Retro Review: SCAVENGER HUNT (1979)

SCAVENGER HUNT
(US - 1979)

Directed by Michael Schultz. Written by Steven A. Vail and Henry Harper. Cast: Richard Benjamin, James Coco, Scatman Crothers, Ruth Gordon, Cloris Leachman, Cleavon Little, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, Richard Mulligan, Tony Randall, Dirk Benedict, Willie Aames, Stephanie Faracy, Richard Masur, Meat Loaf, Vincent Price, Pat McCormick, Avery Schreiber, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liz Torres, Maureen Teefy, Carol Wayne, Stephen Furst, Stuart Pankin, Henry Polic II, Hal Landon Jr, Marji Martin, Jerado Decordovier. (PG, 116 mins)

When you go a couple of decades or longer without seeing a favorite film from your younger, formative years, you always run the risk of childhood nostalgia blowing up in your face, forcing you to confront the harsh realization that this thing you loved so much just might be a steaming pile of dog shit. Such is the case with SCAVENGER HUNT, a comedy that did only middling business in theaters when it was released the week of Christmas 1979. It found an audience on cable, where it was in constant rotation on Showtime and The Movie Channel in the early '80s, watched over and over again by latch-key kids like me who got home from school and had a couple of hours to kill before Mom and Dad got home from work. It was a movie I watched many times and always guffawed at the wacky, slapstick antics of the all-star cast of comedy stars and familiar character actor ringers I recognized from TV. I hadn't seen SCAVENGER HUNT in over 30 years and I still vividly recalled specific scenes. The film was just released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber and in watching it again, many of those scenes played out exactly as I remembered, but something was different this time. It's the same movie, but I wasn't laughing. So is it me? Have maturity, life experience and age combined to make SCAVENGER HUNT a miserable slog now compared to the uproarious classic it was when I was eight or nine? Other comedies from that era that I watched a million times hold up beautifully. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. THE BLUES BROTHERS. CADDYSHACK. AIRPLANE! PORKY'S. I still love the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes shorts I watched repeatedly at that age. But SCAVENGER HUNT? Was it always this awful and I was just too young and dumb to know any better? Because let me be clear: what was comedy gold at nine was excruciatingly painful to watch through 44-year-old eyes.

The film opens with the death of wealthy board game creator Milton Parker (Vincent Price). His attorney Charles Bernstein (Robert Morley) reveals that Parker left a unique will for the "scavengers" looking to inherit his $200 million fortune: they're to form five groups and work from a checklist with objects to acquire for point value and bring back to the Parker estate by 5:00 pm that day. The teams: Parker's greedy sister Mildred Carruthers (Cloris Leachman), her oafish man-child of a son Georgie (Richard Masur), and her sleazy lawyer Stuart Selsome (Richard Benjamin); the servant staff consisting of butler Jenkins (Roddy McDowall), limo driver Jackson (Cleavon Little), chef Henri (James Coco), and sexy French maid Babette (Stephanie Faracy); Parker's hunky, nice-guy nephews Jeff (Dirk Benedict) and Kenny (Willie Aames), who welcome Mildred's outcast stepdaughter Lisa (Maureen Teefy) along; Parker's widower son-in-law Henry Motley (Tony Randall), who sees it as a way to bond with his four kids after his wife's death; and lunkhead cabbie Marvin Dummitz (Richard Mulligan), who failed to get Parker's business partner to a meeting in a timely fashion many years earlier, therefore enabling him to take over their company and include Dummitz in the scavenger hunt as a form of gratitude. That Mad-inspired name--obviously a riff on Melvin Dummar, the guy who claimed to have given a ride to a disheveled Howard Hughes and was later named in a disputed will after Hughes' death--is the closest SCAVENGER HUNT comes to a clever joke, and it's a reference I never would've gotten at nine years of age.

