From what I can gather City of the Dead is a very beloved film amongst the horror community. Up until recently I had never seen the film, but after finally viewing it, I get the love. It’s not the greatest film ever, but it is an enjoyable little feature on witchcraft.

Professor Alan Driscoll teaches about witchcraft at a local university. One of his top students is a young lady named Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson). Nan very much believes in witchcraft and though they may not still exist today, she believes that witches did certainly exist at one time. With a thirst to learn more, Nan approaches Alan for additional information after class. Alan’s recommendation is that Nan takes a visit to Whitewood, a small town in Massachusetts famous for witchery.

The strange happenings begin on Nan’s way to Whitewood. On a dark, foggy road Nan comes across a fork in the road that leaves her a bit perplexed as to where to go. Waiting in the fog is a shadowy figure. This figure turns out to be a hitchhiker looking for a ride. Fortunately this man needs to go to Whitewood, so Nan agrees to give him a lift as he knows the way.

Once in Whitewood Nan immediately gets a weird vibe from the place. Something just seems off, but she finds a local hotel to check into. At the hotel Nan notices a plaque on the wall that states this site is the location where witches were burned at the stakes in the 17^th century. As Nan begins to investigate the little town she discovers that this isn’t a place where witches once ruled, but still rule and unfortunately for Nan she’s just the sacrifice they were looking for.

In a weird way City of the Dead reminded me of Psycho. Our lead goes off to a remote hotel and gets killed half way into the film. When she doesn’t return one of her siblings, in this case her brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) who is a professor at the same university Nan attends, heads out to look for her. Instead of a lunatic killer, Richard finds a town of witches.

Now City of the Dead is nowhere near the film Psycho is, which is not to say it’s bad film but it’s certainly not a great, groundbreaking film. City of the Dead gets by mostly on mood and atmosphere. The entire movie has an eerie vibe. But as far as plot and story goes, everything is just so so. The witches and their virgin sacrifice is all stuff that has been done a hundred times before. There’s nothing here to set this apart from other similar movies. There’s Christopher Lee of course which is nice but it still bleeds in with other movies of this kind.

In short I found City of the Dead to be an ok movie. Nothing spectacular but enjoyable for what it is. I’m glad to have seen it but it’s not something I’m likely to revisit. This is merely my opinion of course and as I stated at the top of my review I do know a number of people that are quite fond of this film.

City of the Dead is out now on Blu-ray from VCI Entertainment. As an overall package it’s pretty solid. The special features are pretty loaded. There are three commentary tracks, one with Lee, another with the film’s director John Moxey and a third with Bruce G. Hallenback. There are two cuts of the film, the American version which is actually known as Horror Hotel and the British cut which is about two minutes longer. There’s also an interview with Lee and a what’s listed as behind-the-scenes footage which looks to be Lee hanging out with who I assume is the VCI crew signing copies of the DVD and just chatting it up. In terms of special features, this release is great. The downside is the picture quality isn’t perfect. It looks to have been cleaned up a little too much digitally which gives you that waxy look you never want. It’s certainly not terrible, we don’t have too many waxy faces but you can see a good amount of pixilation in some of the fog which is kind of a bummer. I’ve noticed over the years this is definitely a preference thing and some people don’t mind films being cleaned up this much but I’d certainly prefer not to have this much digitally work done on an older film. Give me the grain!

City of the Dead is what it is. I wouldn’t put it high on any must watch list, but I wouldn’t say avoid. It’s moody and enjoyable on the right situation.

City of the Dead is now available on Blu-ray from VCI Entertainment.