Halloween Horror: The City of the Dead (1960)

Surely, 1960 deserves to be remembered as a banner year for horror films, much like 1968 or 1982 are for science fiction. Classics released that year include Psycho, Peeping Tom, and the French film, Eyes Without a Face, each of which upped the ante for the genre in different ways: by locating horror in collective fears about post-war alienation and suburban anomie or the role of cinema in portraying violence, transforming what kinds of images could be shown on screen. Other less-heralded horror films of 1960, such as John Llewellyn Moxey’s The City of the Dead, looked back, focusing on horror’s Gothic origins, but is nonetheless deserving of notice. 

The City of the Dead, released in America as Horror Hotel, is, like yet another 1960 horror film, Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, steeped in the traditions of the Gothic genre, a story of witch burnings and misty, shadowcast graveyards. Shot entirely on a soundstage at Shepperton Studios in London, the film is, ironically, set in the New England town of Whitewood, a Massachusetts town off the beaten path, with a Salem-like past of witchcraft and witch burnings. Combining its witchcraft horrors with an investigation into the disappearance of a young woman, The City of the Dead is an agreeable and atmospheric Gothic horror treat.

Like Black Sunday, the film opens in the past with the burning of an accused witch, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessell), who, along with her accomplice, the wonderfully named Jethrow Keane (played by the British character actor Valentine Dyall, whom you might remember, with his distinctive voice and odd affect, as the caretaker in Robert Wise’s The Haunting), commits her soul to Satan in order to have her revenge upon the town which has condemned her. Centuries later, we meet a professor, Dr. Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee), who is teaching a course on the history of witchcraft in America to a mix of eager and skeptical young students. One of his students, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), decides to use her semester break to go and investigate the town of Whitewood and its witchy history for her term paper. With advice from Dr. Driscoll, a native of Whitewood, Nan heads off against her brother and boyfriend’s objections.

It might be a bit of a spoiler to note that at this point the film’s structure bears more than a passing similarity to its more lauded 1960 companion, Psycho, as Nan heads off to Whitewood and checks into the Raven’s Inn, the hotel built, as a plaque states, on the site of Selwyn’s death by burning. However, Nan discovers that witchcraft is more than just history in the isolated town. When her brother, Dick (Dennis Lotis), retraces Nan’s steps to Whitewood, it sets up a showdown on the Witches’ Sabbath with the coven that still rules the town.

The City of the Dead features a wonderful atmosphere, with classically spooky mise-en-scene of tombstones, old churches, and mist everywhere; fog machines were certainly working overtime in creating the streets of Whitewood, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable. This British production seems to capture the vivid black and white Gothic style like something straight out of an old EC horror comic from the era. While there are plenty of horror films to choose from the era, City of the Dead ‘s atmospheric sets look better than most, not trying to hide low production values or violence in its deep shadows, but use the shadow to generate a strong sense of foreboding. The camera is fairly restrained in movement, opting for clarity over elaborate movement or unusual compositions. Rather, the film benefits from the immediacy of a stage production, like walking into an old legend; it’s a clear embrace of artifice and expressionism over realism.

What is also enjoyable is the performances from British professionals like Jessell and Dyall, but especially a younger Christopher Lee, with his famous rich baritone here deployed in a rare American accent. As Dr. Driscoll, Lee is both seductive, drawing Nan into his studies with his authority and passion, but also aloof and superior. His scholarly insistence on the reality of witchcraft belies the true nature of his connection to Whitewood. Though not a Hammer production, the film was made during a period when Lee was building his reputation as a portrayer of all kinds of monsters and villains, such as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Lee’s role here also in some ways anticipates his genial but sinister role as Lord Summerisle in the British cult classic, The Wicker Man. The older British stage actors are definitely more notable than the mostly nondescript younger cast, though Betta St. John catches the eye as a reverend’s granddaughter, and one of the only allies the heroes find in Whitewood.

But The City of the Dead, coming as it does in 1960, as horror films start to embrace modern horrors and leave the Gothic past behind, is also notable for its treatment of its material. While it’s similar to Psycho in structure, unlike that film, The City of the Dead is thoroughly indebted to the horror of the past. The witches coven of Whitewood are not merely a misunderstood group of neopagans, but honest to goodness devil worshippers who conduct virgin sacrifices in moonlit graveyards and are vulnerable to the shadow of the cross, which makes them burst into flame. In this way the film is no revisionist tale, treating supernatural content as completely real, despite Dick and Nan’s boyfriend, Bill, expressing an initial skepticism at Dr. Driscoll’s studies that would be the hallmark of later films of this kind (consider the initial responses to Regan’s possession in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, for instance). 

While the most lauded horror films of 1960 looked to more modern horrors in shifting the direction of horror away from the Gothic, The City of the Dead plays as a traditional take on the genre. If you’re looking for spades of atmosphere, Christopher Lee in his prime, and witches and fog shrouded graveyards for your Halloween viewing, you can’t really go wrong with this British classic.

7 out of 10

The City of the Dead (UK, 1960)

Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey; screenplay by George Baxt, based on a story by Milton Subotsky; starring Christopher Lee, Denis Lotis, Patricia Jessell, Betta St. John, Venetia Stevenson, Valentine Dyall. 

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