Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), Or I Need Some Peplum Bismol!

Dearest friends, I bid thee welcome! It is I, the Duke of DVD, once more walking in on you as you step out of the shower, water beading on your supple skin. I shield my eyes and gasp in mock alarm, pretending to look away as I leer at you through my fingers. I smirk as you try to cover your nakedness with a hand-cloth. Fear not! That saucy tattoo of Mother Teresa being buggered by the entire line-up of the 1971 Manchester United football team will go unspoken of henceforth!

Come, join me once again as we walk down Mario Bava Lane. Notice the neatly manicured lawns starting to give way to rusted-fence-lined blackened earth. There, on our right, is the Johnson place, they with their two kids, fancy cars, and popular gatherings. Oh how I hate them! On our left is Old Man Shriveledsack, walking out to get his morning paper. Yes, we see you, no, we won’t wave in return, you scrawny git. Further down the lane we travel, red eyes from unnameable creatures watch us from shadowy thickets. Your hand grasps my arm more tightly. Do not fear! These are pathways I’ve traveled oft of late, and I will see you through it.

We arrive at a mansion seemingly carved of a single stone from the face of a granite mountain. Blackened and twisted, with no line a straight edge, the edifice reeks of madness and despair. Dare we enter? Not without checking the mailbox first! It seems Mr. Bava is a front-runner to win the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes, and has also received a coupon for a free large coffee at Denny’s, the lucky sod! The front door creaks open of its own accord.

Let’s see what’s inside, shall we?

HERCULES! That’s right folks, the son of Zeus himself, oiled up by the gods, ready for action! Some might be surprised that the mad genius that is Mario Bava (along with co-director Franco Prosperi) would turn an eye towards Greek/Roman mythology, but indeed he has! In fact, Hercules in the Haunted World marks Bava’s entry into the world of color filmaking. Bava always paints a beautiful picture with his lens, and this movie is no different. Not only do we get to see fantastic landscapes and frightening widescreen vistas, but we also get Bava’s keen eye for showing well-oiled pectorals.

'Oh Theseus, is that a dagger digging into my hip or are you just glad to see me?"

Hercules, played magnificently by Reg Park, is returning to his homeland of Ecalia along with his best (and in no way gay) friend Theseus (George Ardisson). Having been out adventuring for many years, Hercules is longing to finally settle down with his honey Deianira (Leonora Ruffo) and perhaps live a simpler life. He’s having trouble getting back, however, because Theseus feels it’s his duty to sex-up any wanton maiden he happens across. It’s during one of these romps that our movie opens, with Theseus making out with a saucy farm woman beside a stream. Hercules is cajoling him to hurry things up when suddenly bandits attack!

"Yes, Hercules, your strength is very impressive. Now please untie the boulders from your wang."

Seeing no other recourse, Hercules picks up a wagon the size of a gypsy mansion and throws it at the marauders, finally succeeding in running them off. Little does Hercules know that Lico (the always awesome Christopher Lee), brother of the king of Ecalia, has sent these attackers to dispatch Hercules once and for all. Apparently Lico is also a dullard, to think something such as this would work, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Hercules finally makes it back home, only to discover that the king has died, leaving his daughter (and Hercules’ love) Deianira the heir to the throne. Lico isn’t much for the line of succession and wants to rule things himself, so he has a curse placed on poor Deianira, one which renders her nearly catatonic and only able to speak in spaced-out sentences. Seriously, it’s like she did 10 hits of LSD followed by some Jello shots.

"Herc, could you please do your butt-clenching exercises somewhere else? Marna there is overcome."

Hercules knows nothing of Lico’s designs and takes his word that something has befallen Deianira that must be cured.  Offering to help, Lico sends Hercules to the Oracle for advice. The Oracle tells Hercules that only Pluto’s Stone, hidden deep within the foul confines of the underworld, can save Deinaira. Not only that, but that the only way Hercules can brave the underworld at all is if he first possesses the fabled Golden Apple.

Hercules likes to give his friends the gift of Surprise Buttsex.

Before they can head out, though, Hercules and Theseus hook up with the bumbling comic relief of Telemachus (played awesomely by Franco Giacobini), who is the current beau of the last saucy beauty  Theseus hooked up with--though Telemachus seems unconcerned with that little tidbit. Telemachus tells them they must get ahold of a magic boat, which happens to be in the posession of this strange, beared man. We aren’t really sure why a magic boat is needed, but I guess if you are going to journey into Hell itself you need something a bit more reliable than Grandpa’s rusty fishing trawler.

"For the last fucking time, I'm not Kevin Nealon!"

After obtaining the boat, the trio finally set off and arrive at the island of mysterious women, the Hesperides. These women, prisoners of the monster Procustes, exist in a sort of permanent night, where they are required to sacrifice unwary travelers to their dark god. They also keep track of the Golden Apple--it’s all a bit complicated. While his two companions sleep on uncomfortable stone slabs, Hercules heads right to the giant tree that houses the Apple. He climbs, far up into the tree, only to be driven back down again by the wrath of the gods, which consists of lightning flashes, blowing wind, and someone just off camera dumping burning paper dangerously near Hercules’s head. Giving up on the climbing plan, Hercules instead takes some leather straps off a horse’s bridle and uses them as a sling for launching a boulder the size of his left testicle up into the tree. As it flies, he asks Zeus to guide it, and sure enough, down falls a limb with the Golden Apple attached. Great success!

Meanwhile, Procustes shows up to kill both Theseus and Telemachus. I have to admit, the costume department did right when it came to making a stone monster suit to represent Procustes. About the only thing wrong with the suit is that it doesn’t allow for any movement other than a slow waddle. Theseus hits it with his sword, which shatters (but later in the movie is mysteriously whole again, hah!). Hercules arrives just in the nick of time, and picks up the seemingly helpless Procustes and tosses him straight through a rock wall, which has the lucky benefit of opening a pathway to the underworld. Score!

With this film, Bava transitions from black & white to crimson & blue

Leaving Telemachus back at the boat with the Golden Apple (which sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, but whatev), Hercules and Theseus head off into Hades to retrieve the Stone of Awesome. Bava’s masterful use of color is in full effect here, folks. Stunning vistas surround the couple at every turn, making Hades look very unwelcome indeed, though beautiful in certain spots. Hades isn’t so much filled with demons and imps as it is a simple obstacle course, filled with burning lava, wafting stenches, and vines that bleed and moan when you cut them. Hercules and Theseus traverse this Hellscape with ease, until they come to a wide canyon filled with lava. Hercules uses some of the aforementioned vines to launch a rock once again, this time forming a rope bridge across the chasm that they two men then use to go across, hand-over-hand.

The Spectacular Stalagmite Sisters lull Hercules to sleepwith their #1 hit, "Fog Machine Boogie in D-flat."

However, halfway across, poor Theseus proves yet again that he isn’t the same manly man that Hercules is when he tires out. Hercules tries to make it back to help, but Theseus falls at the last second, sinking through the lava as Hercules watches on in horror. Herc moves on, knowing he can’t give up yet. Meanwhile, we see that Theseus lives, and is indeed perfectly fine. He wakes up in a mysterious, foggy cavern, and finds a stunning beauty beside him. As with anything bearing a vagina, Theseus falls immediately in love with her, not even bothering to find out who she is, and promises to get her out of Hades safely.

"Come on, Herc, hug it out."

Meanwhile, Hercules arrives at the Stone of Fantastical Things and pulls it free from its prison, burning his hands badly in teh process. But Hercules doesn’t need any ointment, oh no! Nor any elixirs, salves, unguents or poultices. He is a (demi)god among men! Hercules returns to the ship to find Theseus alive and well, much to his joy. Telemachus, who showed inhuman restraint in not eating the Golden Apple while the other guys were away, sets sail for home. During the voyage, Theseus spends an inordinate amount of time below decks, which makes Hercules curious, but not enough to investigate himself. He sends Telemachus instead, who discovers that Theseus has secreted away a chick, attempting to smuggle her out of Hell.

