The City of the Dead (

1960

) ½

Great works are often falsely credited with innovation, so much so that some mistakenly believe that their greatness is the result of said innovation. We all know that Halloween (1978) wasn't the first slasher, or even the first holiday-themed slasher (it was beaten to the punch by Black Christmas (1974) by nearly a half-decade). Yet it is often credited as such because we are uncomfortable acknowledging that great art is not the result of a sudden creative breakthrough but instead most commonly the product of mundane technical skills. We want to believe that the artist is gifted with some preternatural (possibly divine) vision that allows them to create works of beauty and horror wholly distinct from their predecessors, but quite frankly the evidence for this theory is pretty thin on the ground. Take for instance today's film, released a scant four days after Hitchcock's innovative classic Psycho (1960) and featuring a similar plot, including that film's much lauded twist. Hitchcock's film has long been praised for daring to kill off the main actress midway through the proceedings and shift focus to her friends and family as they start looking for her. As we will see, The City of the Dead pulls the same trick, under almost the same circumstances (both heroines are, for instance, staying in a creepy rundown hotel at the time of their disappearance). Yet while Hitchcock's film is a perennial classic, screened not just for bored students in film history courses but for paying audiences in commercial revivals across the country, The City of the Dead is an obscure film that would probably have escaped even my notice were it not for its appearance on Rifftrax. The reason for this is obvious, despite the film's charming atmosphere and a fine performance by Christopher Lee, it's rather dull for large stretches of its run time. Let that be a lesson for you kids, a brilliant innovation is worthless without the technical skills needed to bring it to life.

We begin with a flashback to 1692, where an angry mob in the town of Whitewood Massachusetts is preparing to burn a woman, Elizabeth Selwyn, at the stake for the crime of witchcraft. Of course, this bears only a faint resemblance to the historic witch trials of colonial America, where not only were witches not burned (hanging as the most common form of execution) but they were even given formal trials rather than suffer the whims of mob violence. Still, at least the filmmakers here seem to realize that the Salem witch trials were real events, rather than some kind of folklore, putting them one-up on the makers of City of the Living Dead (1980). The other divergence from the historical record is the obvious one, at least for a mid-century horror movie. Rather than just be some poor unfortunate accused of an impossible crime as the result of mass hysteria, Elizabeth Selwyn is a genuine witch complete with her pact with the devil. With her dying breath, she curses the inhabitants of Whitewood and all their descendants to suffer the wrath of Satan. From that day forward strange events and disappearances plague the town of Whitewood Massachusetts, until, by the early 1960s, the town is all but abandoned.

Naturally, most people have never heard of Whitewood and those that have are perfectly willing to regard the story of Elizabeth Selwyn's curse as nothing more than a fable. Professor Driscoll, who relays the story to the audience as part of his lecture on the topic of witchcraft, is an exception. The guy seems downright convinced that not only was Elizabeth Selwyn a practitioner of black magic but that her curse on Whitewood is real and responsible for the town's present state of disrepair. Naturally, this earns him the mockery of his more serious students like Biology major Richard Barlow and his friend Tom Maitland. Unfortunately for the two of them, Richard's sister and Tom's girlfriend Nan Barlow is totally fascinated by the topic and by her professor. So much so that she plans to spend spring break in Whitewood researching the town in general and Elizabeth Selwyn in particular. Though she's fascinated by the occult and the town's sordid history, unlike Professor Driscoll she doesn't really believe in black magic or curses. She's in for a rude awakening when she gets to Whitewood.

Things are strange right from the get-go when Nan encounters a bizarre hitchhiker on the road who the audience will recognize as one of the figures in the crowd at Elizabeth Selwyn's execution. He vanishes just as soon as he appeared but the denizens of the inn professor Driscoll recommended are no more reassuring. For starters, the chambermaid is a creepy little deaf-mute, who gives the whole place a house full of crazies vibes. Then we see the innkeeper and once again the audience will recognize her from the film's intro; she's none other than Elizabeth Selwyn. Indeed, after close inspection, it seems like the only people in town who aren't in some way tied to the coven of witches are the blind/insane Reverend Russell and his granddaughter Patricia who has just arrived to look after her grandfather. Nan is none to concerned about all this though, she finds the creepy, decrepit little town to be downright charming; if she knew there were real witches afoot in Whitewood she'd probably offer to-pick their brains over a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, since the witches are planning to use her as a ritual sacrifice to keep Elizabeth alive a bit longer, Nan won't know to run until its too late. Naturally, when Nan goes missing, her brother and beau spring into action, and aided by Patricia Russell, the last none-witch to see Nan alive they start to dig into the strange mystery of Whitewood.

The City of the Dead is a film that, above all else, understands the importance of atmosphere. The creaky old buildings and fog-lined streets of Whitewood are a masterful reproduction of the classic 1930s and 1940s style of Gothic horror that, in 1960, was just coming back into vogue thanks to Roger Corman's The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and European horror films like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Black Sunday (1960). Unlike these films though, The City of the Dead delights in contrasting its Gothic horror with modern environments. The world outside Whitewood Massachusetts is very much the same world the audience inhabits. It's a world that aside from a couple of odd statues in professor Driscoll's home, could pass for the suburban expanse of a popular period sitcom. The jump from this well-lit, well-cleaned and above all familiar setting to the dark, dirty and foreign world of Whitewood is a jarring one. The film understands this and uses it to great effect. At one crucial moment, when Nan is trapped in the coven's lair and about to be sacrificed the film cuts from a shot of the sacrificial knife to a shot of people cutting a cake at a birthday party. Not only does it give the filmmakers a clever workaround for the period's unofficial censorship, but the lurching jump from horrific to mundane provides more of a thrill than fake blood and gore could have accomplished on their own. It's an effect that recalls the best stories of Lovecraft, where gradually the familiar front of our normal world gives way to unthinkable, alien horrors.

There are a lot of things about this movie that doesn't make sense when you stop and think about them for a few minutes. Why, for instance, does Professor Driscoll teach his classes out of his suburban home? Does the school not have so much as a lecture hall to spare for his classes? Then there's the fact, revealed later on in the movie that Richard Barlow seems to live right next door to the professor when he looks out his window and sees Driscoll pulling out his driveway. While not impossible, it's so improbable as to almost snap my suspension of disbelief. Finally, there's the question of how is the coven managing to sustain itself all these years. They need regular sacrifices to keep Elizabeth from reverting back to a mummy, but it's not really clear how they're getting them or keeping he ritual human sacrifices secret. Driscoll can't be providing them all, as there are limits to how many college girls are willing to spend their vacation in a small, decrepit town in the middle of nowhere. What's more, the police are aware when Nan goes missing and investigate the hotel she was staying at. Presumably, if a steady stream of people were vanishing from the hotel, the cops would be able to put 2 and 2 together. Still, the occasional impossibility, absurdity, and a stray bit of nonsense in films of this type and vintage is a big component of what makes them so fun to watch so I'm not complaining too loudly. If anything, The City of the Dead is too subdued in this respect. Never being so completely absurd or incompetent that it crosses the line into full-on anti-classic. Indeed that is the film's greatest failing, aside from the occasional spark of brilliance and the odd turd of incompetence it is mostly an unremarkable picture.