MonsterHunters.com, March 2012
In the late eighteenth century the forces of evil plaguing London were
finally vanquished. Now in AD 1971, they have returned. Sir Maxwell House (Simon Dillon-Kane) has called his friends Roy Steel
(Matthew Woodcock) and London-based boffin Lorrimer Chesterfield (Peter Davis) to discuss some strange affairs happening
at London's most chic venue, The Discotheque of Nights. There they come across the evil Count Orloff (Dillon-Kane again),
who was supposed to have died two centuries earlier actually turns out not to be dead; as well as Carlotta Darknight (Amy
Larkham), a supposedly attractive woman who turns out to be a vampire.
The Monster Hunters will be most appreciated by listeners with a taste for
schlocky horror films of the early 1970s - the kind produced by Hammer in its later period, or the Amicus complications. My
particular favourite is Theatre of Blood (1973) a blood-and-guts epic starring Vincent Price who kills
off all the London critics who have been savaging his performances, using deaths borrowed from Shakespeare's plays. I
hope the same fate does not await me during my career as a reviewer. Anyway, The Monster Hunters bristles with references
to early 1970s London, while containing the kind of over-the-top performances from Dillon-Kane, Woodcock and Davies that
reveal how much time they must have spent absorbing the unique atmosphere of the British horror film genre.
The Monster Hunters contains several dreadful puns, of the kind regularly
found in British comedies past and present, ranging from the Carry On films to The Benny Hill Show.
The cast obviously have great fun delivering their lines, and their infectious enthusiasm communicates itself to the listeners.
This podcast is a rare breed - a successful horror film spoof that nonetheless pays homage to its various sources. I'll certainly
listen to subsequent episodes when they appear.
