But Shadmocks only whistle.Now the humegoo, which is a cross between a ghoul and a human being, don’t really do anything interesting, but they do have an unfortunate appetite for carrion (which they get, of course, from the ghoul side of the family). It must be noted that although monsters can mate with human beings, the results are almost always disastrous. But they will do it. Any questions?-Vincent Price The Monster Club

The Monster Club: Maddy, as described by R. Chetwynd Hayes.

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The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires Soundtrack LP

I had watched several movies directed by Roy Ward Baker before it finally registered with me that this guy was becoming one of my favorite directors.

I wasn't seeking his movies out because his name was attached to them. It happened backward. I kept watching British horror movies I liked and eventually noticed the same name appearing in the credits.

The Monster Club. Asylum. And Now the Screaming Starts!. The Vault of Horror. Five Million Years to Earth.

There was something about the look of these movies that I kept responding to. Baker could make relatively modest productions feel atmospheric and substantial, and he was particularly good at the sort of colorful, slightly lurid British horror that I apparently could watch forever.

His career was much larger than the horror films through which I discovered him. He had been directing movies since the 1940s and worked extensively in British film and television, including A Night to Remember, his acclaimed 1958 account of the sinking of the Titanic. But by the late 1960s and 1970s he had become associated with exactly the sort of movies I was gradually collecting and obsessing over: Hammer horror, Amicus anthologies, vampires, crypts, monsters and Peter Cushing.

Which brings me, naturally, to records.

While looking through Baker's filmography I discovered that there is a soundtrack album for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, the gloriously unlikely Hammer/Shaw Brothers kung-fu vampire movie he directed in 1974.

There is a Seven Golden Vampires soundtrack?

Holy stromboli. I'll be back in a few minutes.

Oh yes. It exists.

And Peter Cushing narrates it.

This is how collecting works. You begin by attempting to learn something about a film director and fifteen minutes later you're shopping for an LP narrated by Peter Cushing.

Then I discovered something else I apparently needed: the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack featuring Goblin's music from the Dario Argento-associated European version of the film.

There is a Seven Brothers Meet Dracula soundtrack? Holy stromboli, I'll be back in a few minutes...

Oh yes, it exists.  And with Peter Cushing narrating none the less. I found out this also exists...

,

Dawn of the Dead original movie soundtrack by Dario Argento and Goblin. My record collection could be up to as many as three by Halloween. Perhaps four, if...

Yes

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Elvira's Movie Macabre Episode 66: The Monster Club

The Monster Club British Quad Poster

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.

I also own The Monster Club soundtrack on vinyl. And it is awesome.

However, the holy grail of Monster Club collectibles to me is this... a Monster's genealogical Chart, drawn by British comic book artist John Bolton. Last year I contacted John's wife, who handles the business side of things, and she told me she had found this in the basement and sold it a few months before. I didn't ask for how much because I would have been heartbroken, but just knowing it exists gives me hope I might one day be able to buy it. John Bolton and Dez Skinn also did a graphic novel version of the screenplay, which came up on Ebay a few months ago, and I passed. I anticipate being able to find another one of those, but I think the Monster's Genealogical chart is a singularity. The movie itself? Spectacular. Every time we pass by the title loan shop that inside a former Taco Bell that used to be a Video Outlet I tell Jenny that's where I got the copy of The Monster Club I recorded from one VCR to another VCR and have watched over 150 times and still own today. 

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Ghouls Galore- John Hawkshaw- The Monster Club Soundtrack

As I prepare to watch a solid hour of The Alfred Hitchcock Show on Antenna TV, I am trying to sneak in a five minute interlude to listen to the song "Ghouls Galore" by Alan Hawkshaw, from the Monster Club Soundtrack. While you're here, could you do me a favor and take just a moment to bookmark my website, share it on Twitter, Facebook, wherever is easiest for you? 


Back to ghouls. 

