Just saw
Horror Hotel (1960), with Christopher Lee.
Atrocious title for a decent little flick involving witchcraft, a fog-blanketed New England town, and lots of English actors doing bad American accents. (Surprisingly, Lee’s accent is OK.) For some reason, the script keeps cutting back to Lee’s office for some rather dull exposition, but all the scenes set in the town are fun and spooky, and there’s a shock of a scene about halfway through. Acting’s mostly solid.
The scenes in the town hint at more than we actually get, with an almost surreal buildup (dancers who disappear, passersby who stop and stare at newcomers, a trap door in the floor, a mute, terrified serving-girl, a blind, raving reverend who doesn’t let anyone into the church, a hitchhiker who vanishes when the driver reaches the cemetery). Even later on, the writer seems to be building up to some kind of twist when
the reverend warns his granddaughter (cute Betta St. John, who created the role of Liat in South Pacific and here resembles a young Debbie Reynolds) that the hero may be a form of Satan
— just for that hint to lead nowhere. The second act doesn’t have any surprises at all and so gets a little duller than the first act, despite being filled with murders and black magic.
Still, there’s an impressive amount of mood and atmosphere on a cheap budget, and it’s scarier than just about everything Hammer did.
One of the weirdest things about it, by the way, is that (this may be a spoiler, so just in case, but nothing too spoilery)
it seems to be copying Psycho, almost beat-for-beat, just with witches instead of Mother and no twist ending. This was the same year as Psycho… Did they rush this into production? It came out a few months after the Hitchcock movie premiered.
Oh, and on the title: The original British title was
The City of the Dead, which isn’t that great but which is miles better than the horrible and inexplicable
Horror Hotel.
EDIT: And one more thing. In this movie about a creepy, cursed New England town, the heroine’s name is Nan Barlow. In
’Salem’s Lot (1975), Stephen King created a creepy, cursed New England town — and named his lead villain Barlow.
