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City Of The Dead | Year: 1961 Classification: Horror Actors/Actresses: - Patricia Jessel - Dennis Lotis - Christopher Lee An obscure but unforgettable horror classic A college student studying witchcraft travels to the spooky, fog shrouded town of Whitewater where she learns far more about witches and witchcraft than anyone would ever want to know. With sinister Christopher Lee as her instructor, well, her A will be carved on her tombstone. This eerie little horror film is a masterpiece of its type, unsurpassed for its atmosphere and all-around creepy mood. Patricia Jessel as the innkeeper of the title establishment, and the always memorable Lee are terrific in this neglected classic that is deserving of more honor than it has received. Neglected or not, once seen it is not easily forgotten. Better See This!! City of the Dead hasn't looked this good since it's British theatrical release! The DVD transfer is from incredible source materials and reveals to the viewer the most realistic version seen since 1960. The images are sharp with crisp detail throughout the film. Black levels are wonderful. This version is so vivid that you can feel the humidity from the fog scenes! "Dig that crazy beat." It's 1960 with a jazzy score. Christopher Lee is professor of history at an eastern college trying to get through to these teenagers that witchcraft in New England in the late seventeenth century is an important subject. Only beautiful, blonde, virginal Nan takes the professor seriously. So she's the one he sends to do research in the town of Whitewood, where three hundred years ago a witch named Selwyn was burned at the stake for congress with Satan. Bad things happen to Nan when she gets to Whitewood, and to another young woman new in town. It's interesting which virgin is saved and which one isn't. (Notice it's "is saved," not "survives" or "saves herself" like the Final Girl in the slasher movies that Carol J. Clover writes about.) Spoilers ahead. The one who dies is the one who puts her own studies ahead of the convenience of the men in her life (her older brother, another professor, and her airhead boyfriend). She spends the first half of the movie investigating and taking action. The cut from the witches' sacrifice to the jazzy, hi-fi birthday party leaves the audience expecting to find this young woman miraculously safe at the end too, but no. We never see her again and it's disappointing. (This comes from watching a movie made in 1960 from a post-Halloween perspective.) The woman who is saved is not the one preparing for a career of her own, but the one who works at an unpleasant job in an unpleasant town while caring for her grandfather out of duty. (The self-sacrificing one tells her soon-to-be savior, "I'm glad you're here now," while the active female character tells her disappointed boyfriend that she's made up her mind to go to Whitewood and that he should go to a party they had planned to attend by himself. She'll meet him there.) I would rather know the curious, confident one. The acting in Horror Hotel (especially the older British character actors and above all Patricia Jessel as the witch Selwyn) is typically excellent. It turns out Christopher Lee's professor was right. The seventeenth century really does reach out and touch the twentieth. Buy City Of The Dead at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on City Of The Dead Search with the Priority Search Engine on City Of The Dead This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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