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| The City of the Dead (1960) |
Truth be told, you could turn on the fog machine, construct some old buildings in a Colonial style, throw some folks in robes with interesting faces, tilt some crosses and tombstones in a mock cemetery, start off with locals in 1692 burning a witch at the stake, set up Christopher Lee as a professor of history, in particular witchcraft, and have Lee send off a very lovely student (the very attractive blond Venetia Stevenson, who left acting a year later) for a thesis assignment to a decaying town of Whitewood in Massachusetts to be a human sacrifice to their Lord Satan and I am a happy horror fan. Satan granted his followers immortality, while an old priest, lit by a fireplace in his study, realizes his time is drawing to a close, worried sick about his antique story owner daughter being the next sacrifice. Two weeks after Stevenson's Nan Barlow goes missing, her professor brother comes looking for her, eventually tasked with stopping the cloaked witches from sacrificing someone other that his sister. Of course, the cross is a weapon to use against them.
This film, in the past, is perfect for October. Always has been. I noticed Shudder just recently added the film to their site, and I knew I would be watching it soon. Written about in times past by me for the blog, the film always gets me with scenes such as a cavern under an old Raven's Inn, the walls of rock covered in cobwebs, a lighter guiding visiting Richard Barlow, discovering the witches as Midnight approaches, including Lee's own Alan Driscoll. At a little over 70 minutes, this is a nicely compact piece of Gothic horror. I think I need to put together a marathon with this, Bava's "Black Sunday", and the previously mentioned "Witchcraft" one of these years.
***If you watch the Sci-Fi Channel fake documentary of "The Blair Witch Project" called "Curse of the Blair Witch", scenes from this film are included***
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