A ghoul is a (folkloric) monster associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, often classified as undead. The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights.[1] The term was first used in English literature in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novelVathek,[2] which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.

By extension, the word ghoul is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre, or whose profession is linked directly to death, such as a gravedigger.

This is a photograph taken at a local cemetery purportedly documenting a ghoul robbing a grave. It's a very old photograph and I can't determine exactly what's happening here. 

Synonyms

cacodemon, devil, fiend, ghost, demon, ghoulie, imp,shaitan

Related Words

hag [archaic], lamia, vampire; incubus, nightmare,succubus; afreet (or afrit), genie, jinni (or jinn also djinnior djinn); apparition, banshee, bogey (also bogie or bogy),bugbear, familiar, familiar spirit, genius, phantasm (alsofantasm), phantom, poltergeist, shade, shadow, specter(or spectre), spirit, spook, vision, wraith; brownie, dwarf,elf, faerie (also faery), fairy, fay, gnome, goblin, gremlin,hobgoblin, kobold, leprechaun, pixie (also pixy), puck,sprite, troll; monster, ogre

Listen to Ghouls Galore by Alan Hawkshaw

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The Stripper Song By Night- From The Monster Club Soundtrack

Yesterday I got back to the Downtown headquarter of Zombie Logic Press and saw this had been delivered...

Why, is that the ultra rare vinyl LP soundtrack to the 1981 movie The Monster Club, and a huge bottle of Anacin? Yes. And yes. Which immediately made me want to listen to this...

 Which ultimately made me want to hear more Stevie Lange. 

Maybe that will make this blog open more slowly, but it's worth it. I'm so jacked up to have found a copy of The Monster Club on vinyl after having looked every day for two years, then to have won the auction and have it here at the office. Night, B.A. Robertson, The Viewers, The Pretty Things. Now if I can just find that pesky monster's genealogical chart and a copy of the comic book John Bolton and Dezz Skin did I'll be all set. Excuse me, I need to go take a couple of those Anacin and write for about ten more straight hours to even put a dent in my workload. 

November 11, 2014: I saw a copy of this album recently went off at $150.00 on Ebay. I won't tell you what I paid for mine, but I'm happy. Also, a copy of the screenplay comic book that was distributed to cast and crew at the wrap party, which was signed by Vincent Price sold for $200.00. Had to let someone else have that. Still looking for the original Monster's Genealogical Chart by John Bolton. Might run out of money or life before I find that, but we live once, sometimes less.

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Rare Monster Club Vinyl LP About To Be Mine

It's rare for me to celebrate a victory, accomplishment, or acquisition in advance. It's just not my style. I'm far too pessimistic to ever believe any good thing is about to happen. But here's one good thing that's almost certainly about to happen...

I'm about to acquire my very own personal copy of one of the most rare and sought after movie soundtracks of all time... The Monster Club soundtrack

Ya.

Only recently I discovered there was a British quad poster for the movie, which I didn't believe existed because it was a made for television movie with no theatrical release. But I found one. Now all that is left is the Monster Club graphic novel created by John Bolton and Dez Skinn, and the Holy Grail of all MOnster Club collectibles, the Monster's Genealogical Chart

I contacted what i think was the artist's wife last month, and to my horror she informed me the chart did indeed exist, and that she had found it in storage only last year and sold it to a collector that had asked. Dad gum. In a way I hope he payed such a handsome price for it I could never afford it and will never part with it, but part of me also hopes it went for dirt cheap and ends up on Ebay some day. 

Nonetheless, I am very close to obtaining a copy of The Monster Club soundtrack I know sooner or later another copy of the graphic novel will show up at auction.

And when it does, I'll be there.

February 22,2013 update: Is mine. Now I just need to find the graphic novel and the monster's genealogical chart to complete my collection. Pin It

A Monster's Genealogical Chart

I woke up this morning and read an email from John Bolton's personal assistant that it exists! The monsters genealogical chart Vincent Price explains to John Carradine in the movie The Monster Club exists, and she sold it to someone last year. 

