An Interlude

Whilst I was hoping to push on with my write ups of the three low budget eighties exploitation movies - which I finally got started with the last post about Derek Ford's Urge to Kill - work-related activities mean that I'll have to leave the next one until later this week as I don't have time this evening to do it justice.  Apart from work currently inconveniencing me by dragging me halfway across the country for a time-wasting meeting tomorrow, things in general seem to be improving.  Certainly my stress levels have gone down over the past few days as various of the sources of my stress have been resolved.  My apparently AWOL friend has been in touch to assure me that she's OK and that I shouldn't worry - like that's going to happen: when it comes to those I care about, I'm a born worrier, no matter how flimsy the sources of that worry might be.  Moreover, a change in some working practices have reduced significantly my workplace stress.  Consequently, the stress-related stomach problems I was suffering a couple of weeks ago have vanished completely.

Consequently, feeling more relaxed than I have since I finished my summer break, I spent a large part of the weekend enjoying some more vintage exploitation movies.  Thanks to the marvellous Talking Pictures TV (now available on Freeview) I was finally able to catch up with The Trollenberg Terror and The House on Marsh Road, both broadcast using very nicely restored prints.  Whilst the former is a Quatermass cash-in, based on a now lost early ITV serial, the latter is an intriguing and very low key ghost story.  These were followed up with Hammer's quite bonkers 1968 Dennis Wheatley adaptation The Lost Continent (courtesy of the Horror Channel), which I haven't seen in decades, before I finished my viewing with 1970s continental Witchfinder General knock off Mark of the Devil.  Although a German production, the latter was , interestingly, scripted and directed by Michael Armstrong, who, after something of a false start writing and directing Tigon's Haunted House of Horror, before the film was taken away from him, became active in seventies British sex comedies, writing and appearing in The Sex Thief and scripting Adventures of a Private Eye, for instance.  So, not only an entertaining weekend, but also plenty of material for future posts.