Pluto is pissed at the trespass, and sends a powerful hurricane in an attempt to stop the fleeing thieves. The girl, still nameless, bids Theseus to chunk the Golden Apple overboard in an effort to appease Pluto. Theseus runs topside, grabs the apple before Herc can stop him, and hurls it into the sea. Before Hercules can finish his sentence admonishing Theseus for such a crazy act, the hurricane clears and they are on the shores of Ecalia! It seems this plan worked. Their happiness at arriving home safe is short-lived, however, as they find Ecalia is in near ruins. It seems the wrath of Pluto has shifted to their homeland. Crops are withering, cows are dying, dogs and cats are living together. Just mass hysteria, I’m tellin’ ya!

"Is that a... Procustes turd?"

They all head back to the main castle, where Hercules uses the stone to heal Deianira, and the young beauty that Theseus rescued from Hades reveals herself to him, saying that she’s Persephone, most favored daughter of Pluto*, and that she is the real reason things are in ruins. Pluto is punishing humanity for the theft of his daughter. Theseus vows that he’ll protect her, even up to and including killing Hercules, if it came to that. Bold words, little man! Meanwhile, Lico isn’t in the least happy about Hercules returning to Ecalia. It is revealed that he is in communion with some dark god, who advises him to send Hercules to the Oracles, and so he does.

*Not the way the myth really goes, I know. I guess Bava was using a cut-rate translation of Bullfinch's Mythology.

Hercules decided to give Deianira the Stone of Horniness instead.

While Hercules is away, Lico jumps into action, killing Deianira’s servant girl and kidnapping Deianira herself, taking her into the catacombs below the castle. At the Oracle, Hercules learns the truth about Persephone and that in order to save Ecalia, he must convince Theseus to give up the underworld poon of which he’s grown fond. Hercules arrives back at the castle and has it out with Theseus, who attempts to fight the demigod, even going so far as to cutting Hercules’ arm with a sword, before finally Persephone interrupts the fight by causing Theseus to fall into a deep slumber. She tells Hercules it isn’t right that so many would suffer because of her love for Theseus. She promises now that Deianira is healed she’ll take the Stone of Kickass back to Hades along with herself to assuage Pluto’s wrath.

Altogether Ooky

Hercules realizes that he hasn’t seen Deianira in a while, so he goes looking, only to discover the servant girl dead and Deianira missing. He makes his way down to the catacombs to confront Lico, but finds that Lico has summoned an army of zombies! Folks, I have to tell you, Bava made the most of his shoe-string budget here. The zombies are fucking awesome! They fly through the air, or run on the ground, grasping and clawing at Hercules with their rotted, gray limbs. Hercules fights them off and finds himself in a trap, consisting of two rock walls slowly squeezing shut, with him in the middle. He manages to make it out at the last second, leaving the zombies inside to be crushed.

"Praise be to the gods for Rohypnol!"

He finds himself in a large chamber, where Lico is placing Deianira on an altar to be sacrificed, so that Lico can drink her blood while the moon is just right in order to obtain True Ultimate Power. Hercules runs up the slope to the altar, and begins tossing Lico around like a deranged bear trying to get at a Little Person's sweetbreads. Hercules picks up a nearby stone column and crushes Lico to death with it. At about that time, the zombies free themselves of the garbage compactor trap and begin assaulting the hill in wave after wave of zombie attacks. Hercules fends all of these off, tossing stone pillar after stone pillar at the zombies until they are all dead. Finally, the moon passes out of its critical phase, causing the pretty-much-dead-already Lico to burst into flame!

Hercules wields Procustes' cock as a weapon, with awesome results.

Bava then cuts to the seashore, where a newly-bedecked-in-snazzy-white Hercules pulls up in a chariot, along with the beautiful Deianira. Telemachus rides up on a horse, with the saucy brunette, claiming that she’s finally agreed to marry him! Before Telemachus can even begin to day-dream about the consummation of said union, Theseus runs up, telling everyone that he just had the most vivid dream in which he loved a beautiful woman and... Theseus sees the chick. He jerks her off the horse and they run laughing down the beach while a bewildered but not really mad Telemachus falls into the surf. Hercules and Deianira share a laugh. Fin.

