The shadow of the cross!!

This evening oi 'ave been mostly watching camp old horror films.

Namely 'City of the Dead' starring Christopher Lee. Mucho dodgy acting, machiavellian laughter, cliches and campness ensued. And I loved every minute of it. Of course you could predict the plot; Girl goes to village to research witchcraft - girl gets sacrificed - brother wonders where she's got to - goes to find her - almost gets sacrificed along with local vicar's daughter - both saved by first girl's boyfriend who uses the shadow of the cross to destroy the witches. ? Shadow of the cross? Er...isn't that for vampires?

T'other week I saw 'Asylum' - a rather less camp 70's flick with a star studded cast. Robert Powell, Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Britt Ekland etc An anthology film it was and reminded me of some of the stories I've read in those Pan horror books. Oh what marvels they contain. If you really want to scare yourself silly (or just creep you out a bit) you can't do better than these. It'd take me far too long to describe my favourites but one particularly chilling tale has a motorcyclist breaking down in the middle of nowhere, staying in creepy old inn only to be attacked in the middle of the night by the landlady with an axe. He escapes through the roof (via standing on a cistern full of dismembered bodies) but before he can get away the landlady chops his fingers off. He runs away but turns round further up the road to see the pub disappear. He eventually stumbles across a nice, safe house where he tells the owner his story - who then dismisses it as all in his imagination.

"Well if its all in my imagination, how come I've got no fingers?" he asks, showing his bloodied stumps on one hand...

Yikes!

And on that note I'm off to read some more.