Catalog From The Beyond: THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960)

Christopher Lee isn’t only an icon for the horror community. He’s an actor who has crossed over so many genres that you’d be hard-pressed to find a circle of geekdom that doesn’t hold him in high regard. He’s wielded lightsabers against Yoda and bested Gandalf in a wizard’s duel. But guess what, non-horror nerds? He was ours first. Taking the torch from Bela Lugosi to become the definitive Dracula of his era, Lee has a bevy of horror roles to his credit which, let’s face it, he makes iconic just by playing them. So the question is, what role would be a good fit for my little column? After quite a bit of searching, I decided to go with a movie in which Lee uses something that I’ve never seen him use before: an American accent. So let’s take a look at his turn in the 1960 John Llewellyn Moxey film, The City of the Dead, which arrived in the States in 1963 under the name Horror Hotel.

The City of the Dead is a tale about the small New England town of Whitewood, where in 1692 Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) was burned for being a witch, but not before she and her companion Jethro Keane (Valentine Dyall) curse the entire town in a pact with the devil. Flash-forward a few hundred years to Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), an undergraduate looking to travel to a town involved with witch burnings to do research for the most overachieving term paper ever written. Her professor, Alan Driscoll (Lee) suggests that Whitewood be her destination, and against the wishes of her brother, Richard (Dennis Lotis), and boyfriend, Bill (Tom Naylor), she travels to Whitewood where she does some solid research and writes a fantastic paper. Just kidding, she’s attacked by Satan worshippers.

So, since we’re here for Christopher Lee, let’s start with him, although frankly this isn’t his show. Now, sometimes movies will throw a name like Lee in for a two-minute part just to get his name on the poster, but that’s not quite what we have here. He plays an integral part to the story, but he just doesn’t get the lion’s share of the screen time. That honor goes to Patricia Jessel and Valentine Dyall, who, as the leaders of Whitewood’s Lucifer Fan Club, are our main baddies. Jessel plays cold and menacing very well, while Dyall’s overacting is also quite entertaining. Going back to Lee, though, I must say this: the dude can pull off an American accent. I’ve never seen him in a movie where he wasn’t leaning into that British accent for the purposes of maximum creepiness, but The City of the Dead proves that his accent isn’t the only reason he can give us chills.

Aside from Lee, here’s the thing about City of the Dead: it’s one-half fantastic B-movie horror, and one-half so-so B-movie horror. The opening act introduces an extremely likeable character in Nan Barlow. She’s charming and deftly navigates the smug, cliché protests of her brother and boyfriend when she tells them her plan to spend her vacation in Whitewood. A woman going by herself to investigate silly superstitions? But you’re expected at a party!

When Nan does arrive at Whitewood, she’s greeted by my very favorite part of old horror movies: the haunted set. Most modern horror flicks will either utilize actual locations or go to great lengths to make the sets seem organic to the story. Sets like the one we get in The City of the Dead look more like someone gave the guy at the local haunted hayride a much larger budget, and I love it. Everything has been placed with the intention of making things look spooooooky, and damned if it doesn’t work on me every time. It takes me back to trips to the local haunted houses that I’d drag my parents on every October. It’s creepy as hell, but it’s also somehow familiar and comforting.

In addition to the ominous set, the initial sequences in Whitewood are perfect at setting the atmosphere. Everything is just a little bit off. People are always giving Nan the evil eye before mysteriously disappearing as soon as she turns her head. She hears chanting coming from a room that she’s told doesn’t exist, and the mute hotel maid seems to be trying to tell Nan something very important.

I won’t give away what that important thing is, but I will say that things take a turn about halfway through the movie when the focus pivots from Nan to the doofus brother and boyfriend, as they become the heroes that no one was asking for. As I realized where things were going, I found myself asking that if they were supposed to be the film’s heroes, then why would they be so unlikeable in their initial scenes? It’s not like they come to any great epiphanies about themselves. They just get thrown into a situation where by circumstance they’re no longer the worst people in the room.

Perhaps one of the reasons they come off as so grating is because we’re actually getting Britain’s take on American personality. While Christopher Lee managed to incorporate his American accent and mannerisms fairly seamlessly into his performance, Dennis Lotis didn’t make out quite as well. His British accent sneaks in from time to time, which actually serves to exaggerate his already pompous attitude. As for Tom Naylor, I’m pretty sure he researched his role by looking through Time Life’s Jocks & Bullies of the 1950s. With his rigidly spiked blond hair and thoroughly oafish demeanor, I kept waiting for him to start practicing two-handed basketball bounce passes and lecturing people about the superiority of fundamentals over showmanship.

One last thing that I have to get off my chest, and this is going to be straight-up nerd grumbling. I’m by no means a history scholar, but it’s safe to assume that Whitewood serves as a proxy for Salem, Massachusetts, but the problem is that witches weren’t burned at the stake in 1690s Salem. They were all hanged, with the exception of one fellow who was “pressed,” which is a lovely euphemism for being squashed under a giant pile of rocks. I assume that the producers felt that a good ol’ fashioned stake burning would be more dramatic than a hanging, but it could have been equally effective for Lady Selwyn to tell off the town a split second before being dropped from the gallows, or as she’s being squished by rocks. Alas, this was not to be.

Even with my complaints about The City of the Dead, I still think that it was a fun watch. In fact, many of my complaints about the second half are magnified by how impressed I was by the first half. That being said, the movie does redeem itself with a pretty amazing final sequence involving a cross, a hero that probably should have been dead three times over by that point, and flaming cult members. While there’s probably a reason it took some digging to find The City of the Dead, I would argue that it’s effectively creepy and a worthwhile venture for anyone in the mood for 1960s, witch-flavored mischief.