Dearest friends, I submit to you that this is the pinnacle of Hercules movies. And I’m not just saying that because it had Bava’s masterful hand at work... ok, well, yes I am saying it for that reason, but it’s not the only one, no! Reg Park makes a fantastic Hercules (he played him in 4 films, including this one). His pecs appear to be sentient, and his beard could easily flay the paint off a battleship. The man is pure testosterone, and he plays Hercules fantastically, with a glint in his eye and a spring to his step. Christopher Lee is fantastic as always as the evil Lico. It’s said that a different actor dubbed Lee’s voice for the movie, which is sad (what, it wasn't sonorous and eeevil enough?), but it doesn’t detract from his brilliant portrayal.

"God, how I love you, Eddie Rabbit."

Once again, Bava was on a budget set ludicrously low, but this is how the Master thrives. I’m afraid given too much money Bava would have been not as cavalier about taking chances or setting up shots as he does in most all his films. His use of color and frame are unparalleled, and this movie brings those traits to life perfectly. Sure, the movie isn’t perfect by any stretch, but it’s exciting, good to look at, and even freaky (flying zombies, yeesh!). There are probably hundreds of movies in this genre (“Sword & Sandals” for the peasants, “peplum” for the in-crowd), but to me this one stands out as worth watching over most others.

Two Thumbs Up.

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The Whip and the Body (1963): or, When a Dead Guy Comes Along, You Must Whip It!

A wild little Italian chiller from the early 60s directed by Mario Bava, The Whip and the Body has ghosts, insanity, aristocratic incest, and the wonderful color and style that's always a trademark of the maestro's horror works.

The frenetic plotline maps out like this: a young Christopher Lee is dashingly handsome as the black sheep of a decaying aristocratic family who reappears at just the wrong time for everyone involved. His younger brother is married to their cousin (who is also Chris’s former lover!), but is also having an affair with a young housemaid, whose mother despises Chris for having driven her eldest daughter (the housemaid’s sister) to suicide!

Their father, the Count, is an invalid who has disowned Chris, but Chris has vowed to challenge the old man's will and is sure he will win as the firstborn (and thus entitled) son of the count.

After a day or two of whipping his old lover into a frenzy (both figuratively and literally) and irritating his brother and father to no end, Chris is unexpectedly found dead--murdered!--with the very knife the housemaid’s daughter used to kill herself! Problem solved, right?

WRONG! Soon the increasingly unhinged former lover is seeing Chris’s corpse stalking the castle in the moonlight, and is even subjected to the sado-masochistic whipping of her life and his undeath, which is apparently something they were both into. Is Chris back from the dead, or is something else going on here?

It all leads up to a pretty effective ending, as I recall, but I admit to being hammered when the end credits rolled. :) This is a lesser-known Bava film that shows all his trademark atmospheric use of color and strange plots. The seaside castle setting is used wonderfully, and there is some great 60s Italian eye candy here, though I can’t help thinking it would have blown the top off the awesome-meter if Barbara Steele had played Chris’s lover instead of the lovely but less mesmerizing Daliah Lavi. Still, there’s plenty of creepiness with Chris’s corpse on walkabout, and the whipping scene is quite arousing if you’re into that--and who isn’t, eh? Nice little perverse Italian period chiller. 2.5 thumbs.

Bonus: Chris often cites this as one of his favorite of his many screen roles.

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Crypt of Horror (1964): or, the Devil is My Magic 8-Ball

Part 2 of the Chris Lee/Dollar Tree Double Feature; having already partaken of the fog-shrouded witch-enriched goodness of Horror Hotel, I decided to turn over this pancake of evil and check out the 1964 Italo-English production La Cripta e l'incubo, or more prosaically, Crypt of Horror.

Can you EVER go wrong starting a movie with a buxom woman wearing a nightie or less running through a forest from some unseen horror? If you can, I've never seen it, and Crypt of Horror is no exception. In very darkly-tinted black & white we see a young woman in a flowing white nightgown exit a horse-drawn carriage and run into a foreboding forest, from what we don't know. She leans against black skeletal trees, gasping, only to discover in front of her a different, darker coach, drawn by black horses and itself as black as the tomb...or crypt, even. It's actually a pretty creepy, gothic scene, as she runs again only to discover her way blocked by the dark carriage, this time pausing long enough to see the door open with a chilling creak, revealing an inky abyss inside that beckons her. She falls to the ground with a scream, and we see her lying lifeless, eyes wide, whether killed or dead of fright we can't tell.

