British Horror Film presents: City of the Dead (1960)

The basis of fairy tales is in reality.
The basis of reality is fairy tales.

The first horror film produced by the tag-team of Milton Subotsky and

Max Rosenberg (the two men responsible for Amicus Productions, Hammer’s

only serious rival in the field of British horror in the 1960s and

early ‘70s), City of the Dead is an understated and unsettling movie

about witches and the academic study of witchcraft in contemporary New

England. Making striking use of black-and-white photography (see image

above) and of quasi-Lovecraftian iconography, the film has an

insinuating force all its own. A wonderful sister-text to Witchfinder

General (1968), City of the Dead is not to be missed.

Thursday, November 18th

Stevenson 150, 9 PM