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Harry S Skats, fire-eating, pri ball of absolutely livid livid Of all things: an accident! And on his birthday, too! Zack Phalanx, superstar, &039;King of the Bad Guys&039;, had been involved in some minor accident back in Beverly Hills; an accident which, however temporarily, had curtailed his appearance on location

Skatser rushing out of hih What if the accident orse than he&039;d been told? What if Zack was out of the filht) permanently? All that so-expensive advance publicity - all the bother over visas and work perers - all for nothing Of course, they could always get solash, perhaps?) but it wouldn&039;t be the same In his mind&039;s eye Skatss already: &039;Zack Phalanx WAS Vlad the Iain at this mental picture, then leaned forward in his plush leather seat and snarled (he never spoke to anyone, always snarled) at his driver: &039;Joe, you sure the htly hurt? He didn&039;t stick hi?&039;

&039;Yeah, slightly hurt,&039; Joe grunted &039;Minor accident&039; Joe had been driving his boss now for so many years, on location in so er fazed hi car ploughed steadily through raid-afternoonroads that were often only just third class, high above in the village-sized huddle of caravans, huts and shacks, up in the glowering Carpathian Mountains, Harry S Skatsues prepared themselves for all hell let loose when the florid, fiery little director returned

They all kne that Zack Phalanx had been injured, that his arrival at Jlaskavya airport had been &039;unavoidably delayed&039; And they knew moreover just exactly what that meant where Skatsman was concerned The little fatonethe next in unashamed frustration, until &039;Old Grim-Grin&039; (as Phalanx was fondly known in movie circles) showed up Then they could shoot his all-important scenes

This dread of the director in dire mood was shared by all and sundry, froer (a ar&039; Sweeney, the coffee-boy - as in fact asloe-eyed Shani Silarno, the heroine of this, Skats to be a fuss, all right, but what - they all asked a themselves - would the fuss really be all about? For in all truth Zack Phalanx&039;s scenes were not to be ic box-office name on the billboards, starred as Vlad the Impaler himself, was simply to be a draw, a &039;name&039; to pull the crowds For the sah certainly she had far ly, friendly &039;star&039; of the picture

And most of that picture, filmed already, had been dashed off to Hollywood for the usual pre-release publicity screenings - except for the Phalanx scenes, which, now that the star was known to be out of it, however teer had explained away in a hastily dru siood to be shown in any detail before the actual preossip coluot their wicked little claws into the story Phalanx would be out here in Romania and all would be well

But meanwhile the ih they were, would have to wait on the arrival of Old Grim-Grin, injured in soinning to wish he&039;d never heard of Vlad the Impaler; or rather, that Harry S Skatser could still remember when first the fat little director had snarled into his office to slam down upon his desk a file composed of bits and pieces of collected facts and lore concerning one Vlad Dracula This Vlad - Vlad being a title of some sort, possibly &039;Prince&039; - had been a fifteenth-century warlord, a Wallach of incredible cruelty Like his ancestors before hi Turks, Magyars, Bulgars, Lombards and others equally barbaric, to beat the inal Dracula; but whichever historian appended the words &039;the Impaler&039; to his na than did Bram Stoker when he wrote his popular novel Vlad V Tsepeth Dracula of Wallachia had earned his na the captured hundreds of his eneht stakes, where they ht sit and scream out the ony while he and other nobles laughed and cantered their warhorses up and down aend in connection with Vlad V probably sprang up not only from this monstrous method of execution, but also fro dead for over five hundred years) that Vlad the Irave with his warriors of old to protect his lands if ever again invaders penetrate his boundaries&039;

This, roughly, was the information Skatsman&039;s file contained, and to its cover he had stapled a single sheet of paper bearing the following story-line, his synoptic &039;plan&039; of the epic-to-be:

&039;Vlad Drac, (Zack Phalanx), scorned by his subjects and the sovereigns of neighbouring kingdoms and princedoms alike for his chicken, pacifist ways, finally loses his cool and takes up the sword against the invader (so like Friendly Persuasion but with mountains and battle-axes) This only after his castle has been burned right off the edge of its precipice by the advancing Turks, and after his niece, the young Princess Minerna, (Shani Silarno), has been raped by the Turk barbarian boss, (Tony Kwinn?) To conclude, we&039;ll have Vlad V suicide after his boys mistakenly stick his mistress, (Glory Graeme?), who has dressed like a Turk ca that Vlad has already whupped theood&039; To this brief, alnature

And fro into a giant project, an epic; by which tier to back out Truth of the matter was that the producer was a little fearful of these so-called &039;epic&039; productions: just such a project had alo But with such a story - with the awesoround, with a list of stars literally type-cast into the very parts for which they were acclaimed and which they played best, with Skatsood director, despite his tantru

And yet at first it had see The new peace-pact with the Eastern-bloc countries had helped theet the necessary visas; that and the promise of recruiters into bit parts And this latter of course had saved much on costumary, for the dress and costued in five centuries On the other hand, there had been little of the filment of each and every scene had to be directed with the h an interpreter and invariably with the end result that Skatsman, before he could be satisfied, would have the set in uproar The stars would be threatening to walk out, the local &039;actors&039; the in fear of the little reat Vlad V himself resurrected!

Indeed, when finally those locals - all two hundred eighty of theer on the giant production, Skatsman had been blamed Not to his face, of course not, but behind his back the cast and technicians had &039;known&039; that he was the spanner in the works This did not explain, though, the fact that when Philar Jontz the PR man went after the runaways, in fact to pay thees!

Not only had the rather primitive &039;actors&039; deserted the filreatly, for all of their important scenes were already in the can - but they had taken their families, friends, indeed the entire populations of their hoer still, the quaint old town into which they had all moved en masse was only a mile or so further down theaway from, well, they had not bothered to run very far!

Ever the PR man, Jontz had followed them, only to discover that in the now badly overcrowded town no one would have anything to do with hiular inhabitants Mystified, he had returned to his colleagues

Within a day or so, however, rumours had found their way back to the ue and inconclusive and no one really bothered ave the lie to anyone who ht try to attach the blaers had not been frightened off by the little boss; and no, they had not found the work distasteful - the rateful

But did the rich As in the mountains?

And were they not aware that in Recjaviscjorska a priest had foretold queer horror in the highlands? Why! - wasn&039;t it corounds of certain cruh in the rocky passes was suddenly iven a wide berth until, one way or the other, they were gone and the h of course he had his ear to the ground, still it was all far beyond Philar Jontz&039;s understanding, and even had he thought or bothered hih there was no reason why he should) it is doubtful that he would have noticed anything at all out of the ordinary Maps being what they are in that country, in all probability the ancient boundaries would not be marked, and so Jontz would not have seen that the two deserted villages lay within the perimeter of what once had been the princedoing toer down the mountain slopes lay outside the centuried prince&039;s domain

Now all this had happened before the latest crisis, but even then Phalanx had been overdue on location, delayed for first one reason and then another in Hollywood And so a nuone by, until finally ca when the poisonous little director received the telephonefor Old Grim-Grin was on his way at last; he would be on the ht into Jlaskavya; could someone meet him and his retinue at the airport to escort them to location?