Meanwhile at Castle Karstein, miles away, Laura Karstein awakens from a nightmare, screaming, sure that her cousin (who is coming to visit her) is dead. The spinstery governess Rowena tries to calm her, but apparently the young countess has had these visions before, and they've often come true. Rowena promises cryptically that they'll "find out the truth."

Meanwhile, the next day...Count Karstein (a dashing young Lee who hardly looks old enough to be Laura's pop) welcomes a young historian/document specialist to his castle. The young man has been hired to go through the library and other records of the castle, looking very specifically for a physical description of a witch who was condemned and crucified centuries earlier. The story goes that on the pyre before she died, the witch cursed the house of Karstein (naturally--don't they ever think of slapping a gag on these chicks? You'd think they would learn...), saying she would return in the form of a Karstein descendant, and through her the house of Karstein would be destroyed and Count Karstein killed. Lee, as the current Count Karstein, doesn't want this to happen, and fears Laura might be the prophesied one--so he wants to know what the old witch looked like, and see if there's a resemblance...you know, just to be sure.

It isn't long before the young man finds a strange piece of paper with a 5 pointed star cut out of it, and lots of info on the witchy legend (occasioning the requisite flashback, though we don't get to see the witch's face, we do hear her curse). Later that night, Rowena and Laura go to a basement room with the missing star in hand, and while Laura strips and lies down on the floor (!), Rowena summons Satan and the spirit of the dead witch to tell them whether or not the cousin is dead (!!). Apparently neither Laura nor Rowena knows of the storied curse--though Rowena does know enough to summon the witch by name (?). It's a crazy ceremony, and reveals little except the back of Laura's shoulders and the lengths to which Rowena is willing to go to answer a Magic-8-ball level question.

The document specialist begins to make googly-eyes at Laura, while the Count is having it off with the head maid, who desperately wants to be a Karstein. (I should note that in several scenes Lee wears the most fantastic smoking jacket I've ever seen--I want a replica for Xmas.) Not long after that, a near-carriage wreck in front of the castle results in a new visitor to the castle, a fetching young lass named Luba (who lives on the second floor). Luba's aunt, in a hurry to get on, unceremoniously dumps Luba on the Karsteins, without so much as a by-your-leave, and hey-presto, new blood in the castle. Luba and Laura quickly become the best of friends, and soon more than friends--though there's nothing explicit, there are several scenes absolutely fraught with erotic tension where the girls are holding hands, hugging, nearly-but-not-quite kissing--which I admit put a little spring in the cigarette holder, IYKWIMAITYD. Meanwhile the young man, jilted, keeps looking for a rumored portrait of the witch that may exist in the castle, Rowena keeps asking Satan to help her find the killer so Laura can clear her name, Luba keeps getting hotter for Laura, and it all ends in bloodshed and a reveal that's only a little nonsensical before the whole mystery is solved.

While not as good as Castle of Blood (but what is, eh?), Crypt of Horror does share some of that movie's strengths--the setting/location is absolutely fantastic, and almost becomes a character in the film. Apart from Castle Karstein itself, which is a gorgeous gothic ruin of a manor, there is also an actual ruined village that figures prominently: abandoned, falling down, but with a lone bell tower in which the bell still tolls when the wind blows. The ringing of that bell sets up several atmospheric and creepy scenes, building up of course to a scene in which it tolls and the girls realize that there is no wind...*shudder* The b&w cinematography is also good, though the print damage is severe in places. A particularly nice example is when, after Rowena dies (of fright, while summoning the witch to pester her for a recipe or something) a thunderstorm interrupts her funeral, blowing out the candles and giving a nice lightning strobe with some pretty freakin' creepy results. And the lesbonic elements of the plot are carried out very nicely, if in a necessarily obscure manner. There's even a little pillowcase gore, done again in an understated but creepy way. The flick's got atmosphere to spare, and isn't boring.

