The Guardians: The Curse of Rathlaw

After enjoying The Vampire of Finistere so much I tracked down another in the Guardian's series, 'The Curse of Rathlaw'. Another cracking tale with no airs and graces. In many ways these novels remind me of the old Target Doctor Who novelisations. They're obviously about the right page count, but it's also the tone and pace. There's no attempt in them to be clever, no wish to impress, just to tell a damn good, rip-roaring story.
In this one, a Scottish laird is cursed by a local hermit and contacts the Guardians as he believes that his only son is doomed. Along the way we get a spooky child-wizard, dwarf and a full blown murderous witches coven. I can't believe that no-one ever picked up the rights to produce movies of these novels. They actually read as novelisations at times and you can imagine the set-pieces one after another. It wouldn't be too difficult to imagine a series of Amicus series of films based on these novels - Amicus presents: The Curse of Rathlaw starring Ian Ogilvy as Steven Kane, Jane Seymour as Anne Ashby and Christopher Lee as Cosmo Trayle...

It would also be great to resurrect this series but as I've been talking about with Curt at Groovy Age of Horror the rights issue could be a bit of a nightmare, espiecially as Peter Saxon was a pen-name and no-one really knows who actually wrote these stories. Saying that, if I understand English Law you can't copyright characters only specific text... Hmmmmm....