With the ground rules set, the rest of the movie basically consists of acts of wanton slapstick destruction as a bunch of actors run and flail around, shouting, screaming, and mugging shamelessly as they do whatever it takes to get the items on their list. This leads to scenes where the servants have to steal a toilet, Selsome has to move a huge safe from the top floor of a building with an out-of-service elevator, Kenny has to tear the clown head off the drive-thru order speaker at a Jack-in-the-Box, and Dummitz has to disguise himself as a mummy, for some reason. Other objects on the list include tennis rackets, laughing gas (yes, it leads to a scene with everyone hysterically laughing), a fat person (yes), false teeth, a bulletproof vest, a globe, five ostriches, a stuffed fish, an oar, a stroller, a medicine ball, a table, assorted kitchenware, a football helmet, an old cylinder phonograph, etc. By the time of the climactic car chase with everyone heading to the Parker mansion with the random junk spilling out of their vehicles, SCAVENGER HUNT starts to look like an unfunny hybrid of IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and SANFORD AND SON. As in IAMMMMW and other similar, star-studded comedies that send their large casts on a madcap pursuit (THE GREAT RACE, THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES, THE GUMBALL RALLY, MIDNIGHT MADNESS, THE CANNONBALL RUN, GREEDY, THE RAT RACE, etc), other parties end up joining the ensuing fracas, including a bridal shop security guard (Scatman Crothers), three obese people (Stuart Pankin, Stephen Furst, and Marji Martin) who are among the "items" and exist only to be the butt of endless "fatty eats and/or falls down" jokes, an old Native American (Jerado Decordovier) whose dentures were stolen by Selsome, and a lisping, Sylvester the Cat-sounding zookeeper (Avery Schreiber), looking for his stolen ostriches. Various parties also cross paths with a batty old weapons nut (Ruth Gordon), fearsome motorcycle gang leader Scum (Meat Loaf), and pumped-up gym trainer Lars (Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Over 116 laborious minutes, nothing funny happens. It's a pretty amazing grouping of actors and they seem to be having a good time (Benjamin, especially), but SCAVENGER HUNT is the kind of comedy where everyone equates being loud with being funny. Everyone plays everything too broadly and most of the one-liners are totally rimshot-ready ("I loved him like a brother," Mildred says of Parker, to which Bernstein replies "He was your brother"). Bankrolled by shopping mall magnate turned movie producer Melvin Simon, SCAVENGER HUNT was co-written and produced by Steven A. Vail, whose only prior credit was the smutty 1978 late night cable favorite and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE ripoff JOKES MY FOLKS NEVER TOLD ME, and directed by Michael Schultz, which leads to the bizarre opening credit "A Steven A. Vail film by Michael Schultz." Schultz already had a reputation as a top African-American filmmaker of the decade with hit films like 1975's COOLEY HIGH and 1976's CAR WASH, and was a frequent Richard Pryor collaborator (WHICH WAY IS UP? and GREASED LIGHTNING, both from 1977, and he directed some of 1981's BUSTIN' LOOSE, though only Oz Scott received credit). Schultz's career hit a major speed bump with the expensive 1978 flop SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, which gathered a huge cast of non-singers in a musical starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. After SCAVENGER HUNT, Schultz stayed busy but he never lived up to the potential of his early hits. He enjoyed moderate box office successes with THE LAST DRAGON and KRUSH GROOVE in 1985, and directed the 1987 comedy DISORDERLIES, notable for its much-anticipated teaming of The Fat Boys and Ralph Bellamy. Other than 1991's LIVIN' LARGE and 2004's WOMAN THOU ART LOOSED, the now-78-year-old Schultz has worked exclusively in TV since the late 1980s, directing episodes of a myriad of shows, among them PICKET FENCES, ALLY MCBEAL, FELICITY, THE PRACTICE, BOSTON PUBLIC, EVERWOOD, TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, JAG, BROTHERS & SISTERS, and most recently, BLACK-ISH and ARROW. Schultz contributes a commentary track to the SCAVENGER HUNT Blu-ray, and cites it as his most successful film in terms of people mentioning it to him. It's remained a minor cult classic beloved by those who saw it at an impressionable age, and part of that ongoing affection might be because it was out of circulation for so long unless, as Schultz points out, "you taped it off of TV years ago or found an old VHS tape at a garage sale or on eBay." If you want to keep having fond memories of SCAVENGER HUNT, then you'd be wise to just leave it alone, because revisiting this one was a soul-crushing disappointment.

The Cannon Files: HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (1983)

HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS
(UK - 1983; US release 1984)

Directed by Pete Walker. Written by Michael Armstrong. Cast: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Desi Arnaz Jr, John Carradine, Sheila Keith, Richard Todd, Julie Peasgood, Louise English, Richard Hunter, Norman Rossington. (PG, 102 mins)

When it came to ninjas, Namsploitation, and breakdancing, Menaham Golan had his fingers on the pulse of what audiences wanted to see. But just as often, he'd keep Cannon cranking out increasingly geriatric Charles Bronson actioners directed by an aging J. Lee Thompson, cheapjack franchise offerings like the one-and-done MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987) and the ill-advised SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987), and misguided attempts at arthouse legitimacy that played to smaller and smaller audiences. When Golan decided to make an all-star horror movie with the screen's titans of terror in 1983, he didn't come up with the kind of horror movie that 1983 audiences had in mind. HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was born when screenwriter Michael Armstrong (director of the 1970 barf-bag classic MARK OF THE DEVIL) and cult British horror filmmaker Pete Walker (DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE, FRIGHTMARE, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, THE CONFESSIONAL) came to Cannon with an idea for a gory horror movie called DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Golan rejected the idea and told them he wanted a vintage "old dark house" story with all the classic horror stars, so Armstrong and Walker concocted a script inspired by the 1932 James Whale classic THE OLD DARK HOUSE and based largely on the oft-filmed 1913 George M. Cohan play Seven Keys to Baldpate, itself based on a novel by Charlie Chan author Earl Derr Biggers.  According to legend, Golan demanded Walker and Armstrong cast Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in this all-star horror summit, and was not deterred by minor inconveniences like Karloff's death in 1969 and Lugosi's a decade before that in 1956.

HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS publicity shot

While Karloff and Lugosi were out of the question, Golan did manage to snag four living horror legends: 72-year-old Vincent Price, 61-year-old Christopher Lee, 70-year-old Peter Cushing, and 77-year-old John Carradine. The big selling point of HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS--a playful nod to how beloved its stars were--was these iconic figures not just being in the same movie together, but finally having significant amounts of screen time interacting with one another. Of course, Lee and Cushing were paired up many times over the years (this would be their last movie together), and Cushing co-starred with Price in 1974's MADHOUSE and Price with Carradine in 1981's THE MONSTER CLUB, but usually, it would be a case of them being in the same movie but having no scenes together, like Price, Lee, and Cushing in 1970's SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN or Price and Cushing in 1972's DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN or Cushing and Carradine in 1977's SHOCK WAVES. There was also Price and Lee in 1969's THE OBLONG BOX , where they had one brief scene together very late in the film when Price finds Lee's dead body. In that respect, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was sort-of the old-school horror EXPENDABLES of its day. And of course, upon its US release in the spring of 1984, it bombed with critics and audiences, who loved these old-timers on late-night TV and Saturday afternoon Creature Features, but didn't venture out to see a new movie with them in theaters. A gothic Hammer/Amicus throwback didn't really appeal to the slasher and special effects crowd. LONG SHADOWS was recently released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber and on one of the two commentary tracks, film historian David Del Valle and moderator Elijah Drenner also cite Cannon's poor marketing campaign: a tongue-in-cheek, old-fashioned horror mystery set on a dark and stormy night, the film has enough of a playful atmosphere that it never really takes itself too seriously, though it never quite takes the plunge into all-out comedy. Cannon didn't seem to know whether to sell this as a mystery, a horror movie, or a spoof.

