Michael M
An excellent witchcraft movie! This is a total classic in every aspect!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Michael V
The City of the Dead (U.S. title: Horror Hotel) is a 1960 supernatural horror film directed by John Llewellyn Moxey 🧟♀️
It's good 🙂
I'd recommend it if you like this genre 👍🏼
It's a B grade, atmospheric and unintentionally fun horror flick,,,
300 YEARS OLD!
HUMAN BLOOD KEEPS THEM ALIVE FOREVER!
A young college student arrives in a sleepy Massachusetts town to research witchcraft; during her stay at an eerie inn, she discovers a startling secret about the town and its inhabitants.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
10/23/22
Full Review
deke p
1960! VERY good, for 1960. I agree with the surprisingly good consensus of RT critics & audience. Very creepy. Some Christians might enjoy the denouement... SPOILER SCROLL DOWN WAY DOWN BELOW:
Never saw it bfo 4.12.2022 on The movie channel.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
dave s
Despite the hokey title, Horror Hotel (aka City of the Dead) is a surprisingly effective low-budget thriller. When a college student visiting a small Massachusetts town to investigate claims of witchcraft mysteriously disappears, friends and family head off to the fog-shrouded town to determine her whereabouts. Most of the action takes place in shadows and mist, giving the film an appropriately eerie atmosphere. The sets are genuinely creepy, the black and white cinematography is great and the lighting is fantastic. If you can ignore the jazz score that periodically pops up and the improbability that a town inhabited by witches for a couple of hundred years has gone undetected, this is a fun way to waste an hour and a bit.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie is called City of the Dead.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/29/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The City of the Dead (Horror Hotel) starts off with a traditional, rather predictable story: a college student, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), goes to a spooky town in New England to research witches that were burned at the stake there hundreds of years before. The town is set back in the woods beyond a crossroads and possesses the expected cemetery and creepy hotel along with an extra helping of mist. It's horror just as you would expect it from an old black-and-white movie, but even so it remains spooky rather than silly in large part thanks to eerie choir music and the unusual inhabitants of the cursed town, who, of course, are keeping the practice of witchcraft alive. They draw Nan in as she innocently pursues her interest, until curiosity gets the better of her and they close the trap around her. Then comes a surprise, delivered quite effectively since we have by this point settled in to what we think is a run of the mill, if better than average, little ghost story. Many details very obviously point to what will happen, but we don't believe them. *Spoiler Alert* We expect Nan to escape the witches and the town, to figure out what is being planned for her, or at least to struggle her way out of the witches' grasp. But she doesn't, and with a sharp and effective cut, we are left to imagine her being stabbed and offered as a sacrifice to the devil. It has been noted that this reversal of expectation is very similar to that in Psycho, and it is astonishing that the two stories were thought up simultaneously, yet independently. In Psycho, however, we are not supposed to see the murder coming, while in Horror Hotel we are given obvious clues but reject them as red herrings. The rest of Horror Hotel follows characters that were skillfully set up earlier in the movie—Nan's brother, her boyfriend, and a friend she met—as they search for the missing Nan. Their dialogue is competent and their deduction skills are adequate, making them a cut above most B movie heroes. Christopher Lee distinguishes himself, once again, as the master of horror, even if the true evil motives of his character are never in question. The story does repeat itself as all three new protagonists separately follow the same path Nan did, causing the story to drag slightly but also adding to its peculiar nature and the inescapable atmosphere of the town. There are instances when visual details, like a plaque marking the place where a witch was burned, are shown excessively, as if the filmmakers aren't sure we're getting the message. The overemphasis on the plaque does pay off, however, in a clever final shot following the spectacular culminating confrontation with the witches.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
>
