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I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Alternatively titled Horror Hotel, which is admittedly a more fitting title, seeing as the outdoor set that consists of no more than a few wooden facades (with spooky low-hanging fog) can hardly be seen as a city. Not sure if one influenced the other or not, but the setup is similar to Psycho (also 1960), where the main heroine disappears after the first half and people whom she knows search for her.It begins with a witch being burnt at the stake (the puritans with the hats sure look funny). The story is fairly predictable, with a fun villain played by Christopher Lee, who lures young women to be sacrificed on two occasions of the year. It's amazing his activity hasn't attracted much attention, since he seems to recruit the women from university classes held in his swanky room with a plethora of interesting artifacts related to witchcraft or tribal superstitions and loads of expensive alcoholic beverages (nice advertising shot for afficionados). His success as a lecturer hinges on getting his students hammered, obviously (really bad pun). Seems weird for such a little town to have two university girls disappear each year... and somehow related to Lee's character... You know you're going to a good place when it's always night time and the fog is unrelenting, and some weird guy named Jethro (looks and sounds like a serial killer) hitches a ride with two different young women and disappears before even opening the door, then you're given obvious red flags by a servant woman who has a speech impediment, a crazy, old blind man, and the mean horse-faced villainess. The often film noir-esque lighting is the highlight of the film. Sufficiently spooky with rich, high contrast blacks and whites-many of the interiors are well-lit, though not draped in darkness--but the inn in particular has deep pools of blackness, many practical lights strewn about the frame--such as a burning fireplace and lamps--and a heavily flickering light from above that appears to be simulating a torch. Really excellent example of horror film lighting here. Even the stereotypical horror set really looks quite nice, though a softer, grainier image and maybe a bit less low-hanging fog might have made it look more convincing (but, frankly, the obviously fake graveyard is great), but that's just a minor quibble. Art direction and score are also decent for a b-horror film (the chants remind me a bit of The Wicker Man).One of the more interesting parts is probably how they perfectly mirror the walking scene of both Nan and Richard. The denizens all stop at the exact same locations to watch both the hero and heroine--even the camera work appears to be the same, if not roughly the same. Definitely gives the impressions that those who inhabit the town are long dead and have repeated the same process since 1692. Though I'm rating it a 4, I did enjoy the film, and I'd recommend it to those looking for a decent B&W supernatural b-movie horror.

Student Nan Barlow is fascinated by the lectures given by Professor Alan Driscoll on the subject of witchcraft in seventeenth century New England and tells him of her intention to spend a fortnight investigating the subject in the area. He suggests that she goes to the town of Whitewood in Massachusetts and stay at the Raven's Nest Hotel. She heads there and finds a particularly spooky town with constant swirling mists and strange locals. She explores and is warned to leave by the vicar. After that she goes to a shop run by the vicar's granddaughter, Patricia, and borrows a book. It tells of witchcraft and devil worship in the area… particularly of interest is the story of Elizabeth Selwyn who was burnt in the site of the hotel in 1692. Talk of what happens next would spoil one's enjoyment of the film!This may be a low budget film from almost sixty years ago but it is still surprisingly creepy. It contains some good twists; including one genuinely shocking one. The town is very atmospheric… a fair portion of the budget must have gone on all the dry ice used to make the fog! There are some scary moments and a few violent moments… they may be tame by the standards of modern horror but are still effective. The cast is solid; Christopher Lee puts in an impressive performance as Professor Driscoll. The other, less well known cast members are good too; most notably Venetia Stevenson as Nan; Dennis Lotis, as her brother Richard and Betta St. John as Patricia. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of classic horror.

I'm not going to discuss at length this turkey, with incompetent acting and a ridiculous setting in a town covered with fog where visitors come to stay in a hotel for no reason and like to take strolls along weird looking local people. Just wrote this for one of the stupidest scenes I've ever seen: the good guy is firing bullets right at the chest of the approaching Christopher Lee who continues approaching, unfazed, but when the good guy runs out of bullets and throws his gun at him, Mr. Lee ducks! Uf, 10 lines required! Well, good photography by distinguished British cinematographer Desmond Dickinson. For some reason some great cinematographers were working in low budget horror films in the early 60's, for example, Eugene Shufftan in Eyes without a Face.

Top-billed (on posters advertising the film) Christopher Lee is actually more of a supporting player in "The City of the Dead", a mature, well-handled horror piece. He's joined by equally talented performers like Patricia Jessel, Valentine Dyall, and the lovely Betta St. John, and they're all superbly directed by John Llewellyn Moxey ("The Night Stalker") in this tale of a resurrected New England witch cult. It's an interesting role for Lee: as an uptight university professor who is secretly a member of the coven (and who points a hapless female student in the direction of the spooky, decaying village where the group performs its sacrifices to Satan), he skulks, stares furtively from the corners of his eyes and generally lacks the authority of a Dracula-type character. In other words, he's more fun to watch here than in many of the roles with which he is normally associated! A solid, stylish fright flick that gets all the little details right, "The City of the Dead" is highly recommended. It's a shame that horror filmmakers have abandoned the time-tested formula used so effectively here by Moxey.