Best-selling novelist Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr) is good at cranking out books but really only cares about the money. His British publisher Sam Allyson (Richard Todd) wants Kenneth to challenge himself and after dissing the likes of Wuthering Heights, Kenneth bets Sam $20,000 that he can write an old-fashioned gothic novel in 24 hours. To get in the right frame of mind, Sam arranges to have Kenneth spend the night at a desolate Welsh estate called Baldpate Manor, which has been empty for 40 years. After he's interrupted by Sam's secretary Mary (Julie Peasgood), sent there to distract him, things get weird when Baldpate becomes the location of an impromptu family reunion of the Grisbanes: patriarch Lord Grisbane (Carradine), eldest son Lionel (Price), younger son Sebastian (Cushing) and daughter Victoria (Walker regular Sheila Keith). Baldpate Manor was home to the Grisbanes until a terrible scandal brought shame upon them in 1935: the youngest of the Grisbane sons, black sheep Roderick, raped and killed a 14-year-old village girl. The horrible crime was covered up by Grisbane and his other sons, who dispensed their own family justice by sentencing Roderick to live in chains in a hidden, locked room on one of the upper floors of the manor. For over 40 years, Roderick has resided in the dilapidated manor alone, surviving on food brought by Victoria or snacking on whatever rats he encounters, and tonight is the night the Grisbanes confront him and come to terms with their ugly past. Also complicating matters is the arrival of Corrigan (Lee), a sneering businessman who plans to buy Baldpate Manor to demolish it and develop the surrounding area. It doesn't take long before they're all being picked off one by one by an unseen Roderick, who's gotten out of his room, cut the phone line and slashed the tires on everyone's cars, and won't stop until he gets his revenge.

Critics savaged HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, with Arnaz's performance inexplicably singled out as the film's biggest problem (from the film's listing in the Leonard Maltin guide: "Arnaz Jr. singlehandedly sinks this adaptation..."). He's not the most magnetic lead actor, but he does what he's required to do and graciously steps aside at the right time and lets the masters do their thing. Del Valle, a longtime friend of Price's, even recalls the legendary actor defending Arnaz and his performance in the film. Both Del Valle and Drenner are incredulous over the amount of heat Arnaz took for his work here, and they're right: he didn't deserve the pummeling he got and isn't bad at all. You could almost compare him to Michael O'Keefe in CADDYSHACK: he plays the central character and he's the real star of the movie, but you're actually there to see everyone else around him. Walker and Armstrong do take too long to get all of the players together (it's nearly 50 minutes in and the film is half over when Lee first appears), but they all get some time to shine and seem to genuinely enjoy working off of one another. Cushing amuses himself by adding an Elmer Fudd-type speech impediment, Carradine is befuddled and cranky, Lee is huffy and pompous, and Price is gloriously florid and over-the-top as Lionel Grisbane, gravely intoning "I have returned" upon his arrival and admonishing Magee for asking a question during his eulogy for the Baldpate Manor of old with a hand wave and a firm "Please...don't interrupt me whilst I am soliloquizing."

Cannon could've easily put these guys in a gory, T&A-filled slasher movie, which probably would've been more in line with Pete Walker's comparatively trashy and sleazy B-horror films of the 1970s. HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was practically a departure for the director, whose cult status has grown in the subsequent decades. A true indie auteur accustomed to working on his own and outside the system, LONG SHADOWS was Walker's first and last gig as a hired gun director--he retired from filmmaking afterwards and in the decades since, has had success owning a chain of movie theaters in London. He remains active in the cult movie scene, recording DVD and Blu-ray commentaries for Redemption's "Pete Walker Collection," and he's on hand for a commentary track on the LONG SHADOWS release. LONG SHADOWS does demonstrate some infrequent concessions to the times in which it was made--there's a couple of mildly gory deaths and a few curse words (where else will you hear Vincent Price hiss "bitch" to Christopher Lee?), but it's a throwback before nostalgic throwbacks became a thing. It unfolds less like a Cannon production and more like a vintage Hammer or Amicus chiller and it does right by its cast, respecting them and the history they bring instead of derisively dismissing them, and when the actors are the butt of jokes, they're in on it.

Drenner points out on the commentary that it's easy to look back at the film now with a sense of nostalgia while seeing that it had to be very out-of-touch with where horror was in the early 1980s. Indeed, while it was enjoyable in 1983, it's a film that's improved over time and it's a rare instance where nostalgia is enough to carry it through. Of course, the story and the final twist are predictable, but watching these legends together is truly a joy that's helped the film out in the long run, especially now that a significant chapter of genre history has closed with the passing of Lee in June 2015 (Carradine died in 1988, Price in 1993, and Cushing in 1994).  HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS has aged like fine wine and sentimental feelings have won out over jaded cynicism, earning it a loyal cult following among classic horror fans enjoying the masters having one last hurrah without the baggage and expectations that came with its era. It may have been released in 1983 but it certainly wasn't made for 1983, and just about everyone back then--critics, audiences, and Cannon--was wrong about HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.

