A Halloween Pumpkin for Reverse Shot - Amicus chiller CITY OF THE DEAD (AKA HORROR HOTEL)

The first Amicus film - British micro-budget horror, CIty of the Dead.

I provided this year’s Fourth Night Pumpkin for Reverse Shot. It’s about a very peculiar, and potentially quite influential horror film: CITY OF THE DEAD.

“It’s a confrontation, mirroring the film’s plot, between ancient and new. It’s also a statement, and in a sense a dirty trick, but a devilishly good one too. Nothing that follows this sequence feels the same as before, nor can it really be so. Every subsequent image, which might have looked staid or studio-bound, has now been contaminated with something resembling realism and impregnated with the dread that accompanies unpredictability. It’s almost like a bond of trust has been broken between the filmmakers and the audience and replaced by a gloriously assaultive atmosphere of threat.”