horror hotel movie review

"Superstition, fear, and jealousy"

Right off the bat, I gotta tell you; if you be into that there Wiccan stuff, you sure as hell ain't gonna like this movie. For one thing, it paints all witches as them whats in league with the DEVIL! For another thing . . . well, no... there is no other thing, that's pretty much it.

The flick starts off in ancient times, about 1680 or so, and some nervous jittery folk are about to burn themselves a witch! Then we see that the whole thing is a historical tale being told by kindly Professor Alan Driscoll ( Christopher Lee: DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE , TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA , THE WICKER MAN , END OF THE WORLD , GREMLINS 2 , SLEEPY HOLLOW , THE LORD OF THE RINGS ). He teaches an extracurricular course in witchcraft and devil worship out of his house in Massachusetts.

One of Alan's students, a comely young thing named Nan Barlowe ( Venetia Stevenson: ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN ), is headstrong and independent. Back in the late fifties early sixties, such women were bound to get themselves into trouble ( remember Janet Leigh in PSYCHO ? ). Her friendly professor appreciates her singular personality and helps her with her thesis on devil worship and witchcraft. He does this by giving her an address in the old witch burning town of Whitewood.

It's an address to a hotel see? A possibly Haunted hotel. With friendly teachers like this you don't need enemy teachers! So the young and lovely blonde ( brunettes in this movie are inherently evil and in league with the DEVIL! ) goes to Whitewood, checks into Raven's Inn and merry mishaps occur.

At its best, it contains many unique surprises as well as genuinely creepy scenes.

On the other hand, it's also hard not to draw comparisons between this movie and its contemporary, PSYCHO . Remove Norman and Mother and you pretty much have the same story of a young blonde woman who drives out to parts unknown, checks into a hotel, and meets her fate.

Like PSYCHO , the rest of the movie concerns itself with those family members like her brother Richard ( Dennis Lotis ), and friends like Patricia ( Betta St. John: DANGEROUS MISSION, CORRIDORS OF BLOOD ) she left behind, who are trying to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

Both movies were in production at the same time, but the movie industry was well aware of what Alfred Hitchcock was up to long before he began production on his film. With 10 years of growing success behind him, nobody doubted that whatever his next movie would be, it would be a smash hit as well. Amicus made sure to release THE CITY OF THE DEAD on the same month and year as PSYCHO .

American censors were appalled by some of the dialog, however, and it took two years before its American release, then retitled HORROR HOTEL .

Unlike PSYCHO , HORROR HOTEL is riddled with gaffs. At one point, a character empties his gun shooting at a witch, who just stands there unafraid. Good Lord! They are bullet proof! In his frustration, the character then throws the gun at the witch, who ducks! "Hey! Watch where you throw that gun! Somebody could get hurt!"

What the hell?

Though HORROR HOTEL was made on a very low budget, thanks to the sets and other equipment at Shepperton Studios, the production values were quite high and even today with some of the cheapo video production houses like, for example, Diamond Video, the quality of both picture and sound is passably clear: as clear as regular VHS. The end of HORROR HOTEL is really what kills this flick. So mind boggling stupid is it, so ridiculously easy are the evil doers overcome, that you'll be asking yourself, "That was the most obvious thing! Why the hell didn't anyone ever do that first???"

Those of you who saw M. Night Shyamalan's SIGNS will know what I mean.

Because, at turns, this film is creepily great, and the aforementioned mind-boggling stupid bit, I give HORROR HOTEL 3 Negative Shriek Girls for being so Bad It's Good!

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Horror Hotel (1960)

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Public Domain Film – Horror Hotel (1960)

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Horror Hotel Film Review

Also known as City of the Dead, Horror Hotel is a black and white horror film that was released in 1960. The special effects are limited, but the lack of colour and modern FX gizmos have not prevented the Horror Hotel from becoming a firm favorite with many horror film fans.

There is no blood, gore, or guts in he film, and it manages just fine without any of that as well. Whenever something nasty is about to happen the camera cuts away and leaves the rest to the viewer’s imagination: the knife raises . . . clock strikes thirteen, the knife falls (scream) and . . . cut to another scene, where someone is cutting a cake.

So if you are a fan of all that is red and splatters—and like to take a good look at your hero’s guts, as they spill onto the floor—Horror Hotel may not be horrific enough for your tastes. However, if you prefer a more traditional style of horror film, one that offers bags of atmosphere instead of bags of body-parts, Horror Hotel could be right up your street.

The first few moments of the film are set in 1692 and concentrate on the witch, Elizabeth Selwyn, who is about to get burned at the stake. It is quite a spooky scene when the witch-hunters come for her, appearing out of the fog, beating a drum and shouting “Burn witch!”

The next scene is set in a more modern-day setting—at least it was in the ’60s—and finds historian, Professor Driscoll (Christopher Lee) lecturing his class on the subject of witchcraft. Strangely enough, he is focusing on the burning of Elizabeth Selwyn. One of Driscoll’s students, Nan Barlow, shows a firm grasp of the subject and he is impressed.

When Miss Barlow tells him that she would like to go to New England to write her senior paper Driscoll recommends the village of Whitewood to her, and further suggests that she stay at The Raven’s Inn, which is run by a woman called Mrs Newless. In fact, he explains, Whitewood is the very same village where Elizabeth Selwyn was burned.

When Nan arrives at Whitewood she finds a lot of fog and a town that seems unchanged by time. She compares it to a picture out of a history book. Whitewood is always foggy, it seems, and people have a habit of stopping in the street and just staring at strangers while the fog drifts around their feet. They are a strange lot and none of them; it seems at first, are stranger than the local minister, an old blind-man who tends a church that has no congregation. His only message to Miss Barlow is, “Leave before it is too late.” In fact the only normal person that Nan meets is the woman that runs the local book store and it turns out she is the Minister’s granddaughter.

When Nan fails to turn up at a party two weeks later and stands up her boyfriend, Bill, the young man gets worried. He hasn’t heard from Nan since she left, and asks her brother Dick, who is also at the party, to ring up Whitewood and find out if Nan has left yet. Dick doesn’t have a contact number and rings the operator. He asks to be put through to The Raven’s Inn at Whitewood, only to be told that there is no such place.

Horror Hotel features a strong cast and the whole thing is presented quite convincingly. It has a runtime of about one and a quarter hours and lots and lots of fog.

Additional Information

Director:  John Llewellyn Moxey

Dennis Lotis … Richard Barlow Christopher Lee … Prof. Alan Driscoll Patricia Jessel … Elizabeth Selwyn/Mrs. Newless Betta St. John … Patricia Russell Venetia Stevenson … Nan Barlow (as Venetia Stephenson) Valentine Dyall … Jethrow Keane Ann Beach … Lottie Norman Macowan … Reverend Russell Fred Johnson … The Elder James Dyrenforth … Garage attendant (as Jimmy Dyrenforth) Maxine Holden … Sue William Abney … Policeman

• Public Domain Movie: The Devil in a Convent (1899)
• Horrors of Spider Island (1960 – Public Domain Movie)

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• Universal/Paramount/Psycho, Warner Bros. Pictures/The Shining, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/1408

The Best Horror Movies Set In Hotels

It's no secret that two of the most iconic horror movies of all time take place in hotels, but beyond Psycho and The Shining , what are some good scary movies that take place in hotels or motels? This list ranks the scariest hotel horror movies, with the help of your votes. The top spots are almost exclusively reserved for the aforementioned films, but there are plenty of other scary movies set in hotels for you to vote on below.

Although it didn't receive the highest accolades from critics, Identity is actually an entertaining motel horror film with a great twist at the end . Other examples of horror movies with hotels include 1408 , Motel Hell , The Innkeepers , and Eli Roth's Hostel .

Did we somehow miss the scariest hotel horror movie on the list? Add as many films to this poll as you want, as long as they are scary movies about motels, hotels, or hostels.

The Shining

While Psycho often takes the cake as the best horror hotel movie ever created, The Shining is undoubtedly the scariest haunted hotel movie in existence. Stanley Kubrick brought The Overlook Hotel to life in painstaking and mind-altering glory, creating a building that on paper makes no sense, and when realized, becomes all the more terrifying. With the ghosts haunting its halls and danger seemingly around every corner, The Shining became so beloved and revered as a haunted hotel movie that to this very day over 50 years later, fans still desperately seek the opportunity to enter The Overlook Hotel.

• Released : 1980
• Directed by : Stanley Kubrick

The quintessential horror movie set in a hotel, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is a masterpiece the likes of which the horror community rarely sees, and even 60 years later, the film still more than lives up to the hype. A tense, paranoid thriller that diverges into something far more wicked and sinister as time goes on, Psycho is inarguably one of the best horror hotel movies in history. The Bates Motel takes center stage and has grown to become one of the most beloved and recognizable locations in all of horror thanks to its masterful use in this film, becoming a character unto itself. 

• Released : 1960
• Directed by : Alfred Hitchcock

Stephen King and haunted hotels go together like peanut butter and jelly, and in 1408 , he created one of the most terrifying and bizarre ever seen in film. Following a writer who checks into the Dolphin Hotel in order to debunk the supposed supernatural phenomena happening in the rooms, the film quickly delves into complete and utter madness and showcases all the trademarks of a stellar scary hotel movie. With a laundry list of rooms each more terrifying than the last, a creepy concierge, and a neverending feeling of claustrophobia, and if someone is always watching, room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel is one of the most underrated hotels in horror history.

• Released : 2007
• Directed by : Mikael Håfström

When ten strangers find themselves isolated in the remote Nevada desert, they have no choice but to stay at The Four Aces motel, little do they know however that they just entered the playground of a deranged murderer looking to have some fun. While Identity may not have the hallmarks of the traditional supernatural horror hotel movie, it beautifully mixes elements of paranoia, crime, and slasher to create an experience horror fans won't soon forget. The Four Aces motel plays as the perfect backdrop for our poor victims, and by the time the credits roll, viewers will be utterly stunned at the secrets lying inside the walls of the motel.

• Released : 2003
• Directed by : James Mangold

Bringing to life the terrifying fear of being stranded at a creepy hotel after a car breaks down on a long road trip, Vacancy manages to up the stakes of terror by including a crazed and deranged killer who wants them to star in their next snuff film. Showcasing an incredibly creepy cast of staff and some of the most paranoid scenes in modern horror history, Vacancy and its ominous hotel shine in forcing viewers to feel a neverending sense of dread as the walls feel like they are closing in on not only our protagonists but on the viewers themselves. Tense, spooky, and frightfully fun, Vacancy is the blueprint for the best modern motel horror movie. 

• Directed by : Nimród Antal

The film that made travelers of foreign lands never, ever, ever want to stay in a hostel as long as they ever live, Eli Roth's Hostel brought to light a new form of terror, masochistically mixing the horror hotel movie with the splatter film subgenre to create a hybrid so grotesque and revolting, it's hard to watch. The titular hostel in the film is filmed in such a disturbing and uneasy way that it immediately sets viewers up for scare the moment they first see it, and by the time the film ends, even the thought of ever staying at a hostel will make even the most hardcore of horror fans shudder.

• Released : 2005
• Directed by : Eli Roth

The Royal Hotel

In her debut narrative film, the workplace horror “ The Assistant ,” writer/director Kitty Green took the most ordinary setting and made it a tense, nauseating psychological thriller. Pairing again with Julia Garner , her follow-up “The Royal Hotel,” co-written with Oscar Redding , plays like a Gen Z twist on the Australian classic “ Wake in Fright .”

While Green and Redding’s initial inspiration was the 2016 documentary “Hotel Coolgardie,” which explored the volatile sexism faced by twenty-something Finnish packbackers who came to work in an isolated pub near a mining town in the Australian Outback, there is equally as much of Ted Kotcheff ’s 1971 cult film in its DNA. Similar to how “Wake in Fright” explores the tumultuous, violent, and frenzied alcohol culture of the Outback from the point of view of a mild-mannered male school teacher ( Gary Bond ) who slowly succumbs to its madness, Green sets her focus solely on how this violence, which can manifest physically, emotionally, and psychologically, affects the well-being of young women. 

Garner plays Hanna, who is slightly more responsible than her bestie, Liv ( Jessica Henwick ). The duo, who claim to be Canadian because “everyone loves Canadians,” are on holiday in Australia when they become strapped for cash due to Liv’s spending (and most likely her drinking.) They take a temporary live-work job at the titular Royal Hotel, a desolate, faded pub that takes a train, a bus, and a very dusty car ride to get to. It’s the only waterhole for miles—it appears to be the only building within a few hours’ drive. 

