recent read; The Monster Club

One of my favorite horror movies filed under "far from a classic - campy - but I like it anyway" is the anthology flick, The Monster Club. Despite its goofy tongue-in-cheek framing device, it contains one of my favorite all-time creepy tales. The story involves a stranger driving into a lost village which he eventually comes to realize is populated by ghouls.

I finally read the book by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. As with collections spawned movies, only two tales from The Monster Club book (and the framing device) were used in the movie. Other material came from other Chetwynd-Hayes tales from other sources. Fortunately, the ghouls story was one of the stories included in The Monster Club collection. It goes by the title "The Humgoo" which is unfortunate - it is much better than the title. The title comes from the half-breed girl in the story, a human/ghoul. In fact, all the stories in The Monster Club deal with cross-bred monsters and their strange powers.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes includes more than a bit of humor in his tales, and some of his stories are played for laughs. Some are played straight with humorous moments. Either way, he still manages to convey some good chills even in the more humorous stories.

Thanks to yet another informative introduction by Stephen Jones, I now know that there is another movie of Chetwynd-Hayes tales, From Beyond the Grave. I'll be seeking it out, along with more Chetwynd-Hayes story collections. Right now, the only two in print are The Monster Club and Looking for Something to Suck (I just ordered the last Amazon print copy yesterday!) R. Chetwynd-Hayes appears in a few (or more) Mammoth Book of horror anthologies, too.