Cult Classics Revisited: THE MONSTER CLUB (1981)

THE MONSTER CLUB

(UK - 1981)

Directed by Roy Ward Baker.  Written by Edward and Valerie Abraham.  Cast: Vincent Price, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Stuart Whitman, Richard Johnson, Barbara Kellermann, Britt Ekland, Simon Ward, Anthony Valentine, Patrick Magee, Anthony Steel, James Laurenson, Geoffrey Bayldon, Warren Saire, Lesley Dunlop, Fran Fullenwider, The Viewers, B.A. Robertson, Night, The Pretty Things. (Unrated, 98 mins)

Anthology, or portmanteau horror films weren't a new concept when they became hugely popular in the 1960s.  1945's DEAD OF NIGHT, anchored by the classic ventriloquist dummy segment with Michael Redgrave, established the template, Roger Corman's Poe anthology TALES OF TERROR (1962) was a big hit, and TV series such as ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THRILLER, THE OUTER LIMITS, and THE TWILIGHT ZONE got fans accustomed to compact, 30-minute stories.  But when the British company Amicus, led by Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, produced 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, the style really took off, generating many similar, frequently star-studded anthology outings with titles like TORTURE GARDEN (1967), THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970), ASYLUM (1972), TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) and THE VAULT OF HORROR (1973).  By the mid-1970s, the subgenre's popularity began to fade, with lesser titles like TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973) and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974) paling in comparison to the anthology's heyday.  With shocking horror films like THE EXORCIST (1973) and THE OMEN (1976) rendering classic horror passé with 1970s moviegoers, the omnibus film of the Amicus sort quietly faded away, much like Amicus itself as Subotsky (1921-1991) and Rosenberg (1914-2004) parted ways in the mid-1970s.  Similar to the in-name-only resurrection of the legendary British horror house Hammer, the Amicus name would be revived in the 2000s, but we haven't heard much from it other than Stuart Gordon's STUCK (2008) and the atrocious 2009 remake of Larry Cohen's 1974 cult classic IT'S ALIVE.  As far as the British anthologies go, a few stragglers wandered in, like 1977's Canadian/British feline-centric collection THE UNCANNY, but by this time, audiences moved on.

Made during a period when theaters were filled with gory, post-HALLOWEEN/FRIDAY THE 13TH slasher films and the groundbreaking special effects of ALIEN, THE HOWLING, and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and featuring a cast of geriatric and/or past-their-prime actors, it's little wonder that the tardy anthology THE MONSTER CLUB failed to attract a US distributor, going straight to syndicated TV and appearing on VHS a few years later.  An Amicus production in every way except by name, THE MONSTER CLUB, recently released in a beautiful transfer on Blu-ray and DVD by Scorpion, was an adaptation of three stories in British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 1975 collection of the same name.  Directed by Amicus and Hammer vet Roy Ward Baker, the film stars John Carradine as Chetwynd-Hayes, who's bitten by an affable vampire named Eramus (Vincent Price) and taken to the secret Monster Club, a hangout for ghouls, monsters, and new-wave bands, where Eramus tells him three horrific stories to inspire his writing.  In the first, Simon Ward is a scheming shitbag who badgers his girlfriend (Barbara Kellermann) into answering a newspaper ad seeking someone to help catalog a library, figuring there's expensive goodies to steal and fence.  The homeowner (James Laurenson), a sensitive, lonely shut-in, turns out to be a "shadmock," a supernatural creature who emits a lethal whistling sound when angered.  In the more comedic second tale, Richard Johnson is a vampire quietly going about his nocturnal routine as his loving wife (Britt Ekland) keeps his secret even from their bullied son (Warren Saire).  The son has been befriended by a concerned priest (Donald Pleasence), who's really the leader of a squad of vampire hunters from the government's "Blood Crimes" unit.  The final story has a frustrated movie director (Stuart Whitman) location-scouting for a gothic horror film and stumbling on a creepy village populated by grave-desecrating, cannibalistic ghouls led by Patrick Magee (in one of his last roles) and figuring out too late that he's their next intended feast.

