The City of the Dead, aka Horror Hotel (1960), directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, starring Christopher Lee, Patricia Jessel, Dennis Lotis and Venetia Stevenson. Directed by the same man who helmed the legendary television movie The Night Stalker (1972), this early 60s, b&w creepfest has acquired a solid reputation over the last fifty years and change.
The film is set in New England, although it was shot entirely in old England at the Shepperton Studios in Surrey (now part of Pinewood), with British actors doing a pretty good job of putting on American accents. For an early 60s film, this atmospheric tale of witchcraft and devil worship racks up quite a body count.
Horror icon Christopher Lee stars as Alan Driscoll, a professor of history at a small New England college. He convinces a pretty blonde student, Nan Barlow (Stevenson) to visit a remote Massachusetts town to research witchcraft in the 17th Century. The town, Whitewood, was the setting for the burning of a notorious witch named Elizabeth Selwyn in 1692.
What Nan doesn’t know is that Driscoll is actually an immortal warlock, who is sending her on an errand of death and terror. When Nan arrives in Whitewood, she checks into an old inn run by a very creepy proprietess named Mrs. Newlys (Jessel). A day later, she disappears.
Her brother Richard “Dick” Barlow (Lotis), a colleague of Alan Driscoll, drives to Whitewood to investigate Nan’s disapearance; her boyfriend Bill Maitland also shows up. There, they find that Whitewood is populated by witches and warlocks who must sacrifice two young women every year in order to remain immortal. A young woman from the town who befriended Nan, Pat Russell (Betta St. John), appears to be the next target.
This film is obviously a low-budget B-effort, and suffers from cheap sets, a surfeit of dry-ice-produced fog, and a too-easy-to-guess premise. However, these flaws are compensated for by the twists and turns of the plot action, and by innovations like the ballsy decision to kill off a major character in the middle of the film.
The cinematography is beautifully dark and shadowy, provided by the same man (Desmond Dickinson) who shot Laurence Olivier’s legendary Hamlet (1948). The score by Douglas Gamley adds to the outstandingly creepy atmosphere; it features startlingly effective demonic chanting (16 years before The Omen) as well as cool early 60s jazz compositions.
For the acting, Sir Chris Lee as Driscoll offers his usual intense, domineering presence. Stevenson as Nan is excellent. Jessel as Mrs. Newlys is a bit too hammy, but the rest of the cast is great. I give them extra points for nailing the accents.
As highly regarded as this little film is today, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t been remade. In the right hands and with a decent budget, a remake could be phenomenal.
