SPOILER ALERT!
THE CITY OF THE DEAD aka HORROR HOTEL 1960
John Llewellyn Moxey’s The City of the Dead (1960) emerges from the fog-draped corridors of classic horror as a film both steeped in Gothic tradition and bracingly modern in its narrative daring. Moxey, making his directorial debut, conjures an atmosphere so thick with dread that Whitewood, the film’s fictional Massachusetts town, seems to exist in a perpetual twilight- a place where the sun never rises and the fog never lifts, shrouding every secret and sin in a spectral haze.
John Llewellyn Moxey’s legacy as a filmmaker is marked by his atmospheric command of suspense and his pivotal role in shaping both classic horror cinema and the golden age of television movies. Making a striking feature debut with City of the Dead (1960), a chilling tale of witchcraft and haunted gloom, Moxey quickly became a sought-after director for his ability to blend mood, narrative tension, and visual style. He went on to helm the cult TV horror sensation The Night Stalker (1972), which became the most-watched teleplay of its decade and directly inspired the television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and later, The X-Files.
Moxey’s prolific television work included episodes of iconic series such as The Saint, The Avengers, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, Magnum, P.I., and Murder, She Wrote, as well as TV movies like The House That Would Not Die (1970), A Taste of Evil (1971), and Home for the Holidays (1972).
Renowned for his taut direction, atmospheric flair, and ability to draw out compelling performances, Moxey remains an underrated but influential figure whose work continues to echo through the genres of horror, thriller, and television drama.
Desmond Dickinson’s cinematography is focused closely in careful strokes of monochrome moodiness: stark contrasts, looming shadows, and set-bound stylization evoke the haunted villages of Universal’s golden age, yet the camera’s restless energy and the film’s brisk pacing pull the story into the pulse of the 1960s.
At the heart of this supernatural tale is Venetia Stevenson’s Nan Barlow, a curious and earnest university student whose fascination with witchcraft leads her to Whitewood for research. Her professor, the imposing Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee, exuding both scholarly authority and sinister undercurrents), encourages her journey, setting in motion a chain of events that will entwine the living with the damned.
Upon arrival, Nan checks into The Raven’s Inn, presided over by the enigmatic Mrs. Newless (Patricia Jessel in a dual role of chilling duplicity), whose hospitality masks a centuries-old evil. The town’s inhabitants- mute Lottie (Ann Beach), the kindly antiques dealer Patricia Russell (Betta St. John), and the blind, foreboding Reverend Russell (Norman MacOwan)-including the menacing townspeople move through the mist like figures from a fevered Lovecraftian dream, each guarding their own piece of Whitewood’s cursed history.
The film’s narrative is a tightly coiled mystery that unspools with mounting unease. Nan’s scholarly curiosity soon gives way to terror as she uncovers the town’s legacy: in 1692, the witch Elizabeth Selwyn (also Jessel) was burned at the stake, cursing Whitewood and forging a pact with Lucifer for eternal life in exchange for annual human sacrifices.
Moxey stages these flashbacks and rituals with a feverish intensity, the camera tilting and swooping through scenes of torch-lit hysteria and whispered blasphemies, amid a collection of local grotesques with bloodlust on their lips. At the same time, Douglas Gamley’s score weaves a spell of eerie, baroque menace.
The Raven’s Inn itself becomes a character- a labyrinth of shadowy spaces and secret underground tunnels, haunted by the echo of ancient rites and the constant threat of betrayal and violent bloodshed.
The film’s most audacious narrative stroke comes midway, when Nan, seemingly the protagonist, is lured to her doom. Like Janet Leigh, the film’s heroine is killed within a few scenes at the beginning of the film. A jolt in this sequence- its rough-hewn, unvarnished execution delivers a shock perhaps not nearly as potent as Hitchcock’s masterful final reveal in Psycho, he would unleash that same year, yet it would still prove that rawness can rival refinement in its power to unsettle.
