The Internet Archive has a nice 720p copy of Horror Hotel. That was the US title of a British film released in 1960 as The City Of The Dead. It's a creepy little film with Christopher Lee and a bunch of people that I haven't heard of before. It's in the public domain and you can find it on various dvd editions. The movie is the first feature by John Llewellyn Moxey. He had a 30 year career that was mostly in tv, both in the US and Britain. He directed a lot of shows I've probably seen. I know I've seen the tv movie The Night Strangler, it was the first pilot movie for the Darren McGavin Kolchak series. He directed episodes of The Saint, Mannix, The Avengers, Mission Impossible, Kung Fu and many others.
While made in England the movie setting is New England in the US. Venetia Stevenson is a student at a Massachusetts College. That's her on the left. She's taking a class on witchcraft from Professor Christopher Lee. He tells his class a story of Elizabeth Selwyn who was burned at the stake some 300 years ago. We see it as a flashback. Venetia is fascinated by the subject but her boyfriend and brother think it's crazy stuff. Venetia is looking for a small town to do some research for her term paper. Lee recommends the town of Whitewood and the Raven's Inn. It's the only place to stay in the town. She travels to the fog filled town and it's pretty creepy. The buildings are rustic and the church really run down. The few people she sees all stare at her. Not a place I'd want to stay.
The Priest tells Venetia to leave and the maid keeps trying to tell her something but the stern proprietor of the Inn keeps interrupting. The turns out the town is in the hands of a coven of witches and they are sacrificing a young woman tonight. Guess who's been picked for that job. When Venetia doesn't show up at her best friend's birthday party a couple of weeks later people start to worry. The boyfriend and brother call the cops and after that's a bust they travel to Whitewood themselves. You can imagine what they find. Lucky a bit of lumber will save some of them. It's black and white and pretty short. The version is the regualr US edition, 76 minutes long. There were a couple of minutes cut from the movie but it doesn't seem like the scenes amount to much. Ot's an ok piece of entertainment. Christopher Lee was 40 when the movie was made and he's already been acting since 1947. That's 65 years ago. Nice.
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