Being Film #24 for Hooptober 2025
Slightly gothic horror movie about witches from the 60s starring Christopher Lee…and it’s not from Hammer? Color me intrigued, and since two of the films I had slated to cover the “conspiracy or cult” requirement for the marathon turned out to be action films and not horror (sorry The Witch duology) I had to make some quick adjustments, and The City of the Dead fit the bill. Overall it’s a fine if slight movie, wooden in some place but boasts at least two sequences that were fantastic. And since I’m exhausted and getting to the end of my marathon rope (age is a fun thing, huh?) let’s just get to it.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Ignore the fact that this is a British production featuring an all-British cast but takes place in New England, okay? Witch fever has the town of Whitehall in its clutches in 1692, as as they burn Elizabeth Selwyn at the stake she reaches out to Lucifer, offering to strike a deal if the Great Horned One will spare her as as servant and curse the town. Hundreds of years later university student Nan is enraptured by the history and lore of witchcraft and and the urging of her creepy professor Alan Driscoll she travels to Whitehall to see if she can find any records for her thesis. Guess what? The town of Whitehall is no longer terrified of witches…but that might be because it’s full of them!
A couple of things I did not know about The City of the Dead: when it was released in America as Horror Hotel they removed Selwyn’s calls to Satan, which I imagine would have made the film a lot less clear. That and the typically terrible American title might have contributed to the poor box office performance. On the plus side, both King Diamond and Iron Maiden have used clips from the film in their music, although despite my eternal love for Maiden I refuse to listen to “Bring Your Daughter…to the Slaughter” again.
Christopher Lee is in his usual evil creep mode, and while it’s fine it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and he’s more a lurking background menace more than anything else. The City of the Dead focuses on Nan and her friends as things transpire, and it doesn’t really help the story very much, despite the sweet photography and direction from John Llewyllen Moxey and Desmond Dickinson.
But those two moments in the film continue to linger in my head a day after watching it. Coming out the same year as Psycho, I was surprised to see that The City of the Dead uses a similar twist (and SPOILER if you want to see this for yourself): After following our lead Nan for half the film, she is suddenly murdered as part of the town’s annual sacrifice, causing us to loop over to her brother as the new lead of the film. It’s a great switch, even if I don’t find any of the “heroes” of the film engaging.
The second great moment is the film’s climactic ending. I don’t want to spoil that one, except to say I absolutely loved how it looks, how they manage the effects, and how the film ultimately resolves. It’s worth it just to see that ending.
Cinema Dual 
Leave a comment