Her murder at the hands of the coven, led by the unmasked Selwyn, upends expectations and plunges the story into even darker territory. The focus shifts to Nan’s brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) and her fiancé Bill (Tom Naylor), who, together with Patricia, unravel the truth behind Whitewood’s perpetual night and the unholy bargain that sustains it. The climax, set amid gravestones and swirling fog, is a breathless confrontation of faith and evil: a cross wrenched from the earth, the coven’s clawed hands reaching from beneath their robes, and the final, fiery reckoning that leaves Whitewood’s curse broken but its scars indelible.
The cast delivers performances that both honor and transcend the genre’s conventions. Christopher Lee is magnetic as Driscoll, his velvety voice and commanding presence lending gravitas to every scene. Patricia Jessel is unforgettable, her transformation from the austere innkeeper Mrs. Newless. She carries herself with the brittle hauteur of a stone statue, every gesture starched and every word filtered through a sieve of icy decorum, as if propriety were armor and condescension her second skin, as her vengeful witch is rendered with relish and subtle menace. Venetia Stevenson’s Nan is luminous and sympathetic, her fate all the more tragic for its abruptness. Betta St. John brings a kindess and Dennis Lotis with his acadmic skeptisicm ground the film’s latter half with determination while Valentine Dyall’s (The Haunting’s Dudley the caretaker) Jethrow Keane and Ann Beach’s Lottie add a little eerie context and texture to the soul of Whitewood’s damned souls.
The film opens in a shroud of fog and doom-laden air, the village of Whitewood materializing from swirling mist as a mob of Puritans drags Elizabeth Selwyn to her execution, her defiant pact with Lucifer echoing through the flames that consume her at the stake. This chilling prologue sets the tone for the film’s relentless atmosphere, where time seems suspended and the past refuses to die. Centuries later, Nan Barlow, a curious university student, arrives in Whitewood to research witchcraft, encouraged by her enigmatic professor, Alan Driscoll. Warnings and unease mark her journey – a gas station attendant’s cryptic advice, the town’s perpetual night, and the eerie welcome at The Raven’s Inn, where Mrs. Newless presides with unsettling hospitality.
Nan’s days in Whitewood are a descent into Gothic unease and an eerie foreboding. She wanders the mist-laden streets, encounters the blind Reverend Russell in a scene thick with foreboding, and befriends Patricia, the antiques dealer who offers her books on the town’s dark history.
The inn itself is a labyrinth of secrets: Nan is invited to a fireside gathering only to find the revelers have vanished, the silence broken only by the flicker of firelight and Mrs. Newless’s watchful presence. Nan ventures into the inn’s subterranean depths on Candlemas Eve, drawn by a hidden trapdoor in her room. There, she is seized by hooded cultists and sacrificed on a satanic altar, her screams echoing as Mrs. Newless, revealed as the immortal witch Selwyn, plunges the knife, abruptly ending Nan’s role as doom-fated heroine and shifting the narrative’s focus.
The aftermath is a feverish unraveling of Whitewood’s curse. Nan’s brother Richard and fiancé Bill (Tom Naylor), alarmed by her disappearance, follow her path, encountering visions, near-fatal accidents, and the town’s sinister resistance to outsiders.
Patricia is soon kidnapped to serve as the next sacrifice, and the climax unfolds in a breathless pursuit through the inn’s shadowy passages and the fog-bound cemetery. As the coven prepares for another ritual at the “hour of thirteen,” Bill, gravely injured, manages to wrench a wooden cross from the earth, its shadow breaking the coven’s power and setting their undead bodies ablaze. In the aftermath, Richard and Patricia discover Selwyn’s charred corpse, the curse finally broken, but Whitewood is left forever scarred by the evil that once ruled its night.
The City of the Dead is a film that revels in its Gothic lineage- the fog, the cobblestone streets, the flicker of candlelight on ancient stone- but it is also a film of bold invention. Its willingness to dispatch its apparent heroine, its blending of old-world superstition with modern anxieties, and its atmosphere of relentless unease mark it as a classic that stands apart from its contemporaries. Moxey’s direction, Dickinson’s cinematography, and Gamley’s haunting score combine to create a world where the past is never truly dead, and where evil lingers in the shadows and mist, waiting for the hour of thirteen. It is a film that lingers in the imagination, its spectral chill undiminished by time.
NIGHT OF THE EAGLE aka BURN, WITCH BURN! 1962
Night of the Eagle (also known by its American release as Burn, Witch Burn!) is a haunting, elegantly restrained British horror film from 1962, directed by Sidney Hayers and adapted by genre luminaries Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson from Fritz Leiber’s acclaimed novel Conjure Wife.
From its opening moments—a chilling, black-screen prologue in the American cut where a narrator casts a “protective spell” over the audience—the film establishes an atmosphere of creeping dread and rational unease, setting the stage for a story in which the boundaries between skepticism and the supernatural are tested to their breaking point.
The film’s atmosphere is heightened by Reginald Wyer’s stark, expressive cinematography, which turns the Taylors’ home and the university into shadowy, claustrophobic spaces where every corner seems to hide a threat.
William Alwyn’s score is subtle and unnerving, weaving tension through the film’s quietest moments and amplifying the sense of mounting peril. Hayers directs with a careful, almost clinical precision, favoring slow-burn suspense and psychological unease over overt shocks, yet when the supernatural intrudes, it does so with memorable force: a tape recorder emits a strange, throbbing sound that seems to summon an invisible menace; a stone eagle atop the college chapel appears to come to life, its wings unfurling in a nightmarish pursuit through echoing corridors.
The story centers on Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a stoically confident psychology professor at a quiet English university, whose lectures on superstition and belief systems are delivered with the certainty of a man who trusts only in reason. His American wife, Tansy (Janet Blair), is his opposite: gentle, anxious, and quietly devoted, she harbors a secret that upends Norman’s world. After a tense evening hosting colleagues, Tansy is seen frantically hunting for something in the house, her agitation masked as if it’s a search for a mundane shopping list. When Norman discovers hidden charms and tokens- locks of hair, poppets, graveyard dirt- Tansy confesses she has been practicing “conjure magic,” learned in Jamaica, to protect him from unseen forces and ensure his success at the university. Norman insists that Tansy destroy all her magical charms and protective talismans in the fireplace despite her desperate pleas and warnings of the consequences.
As soon as Tansy’s protections are destroyed, the Taylors’ world unravels. Norman is accused of sexual misconduct by a student, threatened by her jealous boyfriend, and beset by a series of increasingly dangerous accidents.
Tansy, sensing the true danger, attempts to sacrifice herself to save Norman, leading to a harrowing sequence on a storm-battered coastline where she nearly drowns, rescued only by Norman’s last-minute intervention and his reluctant embrace of the supernatural. The film’s climax is a bravura set piece: Norman, at last convinced of the reality of the forces arrayed against him, races to save Tansy from a fire set by the true antagonist, Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston), a fellow practitioner of dark magic whose jealousy and ambition have fueled the curse. In a surreal, hallucinatory sequence, Flora uses auditory hypnosis to convince Norman that the chapel’s stone eagle has come to life and is hunting him; only when the spell is broken does the monstrous vision vanish, and poetic justice is served as the real eagle statue crashes down, ending Flora’s reign of terror.
Wyngarde’s performance as Norman is a study in brittle rationality crumbling under pressure, while Janet Blair brings a heartbreaking vulnerability to Tansy, whose devotion is both her strength and her undoing.
Margaret Johnston is magnetic as Flora, her refined exterior masking a well of malice and envy. The supporting cast, including Anthony Nicholls and Kathleen Byron, adds texture to the insular, competitive world of the university, where ambition and resentment simmer beneath the surface.
Night of the Eagle (Burn, Witch Burn!) is steeped in psychological horror, its power rooted in suggestion, atmosphere, and the slow erosion of certainty. The film’s black-and-white visuals are crisp and moody, evoking a world where logic and superstition are locked in mortal combat. Hayers’ direction, Matheson and Beaumont’s literate script, and the committed performances of its cast combine to create a film that is both a chilling supernatural thriller and a meditation on the limits of rationality, its final image lingering like a whispered curse.
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