Part of me hopes the collector paid a handsome sum and has it framed somewhere and will never part with it for any price, but I also have a hope someone just gave her fifty dollars and it will eventually end up on Ebay. I have fantasized about owning the actual piece used in the movie for almost thirty years now. I know it's an incredibly strange thing to pine for but the heart wants what it wants. 

"First we have the primate monsters, vampires, werewolves and ghouls – but everyone knows about those. Now pay attention: A vampire and a werewolf would produce a werevamp. A werewolf and a ghoul would produce a weregoo. A vamire and a ghoul would produce a vamgoo. A weregoo and a werevamp would produce a shaddy. A weregoo and a vamgoo would produce a maddy. A werevamp and a vamgoo would produce a raddy. If a shaddy were to mate with a raddy or a maddy, it would result in a mock (which frankly, is just a polite name for a mongrel). Just remember the basic rules of monsterdom: Vampires suck, werewolves hunt and ghouls tear. Shaddies lick, maddies yawn and mocks blow. Oh but a Shadmock, which is the result if a mock were to mate with any other hybrid, whistles – and they don’t do it very often. Now the humegoo, which is a cross between a ghoul and a human being, don’t really do anything interesting but they do have an unfortunate appetite for carrion (which they get, of course, from the ghoul side of the family). It must be noted that although monsters can mate with human beings, the results are almost always disastrous. " -Aramus



The quest continues. 

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The Monster Club British Quad Poster

British quad posters are really nice because they have a reputation of having great artwork with rich, saturated colors. The size 30x40 is a little different than the American 27x41. I just saw one on Ebay I really want and have been looking for for a long, long time, but it will be really hard to fit this into the budget in December. 

I recently got scooped on a collection of R Chetwnd Hayes books and there's no way I can afford the $250 for the vinyl soundtrack, but maybe with some clever money maneuvering I can get this beauty. I'm going to let it stew for a while. 

The poster was designed by British artist Graham Humphreys, and it was the first movie poster he worked on. Straight out of college, he was given a week and a half to create the poster from film transparancies, and his first effort was rejected as too scary as the distributor fancied that children would be watching The Monster Club. 

In an interview conducted by Film On Paper, Graham admits the job working on this poster wan't much fun at all because the client was slightly shadowy and wanted him to work from photos of the shoddily costumed monsters in the club and expected exact reproductions rather than anything creative. However, I think the poster turned out fine and I think I'm going to buy it. 

Welcome to the Monster Club from Thriller Video.

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How Do You Get To Loughville

I find that ghouls are woefully underrepresented in the horror genre. Perhaps the problem has been that the definition of a ghoul is nebulous. I'm pretty sure I'd know a zombie, a vampire, or a werewolf if I ran into one on the street, but what exactly does a ghoul look like? Webster defines a ghoul as "a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses." But even that definition is vague. Where does the ghoul come from? How is it created? Does it simply hang around graveyards and barrows or does it move about freely in other settings? There are few sources that tackle these questions, and the horror genre hasn't done much to clarify the matter. There haven't been many movies made about ghouls, and the ones that have been made haven't answered any of these questions satisfactorily. 

Are you going to Loughville? I sure would like to hitch a ride. In what ways are ghouls different than zombies? In the 1975 starring Peter Cushingmovie titled simply The Ghoul, his son is transformed into a ghoul through a perversion of the flesh by a wicked religious leader in India. 

For most of that movie we only see The Ghoul from the knees down. He is fed what we are led to believe on a diet of human flesh procured by his father and his mysterious Indian servant. Eventually we see the Ghoul in  whole.

But this does little to help us differentiate between a ghoul and a zombie. technically, all the creatures I have listed here fall under the banner of the living dead, but among each there is a clear differentiation of the method of creation, appearance, and abilities.A ghoul is said to be created by some perversion of the flesh, either by magic or prolonged wickedness, particularly cannibalism. But what binds a ghoul merely to places where bodies are interred? In this movie the ghoul is nowhere near a cemetery. So the confusion persists. 

