Post by Zone Fighter on Oct 29, 2005 20:09:51 GMT -8
Horror Hotel (1960) aka City of the Dead
This film perpetuates the myth that people were burnt at the stake for witchcraft in New England. No one was burnt for being a witch in New England, they were hung.
Anyhow...according to this film a witch was burnt at the stake in Whitewood, MA in 1692. Valentine Dyall (the Black Guardian in 70s and 80s episodes of Doctor Who) prays to Lucifer to save her. Apparently the other towns people were too busy shouting "burn witch burn" to notice. The witch doesn't stay dead. She returns to kill more children.
268 years later a college student asks her history professor (Christopher Lee) were she could go on her winter break to learn more about witches. He sends her to the Raven's Inn in Whitewood, MA (his home town). It turns out the inn is owned and operated by the witch who was supposed to have been killed in 1692 and all the other guests are members of her coven. The witches are kept alive by Satan in exchange for two sacrifices yearly. One guess who is chosen to be the first sacrifice this year. The student is so dense that even after reading how witches mark their victims she doesn't recognize why her locket has vanished, having been replaced by a dead bird or why there is a twig nailed to her hotel room door. Nor she does realize until much too late that her history teacher is himself one of the witches and that he has sent her to die.
This is available on a DVD titled Masters of Mayhem, along with The Bat and The Gorilla. The Bat is the best of the three films.
