Collinsport, ME and Whitewood, MA.: Possible Sister Cities?

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Hey gang,

I recently watched a new dvd copy of a British 1960 supernatural thriller film, entitled "The City of the Dead."  The star of the film is the truly great, Sir Christopher Lee.

Basically, the film deals with a coven of witches, who, since 1692, have gathered together to conduct a human sacrifice on every Candlemas Eve (February 1) to honor their "boss' and to renew their immortality for another year.

Sir Christopher portrays Prof. Alan Driscoll, an expert in the occult (and a not-so-nice version of Prof. T. Elliott Stokes), who urges one of his comely, young female students to travel to Whitewood in order to gain a better "insight" into the history and legends of witchcraft  in New England.  (I don't want to spoil the plot, but suffice it to say, that that impromptu academic field trip ends rather badly for the young coed.)

The village of Whitewood, Massachusetts reminded me very much of the beloved Collinsport, Maine; most of the the residents seem to be very creepy and there always seems to be an incredible amount of fog, rising up from the streets and sidewalks of the town (very much like the pea soup-like stuff Barnabas encountered when he first met the Leviathans on his way along the path to the Old House).

Of course, there is an especially nasty witch around, named Elizabeth Selwyn (shades of Angelique), who was previously burned at the stake in 1692, right around the same time that Judah Zachery had his head lopped off after his own witchcraft trial.


The film was directed by veteran director John Lllewllyn Moxey, who directed such memorable television series as "Mission Impossible," "Kung Fu," "Magnum P.I.," and the superb British spy series, "The Avengers," starring the wonderful Patrick MacNee and the remarkable Dame Diana Rigg.

Oh yeah, Mr. Moxey also directed the 1972 cult supernatural t.v. film, "The Night Stalker," starring Darrin McGavin and the beautiful Carol Lynley, and produced by one Mr. Dan Curtis, a prolific giant of both American film and television, and who once also produced a Gothic daytime soap opera, which we all may have seen, from time to time, over the years.

The dvd also features commentaries by both Sir Christopher Lee and Mr. Moxey, and also an in-depth interview with the United Kingdom's greatest film Dracula. I first saw this film on John Zacherle's Friday night horror show on Channel 11 in NYC way back during the 1960s, and I wholeheartedly recommend this genuinely spooky film to all of my Dark Shadows cousins today.

Bob

[Janet the Wicked]

I'd definately like to see that film, if I haven't already.

Speaking of similarities, in the town of Holden, Ma there is a bar called the Blue Plate - very much reminds me of the Blue Whale, as it is local and has been around for years. And get this, a little ways down the street is a salon called, "Rose Cottage". I have to get some pictures one of these days.

[Gothick]

City of the Dead is better known in the US under the title Horror Hotel.  By far the best version of the film was released on DVD here under the British title, City of the Dead.  It was from a print crafted by archivists at the British Film Institute--they restored a crucial scene early in the film involving Patricia Jessel and Valentine Dyall (who is just as great as Christopher Lee, with this booming sepulchral voice).

Patricia Jessel was a very gifted actress who died in her late 40s or around 50 I believe.  She acted in the US and did a play with Thayer David and Louis Edmonds in the early 1960s, something called Catstick.  I think it was in the Southern Gothic melodrama genre. 

Another DS connection is that Grayson was cast in Patricia's role in the 1961 NYC production of a play by a young writer named Kenneth Jupp called The Buskers.  Grayson played Agata, who was an earthy sensual gypsy.  Sound familiar?  And the publicity for that play was handled by a young woman named Violet Welles, who went on to write for a certain daytime drama we all love...

Janet, in the Coolidge Corner neighborhood of Brookline here in Boston, there is or was a store called Cassandra Wigs.  I always wanted to take a picture of that and post it here sometime.

G.

[Janet the Wicked]

Well, in my travels this weekend, I'll stop and take some pictures. As both of these establishments are on my direct path to anywhere, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Certainly looking forward to seeing those pictures.

And thanks so much for all the info on City of the Dead. I'm pretty sure I've never seen it - but I'll definitely have to track it down...

[Gothick]

MB, if you watched Creature Feature much at all in the Sixties and early Seventies, it would have been hard to miss Horror Hotel.  Our own dear Niece, Miss Penny Dreadful, featured it on one of her early shows, too.  It became one of the core films in the standard Creature Feature repertory even though it obviously wasn't included in the original 1950s Shock Theatre packages... because the movie hadn't been made yet!

Janet, that sounds fabulous.  Perhaps one day I will hear your wicked cackle on one of my infrequent forays into Coolidge Corner.  (Live in Medford, work in Cambridge... not too far from Jennifer who used to post here way back when.)

Best, G.

[Bob_the_Bartender]

One of the other fun parts of this cult film is in listening to the all British cast as they attempt to affect the appropriate American accents of their Massachusetts-based characters.  Sir Christopher Lee does a quite admirable job in sounding like an American college professor, as did Dame Diana Rigg, when she portrayed an American woman in the early 1970s film, "The Hospital," with the late, great George C. Scott. 

Incidentally, I understand that the title of Sir Christopher's autobiography is the wonderfully ironic and humorous one of "Tall, Dark and Gruesome"!  I have not read the book yet, but I look forward to reading about this truly distinguished gentleman's life and film career.  (I do know that Sir Christopher and Patrick "John Steed" MacNee were friends and classmates as young boys in England.) 

In her first book, "My Scrapbook Memories of Dark Shadows," Kathryn Leigh Scott wrote that the renowned film actress, Gale Sondergaard (sp?), once visited the Dark Shadows set.  Ms. Scott regretted that the former "spider woman" of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films and also the "other woman" in the Bette Davis classic, "The Letter," was never able to have a cameo appearance on "Dark Shadows."

I've often regretted that we never got to see some of the other film horror icons of the 30s/40s/50s on "Dark Shadows" as well.  From Great Britain, it would have been wonderful to have seen Sir Christopher "Dracula" Lee and his longtime "nemesis," Peter "Dr. Van Helsing" Cushing on "Dark Shadows."

And, from this side of the pond, wouldn't it have been terrific to have seen such American film horror icons as Lon "Lawrence Talbot" Chaney, Jr., the always eloquent and erudite Vincent "The House on Haunted Hill" Price (who was said to be a big fan of "Dark Shadows" himself) and of course, America's "adopted" horror icon, the great Boris "The Frankenstein Monster" Karloff acting with Joan Bennett, Jonathan Frid, Lara Parker, and, my personal favorite, Bob "Bob Rooney" O'Connell on "Dark Shadows"?

Oh, well ,what could have been...