Occasionally eerie but never taking itself very seriously, THE MONSTER CLUB certainly won't go down as an essential British anthology horror flick, but even with some cheesy humor and some dated songs, time has been surprisingly kind to it.  While there might not have been a place for it in American movie theaters in 1981, TV audiences were much more welcoming with it, likely because young horror fans were already watching movies with Price and Carradine (and Karloff, Lugosi, Lee, Cushing, etc) on Saturday afternoon and late-night "Creature Features."  There's nothing in the way of gore other than one rather icky result of a shadmocking, and even some near-nudity gets obscured and turned into an animated joke.  In those respects, it's quaintly old-fashioned, but also nothing that 1981 audiences wanted to see on the big screen.  The biggest concession THE MONSTER CLUB makes to "the kids" is the inclusion of some extended musical interludes featuring songs by UB40 and onscreen appearances by the short-lived Night, and The Pretty Things, who had just reunited and contributed the title track as Price and Carradine can be seen busting moves on the Monster Club's dance floor (with Price almost grinding on a large actress named Fran Fullenwider).  Carradine seems a bit miscast and more than a little bewildered (Peter Cushing would've been perfect; Christopher Lee was approached for the role and reportedly declined when he heard the title), but Price is clearly having fun with his sole big-screen appearance as a vampire.

While some of THE MONSTER CLUB's humor is corny by design (especially in the second story, though the predicament Pleasence ultimately finds himself in is a rather ingenious development that's legitimately laugh-out-loud funny), some of it is surprisingly witty, with Price's vampire complaining that his kind find it hard to do their thing because of so many horror movies ruining things for them ("Everybody knows about garlic and stakes through the heart!"), and when Anthony Steel appears as a producer of vampire films named "Lintom Busotsky," Carradine exclaims "A vampire film producer?" to which Price quips "Aren't they all?"  There's also some unexpectedly sharp and cynical social commentary near the end when Price's Eramus nominates Chetwynd-Hayes to become the Monster Club's newest member, explaining that humans, with their guns, their wars, their anger, and their endless bloodlust and propensity for murder, are perhaps the biggest monsters of all.  None of this is to say that THE MONSTER CLUB is filled with deep insight, but it is better than its reputation as the last gasp of a dying subgenre.  Anthology films didn't go away--they just changed shape:  George A. Romero's CREEPSHOW was in theaters the next year, Price would similarly appear in the wraparound segments of the much more grisly 1987 horror omnibus THE OFFSPRING (aka FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM), and more recently, the two V/H/S films and THE ABCs OF DEATH have found an audience with newer and apparently more lenient horror fans.  But THE MONSTER CLUB was the last of its kind: the British portmanteau rooted in classic horror.  Fittingly, it was also the last feature film directed by Baker (1916-2010), whose career began with Hollywood fare like the Marilyn Monroe thriller DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952).  He's best known among serious cineastes for the Titanic classic A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958), but not long after that, he became a go-to horror guy for Hammer and Amicus, helming such genre favorites as FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1967) and THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970), among many others.  After THE MONSTER CLUB, Baker moved into British television until retiring in the early 1990s.  Late in his life and still sharp and full of stories, he contributed several commentary tracks on DVD releases of some of his classic horror films.

Scorpion's Blu-ray, framed at 1.78, really is the best this film has ever looked (despite their usual packaging typos, like "R. Chetwood-Hayes" and "Milton Dubotsky"), and it features two outstanding extras courtesy of journalist/historian/close Price friend David Del Valle, including an audio interview and an hour-long, career-spanning 1987 interview for Del Valle's public access show THE SINISTER IMAGE. Price, taking a little time to plug Lindsay Anderson's just-released THE WHALES OF AUGUST, is very much the elegant raconteur here, candidly talking about his classic films and his old and, in some cases, departed Hollywood friends.  This same interview, previously released as its own DVD by Image, is featured on Shout Factory's upcoming Price box set from his AIP/Poe days.