Members Club
It looks like the end of a bumpy road for the “fifth best male stripper group in Essex,” Wet Dreams having narrowly escaped having the police called on them after dyslexic manager “Double Dip” Deano booked the middle-aged dancers for a 12th birthday party celebration rather than a 21st, Alan suggesting he take the reins and against the odds getting them booked into a rural club for a hefty cash sum.
Hatfield Peverel a modest village where the only thing of note is historical, “the home of the Essex Witch trials,” specifically the execution of Agnes Whitewood in 1576, Alan, Neil, Ratboy and Carly are driven to the venue by Deano where they are greeted by Joanne who explains that once the doors are closed none of them can leave and that the client is very particular in the robes and masks they must wear for their unusual performance.
Written and directed by Marc Coleman, Members Club is a British horror comedy which principally acts as a reunion of sorts of the cast of his debut, Manfish, starring Dean Kilbey, Perry Benson, Mark Monero and David Alexander as the members of Wet Dreams, Liam Noble as Deano, demoted to driver, Juliet Cowan as Joanne and Emma Stannard as high priestess of the coven Christine.
Supported by Barbara Smith and Jade Johnson as Alan’s daughter Daisy and her best friend Trish and Steve Oram as doorman Blind Brian, the laughs are scarce but occasionally land, the quartet ill-suited in temperament or ability to act as erotic entertainers, the outcome more embarrassing than hilarious, but fortunately for them their incompetence is matched by the witches who intend to sacrifice them.
Joanne having made her ritual mask from Twiglets rather branches as it was all she had to hand, the jokes are flat and the cast are to be applauded for doing their best with the script which drags over ninety minutes as one extended scene where urgency is never on the agenda, pausing frequently for Alan to consider his failures and limitations as a parent, any sense the troupe are supposedly in mortal danger forgotten.
More Doghouse than Dog Soldiers, with each of the characters spending more time feeling sorry for themselves than taking the fight to the resurrected witch, the promised “pilgrimage of revenge” against those who represent the persecutors of Old Mother Whitewood is trapped in a pattern as inescapable as the locked premises, repeatedly falling back on the same tired dance routine, the Members Club perhaps exclusive but not necessarily enticing.
Members Club was screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest
