31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 14 Horror Hotel

 

TITLE-Horror Hotel AKA The City of the Dead

SOURCE-Cinema Insomnia on OSI 74 Streaming App

Pretty much every year for the past 10 years I've tried to watch a horror hosted film for 31 Days of Horror. Over the years I have covered the bigger known ones like Elvira and Svengoolie. And the lesser known ones like Kreepy Koffee Movie Time or Count Gore De Vol. One of the better known ones I haven't covered is Mr. Lobo of Cinema Insomnia. Cinema Insomnia started back in late July 2001. And as far as I know is still going on. I hear that Cinema Insomnia airs on various tv stations all over the US. But I have only ever watched it on either Vimeo or the OSI 74 app.

Mr. Lobo starts each episode off promising us a fairly well known horror film.But something always happens were that film can't be shown so we get a lesser known film. For this episode Mr Lobo says he is going to show us Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem. But nope we end up with Horror Hotel Aka City of the Dead.

Horror Hotel is in the public domain here in the States. So shouldn't be hard to find online or on many of the various streaming apps that are loaded up with PD films,tv shows and cartoons. Made back in 1960 this film was made by British filmmakers but is set in the US. With Christopher Lee being the best known member of the cast.

The film starts back in the 1690s. Set in Massachusetts we see a witch being burned at the stake.Before she died this witch and her helper have sold their souls to Lucifer. This way they get eternal life and revenge on the town that killed them. All they have to do is sacrifice two virgins a year. On Candlemas Eve & Witches' Sabbath.

Skip ahead to present day,well present day as of when the film was released. A college prof tells one of his students to goto the town from the prologue. This student goes and ends up being the sacrifice on Candlemas Eve.

A couple of weeks later the student's fiancee and her brother head to the same town. They get there seperately. With Bill the fiancee almost dying in a car wreck. This was caused by him seeing the ghostly image of the witch from the start of the film.

Bill and the brother make it to the town. Find out that a coven lead by the witch have taken control of the town. We find out the prof ,played by Christopher Lee

,is part of this coven. And appears to have been providing the town with the needed virginal scarifices two times a year. Our two heroes manage to stop the coven and break the pact with Lucifer.

The above cover is one I remember seeing many times in video stores back in the 80s. Not sure why I never rented it. Might have been because it was b/w. Back when I was a kid and early teen I wasn't much into b/w horror films.

I had forgotten about this movie.Then earlier this week I was driving to town. Listening to one of the many Misfits CDs I keep in my car. Their song Horror Hotel came on and while singing along with it I thought "Man I really need to see that movie". Looked around online and it was easy to find. With copies being on Youtube,Internet Archive and pretty much every streaming app that has "Free Horror movies". Seeing that it is public domain I figured it would be easy to find a version with a horror host. And I've been wanting to watch more Cinema Insomnia with MR Lobo. Looked on the OSI 74 streaming app and they had the episode with Horror Hotel.

You can tell after watching this movie that Rob Zombie was inspired by this when he made Lords Of Salem. But then Lords of Salem was pretty much Rob taking his favorite parts of various Euro Horror films and making that into a damn good movie.

Horror Hotel is a pretty entertaining film. It might feel a bit slow to people use to modern horror. But it has great atomosphere. And Christopher Lee is great in this.So if you want to watch an older horror flick. And don't want to spend any money go track down a copy of Horror Hotel.

Horror Hotel gets a B-.