Horror Hotel lives up to its title!
The film opens with what appears to be a 17th Century New England scene. Women in bonnets in big black hats are gathered around a dirty, disheveled woman being tied to a stake. She is identified as Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) who has been convicted of witchcraft. The angry villagers shout, “Burn, witch, burn†as the stake is lit.
Suddenly the scene changes to America circa 1960 and Christopher Lee is a professor lecturing a class and repeating, “Burn, witch, burn.†A bemused student (Richard Barlow played y Dennis Lotis) breaks the tension by joking in period slang, “Dig that crazy beat.â€
Lee’s character, Professor Alan Driscoll, appears to take a more than academic interest in his subject, regarding the magical powers of witchcraft as a true possibility. Nan Barlow (Venetia Stephenson) is intrigued and wants to investigate further for a paper. Driscoll directs her to the village of Whitewood which burned Elizabeth Selwyn some 300 hundred years ago and a hotel called the Raven’s Inn. It is run by Mrs. Newless who is played by Patricia Jessel in a double role. There things really get spooky.
Horror Hotel is an eerie and tightly directed movie that borrows from Hitchcock’s Psycho to superb effect. There are clichés in the movie such as the small town that seems perpetually laden with fog but they are used so effectively that they do not detract from the movie. Performances are universally excellent with Patricia Jessel outstanding in both her roles as she plays Mrs. Newless with a creepy, dignified, almost majestic confidence. Christopher Lee conveys his usual sense of menace in an unusually small role. Bass-voiced Valentine Dyall is another who sends shivers up the spine in Horror Hotel.
Venetia Stephenson is sympathetic as the earnest, studious, and somewhat naïve Nan Barlow while Betta St. John does well in the similar role of another visitor to the mysterious Whitewood, Patricia Russell. Norman Macowan is convincing as the frightened blind pastor of an empty church. Ann Beach turns in a noteworthy and nuanced performance in the role of the mute, concerned servant Lottie.
Horror Hotel lives up to its title.
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Stumble It!
October 29th, 2008 at 6:30 am
“Dig that crazy beat.†Beatniks were members of a sociocultural movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:05 am
They buggered up the language, Roger but I would hardly say they were anti-materialistic. They kidded themselves that they were with that ubiquitous adolescent revoltingness.
Tell us more, Denise. I often hear American Feminists talk of wicked Patriarchal European men burning oppressed, nature-loving, empathetic, nurturing, early herbal physician witches (in fact Queens Mary and Elizabeth burned far more chaps of Catholic and Protestant persuations – a hellish way of persuading – than women, and the faggot fodder in Spain were mainly Apostate chaps too) but rarely hear of the spate of immolatory shennanigans in the USA.
I understand that mouldy grain was behind the Salem Thingo where the womenfolk were beresk accusing one another of sexual congress with Devils and the like – a fore-taste of today’s epidemic of false accusations. (Janet Reno would have blamed the local kindergarden operators, of course. The male ones. She would have been the Witch-Finder Attorney General of the day). The grain apparantly produced hallucinations and psychoses.
I wonder if all that whole – grain and tofu that women like today is behind psychotic Feminism.
October 30th, 2008 at 8:13 am
re: Beatniks: That’s what I get for copy-pasting from Wikipedia. I’ve always suspected the anti-materialism was really meant to excuse their poverty. Most stereotypes painted them lazy. I guess you must be even older than I am amfortas, and from a big city if you know them from experience.
“The pill” was first approved for use in the US in 1960, the same year The Beatles were formed and JFK began escalation of the Vietnam conflict. With few notable exceptions, bongo drums became children’s toys made popular by friends of Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963) and other TV and movie presentations. The 1960s grew sex, drugs, rock & roll anti-war protesting hippies. “Right on, man!”
October 31st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Denise, thank you for bringing this undeservedly forgotten horror gem to light. I remember seeing this along with another equally superb film called “Burn Witch Burn (1962)” at a double feature. I’d like to see your critique on that. Probably the 2 best films on witches ever made. Thanks again for the memories.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:10 am
Official trailer
BTW: There’s supposed to be a 2008 remake.