Horror Hotel (1960) - Read an Outline & Watch the Entire Film Online, Right Here

Burn Witch, Burn Witch, Burn Witch, Burn! Is my favorite line from the 1960 Horror film, Horror Hotel. In some markets, the film is titled The City of the Dead.

The film stars Christopher Lee and a bunch of other folks that you’ve probably never heard of, but the presence of Christopher Lee is enough to carry just about any horror film from the 1960s, and this movie is no exception.

The film is Gothic horror at its finest, and it has been compared to the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho that was released in the same year.

Both horror films feature a beautiful young and rather rebellious young blonde woman, both women travel to remote locations and encounter absurdly weird innkeepers, and both women eventually find themselves in some serious and murderous trouble.

Horror Hotel (1960) is in the public domain, and if you want to watch the film online, you can check it out in its entirety at the bottom of this hub.

The Basic Outline of Horror Hotel (1960)

So…. Nan Barlowe is a headstrong college girl who lives in a small college town. She has the typical college girl life, she has a boyfriend and a bunch of friends, and she is a smart girl who gets good grades and is very dedicated to her studies.

She has one class in particular where the college professor seems to have great passion for his subject of witches. It was one of those off-beat sort of classes that you take for the fun of it and because it can be used to satisfy a couple of elective credits.

I had a class like that once, it was taught by Dr. Hans Broedel and it was titled something like “Witches Throughout the Ages” or “The History of Witches” or something like that…it was a long time ago, but it covered some of the most interesting material I had ever encountered, but I digress…

Anyways…the professor’s passion rubs off on Nan and she decides to take the undergraduate concept of writing a paper to the graduate dissertation level… She makes it her mission to take a drive to the infamous New England town called Whitewood (fictional) in order to collect more research for her paper.

Whitewood is known to be a town where many witches were burned during the witch-hunt heyday in New England (1692-ish). Nan is made aware of the town’s reputation, but not one, not even her hunky boyfriend, can stop this headstrong girl from completing her important research - it seems that Nan is almost possessed or something….

And so… on the foggiest late afternoon of the entire millennium, a lone Nan Barlow sets out on a drive to one of the spookiest towns in New England. But wait, she isn’t alone for long, because our little brave Nan Barlowe decides to pick up the creepiest hitchhiker who ever roamed the roads…

Once she gets to Whitewood, the hitchhiker seems to disappear, and the town’s only inn is the gloomiest looking thing since The Bates Motel -it’s actually even gloomier.

To top it all off, the eccentric female innkeeper has all of the charm of Lon Chaney (take your pick here, both Lon Chaney, Sr. and Lon Chaney, Jr. were some pretty non-charming dudes… ), and the innkeeper has a female underling who appears to be a half-mute, Peter Lorre-esque waif, who is definitely terrified of her employer .

There you have it… Christopher Lee, Lon Chaney, Sr., Lon Chaney, Jr., Peter Lorre, a foggy night, the site of a witch burning, a creepy hotel, a disappearing stranger, and two creepy innkeepers. To most of us, this is a perfect recipe for time-to-go-itis, but Nan is like not most of us - she has a paper to write!

What does our brave little Nan Barlowe do in the face of such obvious “Get the heck outta here” warning signs? Nothing, she checks right on in so that her ill-fated future can transpire…

Horror Hotel (1960) is actually one of the better horror films in all of the public domain. In addition, it has a catchy theme and all around spooky atmosphere that sticks with you long after the film ends. Check it out if you have a little over an hour to kill…