The City of the Dead (Horror Hotel) (1959)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Amicus Collection
Rating
Year Of Production	1959
Running Time	77:58 (Case: 76)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	John Llewellyn Moxey
Studio Distributor	Britannia Films Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Patricia Jessel Dennis Lotis Christopher Lee Tom Naylor Betta St. John Venetia Stevenson Valentine Dyall Ann Beach Norman Macowan Fred Johnson Maxine Holden William Abney
Case	PUSH-1 (Opaque)
RPI	$19.95	Music	Douglas Gamley Kenneth V. Jones

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel), a witch, is burned in the tiny New England village of Whitewood in 1692. As she dies, she swears to wreak a horrible revenge on the village and its inhabitants, as does her partner in Satanism (Valentine Dyall).

    In 1959, student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) heads to Whitewood to research witchcraft in the region, egged on by Professor Driscoll (Christopher Lee). Once in the town, Nan takes lodgings at the local inn run by Mrs Newlis (Patricia Jessel). The inn is built on the spot when Elizabeth Selwyn was burned. Nan also meets Patricia (Betta St John), a local bookstore owner who loans her a book on witchcraft, and Patricia's grandfather, a blind and curmudgeonly priest. Something mysterious is going on in this spooky little town, and soon Nan is in the thick of it.

    This is an atmospheric little black and white supernatural thriller from the production team that later became Amicus, and is included in a six-DVD set called The Amicus Collection, but is not available separately. While Christopher Lee is the drawcard here, he is not top-billed (singer Dennis Lotis as Nan's brother is), and he plays what amounts to a supporting role. Nevertheless, with an uncomplicated story told with style by John Llewellyn Moxey and evocative photography from Desmond Dickinson, The City of the Dead is entertaining and well worth seeing. While set in America, it is an English production with a mostly British cast putting on American accents, and none too successfully. Venetia Stevenson is the exception, probably due to being raised in America. She was the daughter of film star Anna Lee and director Robert Stevenson. Her screen career was short, lasting four years before retiring at 23, though she worked in production later in life. Her appearance in some outlandish underwear in one scene is totally gratuitous.

    It should also be noted that the film was released in the US cut slightly and renamed Horror Hotel.

Video

    The film is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    This is quite a good transfer. The image is a little dark at times but the contrast is good. Detail is reasonable although the shallow focus means that only objects in the foreground have anything resembling fine detail. Shadow detail is not very good, mainly due to much of the film being shot in low light levels. The black and white cinematography is a little dull and flat looking.

    There are some minor compression artefacts noticeable as macro-blocking in the foggy scenes, though these are quite small and you would need to be looking for them to notice them. There is some telecine wobble as well, but otherwise the transfer is quite good. There are a number of film artefacts, ranging from faint scratches to hairs, dirt and white flecks.

    The film comes on a single-layer disc and there are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.

    Dialogue is quite clear throughout. The audio is a little thin in the upper frequencies, with a slight harshness and a lot of sibilance. The music, by Douglas Gamley, is quite atmospheric and is used well to suggest a sense of weirdness to the proceedings. The music tends to come over better sound-wise than the dialogue. There is also some jazz music by Ken Jones.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio

    This consists of a loud scream followed by the Dies Irae and some mediaeval chants.

Theatrical Trailer (1:33)

    This is described as an original US release trailer although the title is the original British one. It features a sepulchral narration and looks a lot worse than the feature, being in widescreen but not 16x9 enhanced.

Trailer-The Amicus Collection (1:55)

    This submenu has the City of the Dead theatrical trailer again, or at least another way of navigating to it, plus trailers for The Beast Must Die and And Now The Screaming Starts. The former trailer looks horrible, as if it was taken from a low-grade VHS copy. The latter looks a lot better and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The film has previously been released by MRA in Region 4 under the US release title Horror Hotel. I have a copy of this DVD which I had not gotten around to watching when I received the review copy of the new release, so my comparison is based on a brief audition of the earlier release. The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.72:1 but is not 16x9 enhanced, and runs 75:57. Extras amount to two pages of text about the film and two pages of biographical material about Christopher Lee. The transfer is quite poor in contrast, very blurry and washed out. The Umbrella edition is certainly an improvement on the older release.

    The film has also been released in the US in two Region 1 editions. Elite Entertainment released a transfer of a 16mm print in an aspect ratio of 1.75:1, which I believe was not 16x9 enhanced.

    VCI have released the film in Region 1 under the original British title. This edition is 16x9 enhanced in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. It contains the following extras:

• Interviews with Christopher Lee, John Llewellyn Moxey and Venetia Stevenson
• Audio Commentary with Christopher Lee and Jason Slater
• Audio Commentary with John Llewellyn Moxey
• Theatrical Trailer
• Photo Gallery
• Cast and Crew Biographies
• Reversible Slick

    Reviews indicate that the transfer is of the same quality as the Region 4, though perhaps cleaned up more. The interviews total about 90 minutes, half of which is devoted to Lee. Opinions vary on the quality of the commentaries, but Moxey's appears to be more concerned with artistic choices and has frequent pauses, while Lee spends a lot of time describing the on-screen action in between anecdotes about the cast and horror films in general.

    As noted above, this disc comes as part of a set devoted to Amicus. The UK Region 2 Amicus Collection contains five of the six films in this set, but not this one.

    Based on the copious extras, the Region 1 seems to be the best version, but I doubt whether anyone would be disappointed with the Region 4, particularly as you get 5 more horror films into the bargain. It does cost a bit more though.

    A nice little thriller, well presented here. The only extras are a few trailers.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall