Orlof in 8mm.

I usually try to avoid “hey, look at this cool thing I found on Ebay” sort of posts, but couldn’t help sharing a few images of this little Christmas present to myself, which I snagged the other day.

A 150ft (approx 12 minute?) digest version of Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof, released by British company Mountain Movies under the title ‘Lust For Blood’. Year unknown, but presumably this dates from some point in the ‘60s, when the market for 8mm home movie reels was at its height. Both the title and the rather delightful artwork are unique to this release, as far as I know.

Some interesting reminiscences on Mountain Movies and their business practices can be found in this forum thread from 2010, including a contribution from Latarnia Forum main-man Mirek Lipinski, who notes that Mountain actually extracted no less than FOUR reels from their print of ‘The Awful Dr. Orlof’, each sold under a different title with different box art (the other three titles being ‘The Demon Doctor’, ‘The Woman in the Coffin’ and ‘The Body Snatchers’).

I don’t own an 8mm projector (shocking, I know) so I’m unable to enlighten you as to what is actually on this particular reel, but I’m nonetheless happy to add it to my ever-growing collection of random, little-monetary-value memorabilia.

(The photos in the post are the work of the original ebay seller by the way, as I’ve not had a chance to get this reel near a camera / scanner yet, but he did a pretty good with ‘em, so why not etc.)

Anyway, I’ll take this opportunity to wish all you readers a happy Yuletide / winter solstice / xmas / etc; thanks for sticking around, all the best to you and yours, and I’ll look forward to seeing you in the new year for more, well, you know - this kind of thing.