If you’ve ever dreamed of taking a scenic New England vacation filled with Satanic cults, human sacrifices, and enough fog to choke a lighthouse keeper, then The City of the Dead (also known as Horror Hotel) is your dream destination. Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Christopher Lee in full “professor of malevolence” mode, this atmospheric little gem serves as a blueprint for the British horror boom that would haunt the 1960s. It’s spooky, stylish, and just a bit too pleased with itself—and that’s why it’s wonderful.
In 1692, the residents of Whitewood, Massachusetts, decide they’ve had quite enough of Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel), a witch who’s been cozying up with Lucifer and scaring the livestock. They burn her at the stake, which, in fairness, is the go-to colonial remedy for most problems—though in this case, Selwyn doesn’t go quietly. She curses the village and pledges eternal service to Satan, assisted by her right-hand warlock Jethrow Keane (Valentine Dyall). It’s all very cheerful stuff, complete with cackling and a promise to keep feeding the Devil fresh virgins twice a year.
“Nothing says ‘justice’ like a torch and some poor judgment.”
Centuries later, smug history professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee) lectures about witchcraft to a class of wide-eyed undergrads. One of them, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), gets so inspired by Driscoll’s talk that she decides to spend her vacation researching witchcraft in the very real—and very cursed—town of Whitewood. This is roughly equivalent to deciding to visit Camp Crystal Lake to study the local flora. Undeterred, Nan drives into the perpetual fog, checks into The Raven’s Inn, and meets its pleasant but peculiar owner, Mrs. Newless (also Patricia Jessel). Nan also befriends Patricia Russell (Betta St. John), who loans her a book on witchcraft, because nothing says “girls’ night in” like a tome bound in human skin.
The Necronomicon for Dummies.
When Candlemas Eve rolls around, Nan discovers that reading about witches is a lot safer than staying in a hotel run by one. Mrs. Newless reveals herself to be Elizabeth Selwyn—because witches apparently get free rebranding as part of their infernal contract—and promptly sacrifices poor Nan on a Satanic altar, fulfilling her annual quota of dead college students. It’s a grim little ritual, complete with ominous chanting and smoke machines that would make a rock band jealous. By the time the candles burn out, Nan’s academic curiosity has been rewarded with a front-row seat to her own sacrifice to Satan. Who could have seen this coming? Oh, everyone, you say?
This is what comes from ignoring Red Flags.
Two weeks later, Nan’s brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) and fiancé Bill Maitland (Tom Naylor) realize that something’s fishy when Nan stops answering letters and The Raven’s Inn can’t be found in any phone directory (a red flag even before Yelp). With help from Patricia and her grandfather, Reverend Russell (Norman Macowan), the group uncovers Whitewood’s dark secret. After the usual round of kidnappings, graveyard chases, and coven confrontations, Bill manages to burn Selwyn’s followers with a giant cross, proving that while evil never dies, it does have an allergy to wood. Selwyn’s corpse turns up in the ruins of the inn, looking like a roasted marshmallow of pure evil.
This movie has a very metal ending.
Stray Observations:
• How can people not figure out that burning people suspected of witchcraft is never a good idea? Either they’re innocent, and you’ve committed an even worse crime, or they’re actually a witch, and now they’re going to curse you and your descendants.
• Christopher Lee gives his lecture on witchcraft with the same enthusiasm he’d later bring to lecturing Peter Cushing with a sword.
• The amount of fog in this movie is staggering. It billows around every corner, and I bet its creation must have taken up half the film’s budget.
• The “Hour of Thirteen” sounds cool, but no one bothers to explain what time that actually is. 1 a.m.? Or just a spooky “whenever the plot demands”?
• If you hear chanting coming from a hidden trapdoor in the floor of your room, for the love of God, don’t investigate.
• Basically, Nan isn’t too bright. She drives to a mysterious, unlisted town where no one smiles, the innkeeper looks embalmed, and the only directions she gets are from a hitchhiker who literally vanishes. And yet, she stays.
Seriously, would you stop for this guy?
John Llewellyn Moxey’s direction deserves credit for making a modestly budgeted British production feel like a full-bodied Gothic nightmare. This was his feature debut, and he nails the atmosphere— with Desmond Dickinson’s cinematography giving us shadowy graveyards, flickering candlelight, and fog so thick it’s practically a supporting character. The visuals are drenched in atmosphere, giving The City of the Dead an eerie, dreamlike quality that would later influence both Night of the Living Dead and The Fog. Moxey’s pacing is deliberate, his framing tight, and his sense of place—despite shooting entirely on English sets meant to double as Massachusetts—is impressively convincing.
Next stop, The Twilight Zone.
The film’s pedigree is fascinating. George Baxt originally wrote the story as a pilot for a proposed Boris Karloff TV series called The Waxworks. When that fell through, it was expanded into this feature, which explains why it has a distinctly anthology feel. The dialogue is crisp but theatrical, the setup feels serialized, and the whole thing hums with that quaint, small-screen earnestness that somehow makes it even creepier. Karloff’s absence is a loss, but Christopher Lee steps in beautifully, turning Professor Driscoll into the world’s most sinister academic, like a man who assigns The Necronomicon for extra credit.
Seriously, don’t take travel advice from Christopher Lee.
The cast, though operating in B-movie territory, plays it straight, and that’s exactly what makes it work. Venetia Stevenson is all earnest curiosity and tragic naivety, while Patricia Jessel is pure Gothic gold, playing both the prim innkeeper and the resurrected witch with a delicious sense of menace. Betta St. John adds some much-needed humanity, and Dennis Lotis and Tom Naylor provide the sort of square-jawed, cardigan-clad heroism only 1960 could deliver.
“I told her that going to the Malt Shoppe would be safer.”
This film is simply brimming with all the good stuff: a witch’s curse, endless fog, a roadside harbinger, phantom hitchhikers, a creepy innkeeper and secret passageways. It all adds up to a truly terrifying story—one that might teach you not to visit ghostly, fog-shrouded towns populated by the dead. But the film’s real charm lies in how unashamedly old-fashioned it is. The City of the Dead doesn’t rely on blood or jump scares—it’s all about mood, dread, and that creeping sense that something ancient and rotten is festering beneath polite colonial manners. Its themes of faith, guilt, and corruption would echo through countless later horror films, and its twist—killing off the protagonist early—was practically revolutionary for its time.
Fun fact: The film was released before Hitchcock’s Psycho, making this one of the first to kill off its leading lady halfway through. Take that, Janet Leigh.
In conclusion, The City of the Dead is one of those underrated gems that sits quietly in the shadows of Hammer and Amicus productions but deserves far more love. It’s elegant, eerie, and occasionally unintentionally funny, a horror film that feels like an old ghost story told beside a crackling fire on a foggy night. While some of the acting creaks and the logic goes up in smoke, the film’s spell never breaks. Between Moxey’s direction, Baxt’s clever writing, and Christopher Lee’s deliciously menacing performance, this is a witchy delight that still casts a chill six decades later.
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