There is some silliness though, too--Rowena's Satanism for daily use is pretty funny, and never really explained or even winked at by the virginal Laura, even as she takes part in the rituals. The fact that Rowena seeks to use the power of Satan for good is also kind of humorous. The dubbing is pretty bad in most cases, except for Lee's, who did his own voice in the looping, naturally. There's an out-of-nowhere "gotcha" in the crypt at the climax that is explained rather unsatisfactorially, and the twist, while unexpected, doesn't really make sense--though they do their best to set it up with a tell-tale hankerchief. You are still left scratching your head.

All in all, I give CoH a soft 1.75 thumbs, trending higher if you love this kind of thing and can forgive its silliness. It's not a bad flick, just a little above average, but worth seeing once if you've got nothing better on the burner. One or two genuinely creepy scenes, and some nice eroticism, but not much more than that.

Highlights not previously mentioned--hunchback peddler in the Crazy Ralph role, with his catchy catch-phrase "There are some houses where Death is a tenant..."; Rowena stalking the halls of the castle with a corpse-hand candelabra, begging Satan to show her who the real killer is (why didn't OJ think of this?) ; Lee smoking the longest cigarette in cinematic history up to that point; Laura's genuinely frightening nightmare sequence featuring a skull-faced cousin, that nonetheless doesn't stop her from inviting Luba into her bed; and the Dept. of Redundancy Dept. line: "This crypt shall be your tomb!"

You know what? Actually I'm amending my rating to a soft 2 Thumbs, just for that line.

"THIS CRYPT SHALL BE YOUR TOMB!"

That kills me.

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Horror Hotel (1960): or, I know a Lot about Witchcraft, but I'm Foggy on the Details

Here at Mmmmmovies, we love the public domain. Any time we can pick up a handful of creaky old classics we've never heard of for less than a lunch off the Super Value Menu, the Duke and I are a couple of happy aristocrats. Because let's face it--if you pay $15+ for a special edition dvd of some obscuro horror flick and it turns out not to live up to your expectations, you feel not only cheated, but more than a little like a jackass for buying it. On the other hand, if you buy a 10 movie set for $5, or better yet, 50 Chilling Classics for $20 (deal of the century, folks! Get it NOW!) and they're not that great, you're out 40, 50 cents per movie, tops. But if three or four of them turn out to be keepers, well, you feel like some kind of movie shopping god! And believe me--though you do have to sit through a lot of crap in these compilations, there are plenty of great flicks hiding on them too. A truly amazing ratio, really.

So anyway, before I discovered the 50 Chilling Classics, the Duke and I had already raided the Halloween displays at Dollar Tree for their entire line of double feature horror discs. 50¢ a movie--how can you go wrong? Answer: you can't. Sure, I sat through Blood Thirst, but I also discovered the amazing Castle of Blood and got my first exposure to Naschy with Vengeance of the Zombies and Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf. That's value that can't be measured, folks! Anyway, one of these Dollar Tree discs was a Christopher Lee double feature, and we love Chris, yes we do. So the top half of the Lee double feature was the 1960 B&W chiller, Horror Hotel. Was it worth the half-dollar? Read on.

Short answer: yes. Despite not achieving the lofty heights of the aforementioned wonders, Horror Hotel, aka City of the Dead, was a pretty cool, very atmospheric tale of witchcraft and mystery, with plenty to recommend it to the b-movie connoiseur and fans of the cinematically Satanic. Well worth the dollar I spent for the disc all on its own, it's a movie that, even though I won't be hunting down a better version for my permanent collection (a la Castle of Blood), I'm still glad I bought, because I wouldn't have seen it otherwise and for a fan of old horror flicks, it's definitely worth seeing.

The movie starts out with almost exactly the witch-burning scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except in Puritan New England (the township of Whitewood) rather than medieval England, and done seriously instead of for camp. Elizabeth Selwyn is being condemned for consorting with the devil, and her accomplice in the crowd, Jethrow Keane, can do nothing to help her without facing the Big Barbecue himself. It's actually a very well-filmed scene, with the condemned woman in heart-rending terror (you don't know yet whether she's guilty or not) as the townspeople taunt her with animalistic glee, their angry faces looming gargoyle-like out of the thick fog that blankets the streets of Whitewood (more on this later). The b&w cinematography is great, and when Elizabeth is on the stake and Jethrow says a prayer to Lord Luc1fer to aid her, there's a nice creepy moment before the expected "I curse you and all your descendants!" trope. Nothing groundbreaking, even in 1960, but still effective and tone-setting. I was very much drawn in.

