City Of The Dead (1960)

CITY OF THE DEAD (1960)

Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey

Our main star dies too soon, family sets out to find her, and a decayed corpse is revealed at the end. It kinda sounds like something I’ve seen before. There’s driving sequences and a hotel ran by a shady staff which also sounds familiar. City of the Dead was released the same year as Psycho. City was released in the UK in September while Psycho was released in June. I’m not sure if the production could have had time to successfully copy Hitchcock. So are we left with one of those bewildering phenomenons where films alike to one another, having no interaction with one another, offer glaring similarities? I believe were in one of those Deep Impact vs. Armageddon scenarios. One film deals with Satan worship and the other with Mother worship.

Moxey’s feature film career began with City of the Dead. He would mostly be known for TV in the 1960s. But in 1967 he remade Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) for television. It was his first foray into made for TV, but it would be here that he would leave his mark on cinema. During the golden age of the made for TV movies, Moxey cranked them out. Most notably he directed The Night Stalker (1972), slasher film prototype Home For The Holidays (1972), and the women in prison exploitation TV film Nightmare In Bedham County (1976). Before all that he made a film about a witch, who curses a town and lives forever.

For this witch to live forever, she must make good on her end of a pact with Satan. The witch must sacrifice two virgins a year. How is one virgin not enough? Anyway, these two virgins must be sacrificed on sacred holidays, Candlemas Eve and the Witch’s Sabbath. Luckily for our witch and her coven, you can have a Witch’s Sabbath anytime. As for Candlemas Eve or otherwise known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, The Feast Of The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or The Feast Of The Holy Encounter, this only occurs 33 days after Jesus’ circumcision. Candlemas is then normally celebrated on February 3. Not only does the coven have to find two virgins, but they have to find one of those virgins in the winter. That’s a lot of trouble to go through for eternal life, just saying. At least they have Christopher Lee on their side. He’s a professor at a pretentious college and assumes any female that takes an interest in his class must be a virgin.

If you haven’t seen it, City of the Dead is a worthy watch. If you’ve already seen it, there’s not much to go back for.