In Roy Ward Baker's final film, The Monster Club (1981), also the final film of English horror studio Amicus, the third story centers around a village of ghouls called Loughville. We learn at one time Loughville was a normal village where a ghoul just happened to stroll in one day long ago and was taken in by the local minister who attempted through kindness and the love of god to transform the ghoul into a human. But failed. The ghoul was seen one night in the churchyard feeding, and was driven out of Loughville. But for the one ghoul who was driven out twelve returned and danced to mark the place as their own. We never learn where the first ghoul came from or where the additional ghouls came from. We do learn that in this possible world the ghouls can breed with humans, creating a hybrid called a Humgoo. All we know about them is that have a taste for human carrion, but aren't considered evil otherwise. I would guess most humans consider the eating of human flesh, alive or otherwise, as an act of evil.

Dungeons and Dragons depiction of a ghoul in The Monster Manual.

The earliest descriptions of ghouls are from the Arab world, and involve hybrids of the djinn and perhaps a demon who inhabit graveyards and feed on the dead. But even in this tradition we learn little except that ghouls have an uncertain origin and their only consistent feature is that they inhabit graveyards and feed on the dead. Several questions arise that would seem to make the "life" of a ghoul complicated. If a ghoul is bound to cemeteries how does it remain undetected? What does it do when the cemetery is exhausted of human remains? None of these questions have answers in literature or the movies. I feel the definitive movie on ghouls is yet to be done and I await it with carrion baited breath. 

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The Monster Club Is The Best Movie Soundtrack of the 1980's

The 1980's were the golden era of movie soundtracks. So many classic soundtracks. Footloose, Top Gun, The Lost Boys, Ghostbusters, Purple Rain. All in all the 1980's were about 674% more Kenny Logginsey than most Americans would have preferred, at least in retrospect. But none of these are even close to being my favorite soundtrack of the Reaganomics decade. My favorite soundtrack of the 1980's comes from a little known horror movie most people have never seen. 

Take equal parts reggae, punk, ska, new wave, rock, and a killer side two composed by John Williams (yes, THAT John Williams), Strauss, Stravinski, and my favorite electronica track by Alan Hawkshaw, "Ghouls Galore," which accompanies the final and spookiest ghouls story, and you have the recipe for the best movie soundtrack of the 80's.

The songs one side one are varied and all guaranteed to stick in your head. My favorite is the tongue in cheek "Sucker For Your Love" performed by B.A. Robertson, who later composed songs with Mike Rutherford of Genesis, including the song "Silent Running." I once read an article where Donnie Iris and his songwriting partner had accused B.A. Roberston of lifting one of their songs, but since it wasn't "Sucker For Your Love" I didn't care.

The Pretty Things are a rather legendary British band whose career arc somewhat resembles Spinal Tap in that they moved equally successfully in pop, blues, and rock circles. Although they never achieved great success at any one time, their longevity has made them a favorite of many music aficionados. They still perform to this day and their titular performance here is magnificent.

During the stripper sequence you see here, singer Sevie Vann of the band Night peels the paint from the walls with her knockout voice. She was born in Rhodesia and sand backup for many groups and performers, including Def leppard, UFO, Manfred Mann, Wham, Tears For Fears, and Ray Charles. A varied list to be sure, but with pipes like that who's going to question why?

The band The Viewers belts out "Monsters Rule O.K.," a straight forward and satisfying rock song. I don't know much about this band, but like the other bands included in this soundtrack they were no fly-by-night operation either. There are no clunkers on this album. throw in a reggae performance by U.B. and you have a compilation too diverse and interesting to not at least give a listen to. But beware, The Monster Club is one of the rarest and most valuable soundtracks of all time, so you'll probably just have to watch the movie or listen to the songs on You Tube. But you should.

"Sucker For Your Love"

I love this review of The Monster Club soundtrack

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