Flash forward to the present day (i.e., 1960) where a very young and handsome Christopher Lee is relating the tale of Elizabeth Selwyn's immolation to a group of students in his college office. He's giving an informal lecture series on the history of witchcraft in New England, and one of the students, Nan Barlow (a wolf-whistle-worthy blonde in the classic Hitchcock mode), is obviously more into the subject than the others. I have to say right off the bat that Lee is just arrestingly intense in this role, doing an understated American accent pretty much perfectly. It's clear from the first moment that his sympathies lie with Selwyn and his antipathies toward the religious fools who burned her, but that's okay, this is a horror movie, not a whodunit. Nan's boyfriend, Tom, makes light of the story, and is treated to a patented Lee glare that I'm surprised didn't singe his eyebrows off. Nan, however, stays after class to discuss her term paper with Professor Lee, who helpfully tells her of a little town off the beaten path where she can probably find some great historical documents--yes, Whitewood. He recommends the Raven's Inn, where if she mentions his name to the proprietress, Ms. Newless, she'll be sure to get good treatment.

After this Nan's brother Richard (always referred to as "Dick"), a professor of science at the same college, comes in and pretty much belittles Lee with his skepticism. Bad idea, of course, but they never learn, the fools. Anyway, Nan is a headstrong, independent young woman, and over her brother and Tom's objections she decides to go to Whitewood to do her research.

The trip to Whitewood is a real tour-de-force, as Nan, in her motor-car listening to the jazz on her wireless, is enveloped by the thickest, soupiest fog I have ever seen on screen. Really, it's dangerous to be out driving in, so she's lucky it's only poor-man's process. We get a wonderful gas-station attendant who gives her directions, and then an even more wonderful shot of her arriving at the crossroads to find a mysterious stranger waiting there, needing a ride to Whitewood. why, he looks just like Jethrow Keane! And his archaic manner of speaking is most strange...

Well, I think I'll stop with the blow-by-blow synopsis there and leave the rest to your discovery. Suffice to say they don't take kindly to strangers in Whitewood, and Professor Lee had his own reasons for sending his nubile young student there. More highlights include a great "Crazy Ralph" character in Whitewood's blind old priest, with a wonderful "This town is evil!" monologue before disappearing into the shadows of the church; a very surprising choice of underwear by our plucky young heroine; a Hitchcockian shift in focus that I admit caught me by surprise; and one of the wilder climactic battles I can remember seeing in a movie of this type and vintage, wherein a mortally wounded character (complete with knife sticking out of his back) uses a 6-foot cross as a sort of holy bazooka on the coven of witches, causing their robes to burst into flame! Crazy stuff, and actually pretty exciting. And the last shot before the credits recalls Hitchcock once again, so that even though this movie came out the same year as Psycho (only 2 months later) it seems incredible to think that it wasn't referencing that film specifically (though without the cross dressing angle...you'll see what I mean).

Apart from Lee and Selwyn and the surprisingly strong and independent Nan, the acting here is really hit and miss. Dick is obviously a stage actor with little screen know-how, as he over-plays every emotion and always booms from the diaphragm. Both he and Tom seem to be having trouble holding onto their American accents, as well. That's okay, though, b/c the real stars of the movie are the town of Whitewood itself and that incredible fog. I am not exaggerating in the least when I tell you that Horror Hotel is far and away THE FOGGIEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN. Period. It's foggier than The Wolf Man, which was damn foggy. It's foggier than any of the Universal classics. Hell, it's foggier than THE FOG. And what a fog it is! The dry-ice budget for this film must have been completely off the charts. But it works--Whitewood is dreamy, surreal, a place out of time, and the journey there is a journey to the dark and sinister past. Again the cinematography is great, very atmospheric and creepy at times. And Lee, while not the "star" of the picture, really steals the show.

So 2 thumbs easily for Horror Hotel. Not anything earth-shattering, but very well made and entertaining, and worth seeing at least once. Bonus points for a scene with Christopher Lee in a Doctor Strange cape sacrificing a bird to Satan, then having to clean it up quickly before his students come in. Check it out.

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