Hotel Hell...

In a week that has seen me somewhat werewolf obsessed, I felt I couldn't let it end without sharing this fragment from an old Sleaze feature that I'm considering archiving, (it presupposes that you remember both the 1960s/1970s ITV soap opera Crossroads, and its disastrous revival some years ago):

Down in the Midlands, strange things are afoot at Crossroads Hotel. What is Adam Chance’s dark secret? Why does his moustache not meet in the middle? Why does he act as if he has just stepped out of a 1973 vintage episode of Dr Who? Is he in fact a hitherto unknown regeneration of The Master? Suspicions are raised when his new wife, Jill Harvey, becomes the victim of a werewolf murder - just as predicted by Bela the mysterious gypsy fortune teller with a droopy moustache and dangly earrings, who was moved on from the car park by Rocky the porter after guests complained about his curses and their missing underwear. Following the murder, Adam Chance locks himself in his room and will eat only raw meat, (which is just as well, as that’s the only way inebriated Glaswegian chef and part-time child-molester Billy can cook it), before finally confessing to mysterious guest Dr Niemann that ever since having his leg humped by what he thought was merely an amourous German Shepherd, (but was, in fact, gypsy Bela in wolf form - the dangly earrings were a dead give-away), he has been suffering the curse of lycanthropy.

In return for this confession, Niemann reveals just why he has been skulking around the hotel’s cellars, and why the sounds of excavation have been heard coming from beneath the hotel in dead of night - in an ice cave deep beneath the building’s foundations, he has discovered the frozen body of former Crossroads handyman Benny. Simpleton Benny has lain there since his titanic battle with wheelchair-bound vampire Sandy was interrupted when the old Crossroads Motel was swept away in 1987 after terrified villagers dynamited the nearby Kings Oak dam. Niemann plans to revive Benny and offers to end Adam Chance’s torment by transplanting his devious brain into Benny’s body. However, complications could arise, as it seems that evil vampire Sandy may also have survived the 1987 holocaust....