Horror Hotel (1960)

Here’s a nice little gem that hides in plain sight. It’s a public domain picture that can be viewed via the Internet, and that shows up frequently as part of those 100 Horror Movies for $20 DVD sets you find in second hand book stores, nestled into discount bins, and at truck stops. I suspect its very ubiquity is what keeps people from watching it, let alone taking it seriously.

That, and the fact that it’s over 50 years old, in black and white, and was made on a budget that probably didn’t exceed $40,000.

The movie is Horror Hotel, aka City of the Dead. It was the first film made by Vulcan Productions, which would soon change its name to Amicus and become Hammer’s most serious rival. It was released in 1960 and featured Christopher Lee, who was already a star in Europe.

Lee plays Prof. Alan Driscoll, who teaches classes on the history of witchcraft at a university on the American east coast. The picture’s prologue is his tale of Elizabeth Selwyn, burned at the stake in the village of Whitewood in 1692. Right. As IMDB reminds us, witches weren’t burned in the New World . But so what? This is Horror Hotel, not a History Channel documentary.

Driscoll convinces one of his students—an attractive female student—to spend her vacation time in Whitewood so she can do some first hand research, absorb some local color, and maybe get sacrificed to Satan. Nan Barlow (Venetia Stephenson—her name is actually “Stevenson,” misspelled in the credits) goes to Whitewood, checks into the Raven’s Inn , chats with the innkeeper Mrs. Newless (Patricia Jessel, who would play Domina in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and then quickly disappears. Her brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) follows to find out what happened to her, and then finds himself needing to rescue book store owner Patricia (Betta St. John) from the clutches of the local witch cult.

The script is by George Baxt from a story by Milton Subotsky, whose name in the credits is the best hint that we’re in Amicusland. Director John Llewellyn Moxey shows us just how much can be done—or disguised—with lights and a fog machine. When Nan first arrives in the village and drives by a cemetery that is under a thick layer of fog, we agree completely when she mumbles, “Spooky, isn’t it?”

As she strolls along, no one ever seems to enter the frame in front of her. People materialize from the shadows behind her, stop, and watch her silently. This is a Puritan Massachusetts of the mind, with an almost Lovecraftian aura of clamminess. In one shot, hooded choristers glide through the fog. Yes, it sounds corny, but somehow it works. This may all be hokum witchcraft, mocking the church and not predating it as real Wiccan does, but Moxey makes us believe it. In Whitewood, at least 50% of every shot is black; when the light is in the center of the frame, it is being crushed.

The template for the script is Psycho—young woman on a quest comes to an isolated hotel; when she vanishes, a sibling comes looking for her; sibling meets another attractive young woman and comes to her rescue. There’s even a decaying old woman in a chair for the dénouement. The picture was released in the UK about four months after Psycho, more than enough time in the world of low budget filmmaking to be heavily influenced.

Meet it at least halfway and Horror Hotel works. Just don’t bring too much baggage.