The City of the Dead – 1960 | 76 mins | Horror | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Filmed at Shepperton Studios on a sparse budget, George Baxt scripted this extraordinarily atmospheric chiller from a Lovecraftian story by producer Milton Subotsky, Stylishly directed by John Moxey, the mixture of ancient ritual and witchcraft superstition set in the US effortlessly entwines with contemporary life. The film was released in the United States under the alternative title of Horror Hotel.

In 1692 witch hunting and persecution is at its terrifying height. In the small town of Whitewood, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Selwyn is accused of being a witch in league with the devil. She is put to the stake and burned alive, whilst her accomplice and lover Jethro (Valentine Dyall) stands among the Puritans impassively watching proceedings. As the flames engulf Selwyn’s body, her tortured soul calls upon the devil to curse the town and rain terror and death on the villagers who persecuted her.

Hundreds of years later, sinister history Professor Driscoll (Christopher Lee) recommends his Massachusetts hometown of Whitewood as a suitable place for the headstrong college student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) to research her term paper on the occult. Full of enthusiasm she checks into the creepy Ravens Inn Hotel which, unbeknown to Nan is located on the exact spot that the burnings took place many years before. The inn owner, Mrs. Newlis (Patricia Jessel) is in fact the reincarnated 268-year old witch Elizabeth Selwyn – Selwyn sold her soul to the Devil in order to return as the undead after being burned at the stake. The fog-engulfed town is her modern coven held in the grip of sacrificial terror, with the only exceptions being blind Reverend Russell (Norman MacCowan) and his granddaughter Patricia (Betta St. John).

Nan Barlow unfortunately arrives in the rundown town on Candlemass Eve, the annual human sacrifice, and when she fails to return from her visit, Nan’s brother Richard travels to the town trapped in time to search for her. Bookstore owner Patricia Russell helps him in trying to find out what happened, and together they discover satanic sacrifices and all sorts of evil goings-on.