The pub is run by owner Billy ( Hugo Weaving ) and his sometime partner Carol ( Ursula Yovich ), whose own bittersweet relationship is punctuated by bursts of violence. Weaving deftly walks that fine line that high-functioning alcoholics often find themselves on, between someone rough but charming and someone who is terrifyingly violent. Yovich plays Carol as a woman who has made a prickly peace with her situation. There was probably love once there between her and Billy, but now she’s mostly there to keep him from drinking himself to death and keep the crusty hands of the mine workers off the girls he hires to keep the pub open. 

The fraying relationship between Hanna and Liv is tested further as they become friendly with the locals. There’s Matty ( Toby Wallace , bringing the same natural dangerous charm he did to his breakout role in “ Babyteeth ”), who has a sweet spot for Hanna. There’s Teeth ( James Frecheville ), whose bumbling sweetness hides a troubling obsessiveness. And there’s Dolly ( Daniel Henshall ), whose menacing gaze at the end of the bar gives him the air of a lion waiting out his prey. 

While Liv embraces the men’s work-hard, party-hard mentality, Hanna remains more reserved, always aware of the danger lurking behind a drunken man’s charm. “My mom drank,” she says at one point, the pregnant pause indicating she’s seen her fair share of how alcohol can change someone in an instant. Even when she does let her guard down a little, her thoughts are always on Liv’s safety and the perilous situation they’ve found themselves in. 

Again, like “Wake In Fright,” Green teases out the tension slowly. At first, everyone’s drunken revelry is just overly boisterous. A glass broken out of careless abandon. A cruel joke told for a harmless laugh. A firecracker in the distance lighting up the night. She fills the frame with happy bodies in motion, laughing, joking, and drinking as the only entertainment in town. But slowly, the situation becomes more threatening. A large, drunken man in the hallway staring into their bedroom. An insult hurled with the cutting force of a sharpened blade. A chair thrown in controlled, intimidating violence. The bodies in the frame grow more numerous, their laughing and movements more ominous and brutal. 

While Green excels in building the social economy of this world and is a master at slow-burn tension, not all of the characters work. Garner, Weaving, Yovich, and Wallace all find deeper psychological layers to their characters through body movements or certain knowing looks. Unfortunately, what makes Hennwick’s Liv tick never quite comes into focus. She makes one terrible decision after another, but other than a line about Australia being the furthest away she could get from her home, the film never spends enough time focusing on her for any of it to make emotional sense. It’s also never very clear how, or sometimes even why, Hanna and Liv are even friends.

Despite this and an abrupt ending that cheapens the richly drawn complexity that came before it, “The Royal Hotel” remains a chilling and tense examination of the Outback’s toxic alcohol-fueled culture. Green continues to establish herself as an insightful chronicler of the minor yet devastating terrors of violent masculinity that many women endure everywhere they go. 

This review was filed from the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. “The Royal Hotel” opens in theaters on October 6th. 

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture. 

• Julia Garner as Hanna
• Jessica Henwick as Liv
• Toby Wallace as Matty
• Hugo Weaving as Billy
• Nick Slater as Lifeguard
• James Frecheville as Teeth
• Kasra Rassoulzadegan
• Kitty Green
• Oscar Redding

Cinematographer

• Michael Latham

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‘Stream’ Review: A Hotel Gets Hellish in Familiar but Lively Gore-Horror Opus From ‘Terrifier’ Producers

The team that sated horror fans’ bloodlust with 'Terrifier 2' returns with another gory killing spree — its tongue somewhat in-cheek, but other body parts scattered everywhere.

By Dennis Harvey

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Though it breaks from their conceptual template — there’s no killer clown — “Stream” also echoes the “Terrifier” films in its general gist, as well as individual plusses and minuses. They’re all movies on the higher-quality end of that peculiar gorehound terrain, in which a surplus of sadistic violence and FX viscera compensates for near-complete disinterest in basic niceties of plot and character. A lot of wholly inept, inert quasi-underground films have been made in that vein. But Fuzz on the Lens productions , however, are colorfully well-crafted within their modest means. They’re good-looking, have professional actors, decent pacing and a degree of humor. What they don’t have is even a whiff of original ideas to alleviate the eventual monotony for anyone not automatically sold on the display of guts galore.

Popular on Variety

The violence is portended by the weirdness of front-desk staffer Mr. Lockwood (a hammy Jeffrey Combs), who claims “the system is down” as an excuse for demanding payments in cash and waving away the disabled wi-fi. What he neglects to mention is that the whole place will soon be sealed shut so unlucky guests can be hunted by four masked maniacs. Those deeds are captured by surveillance cameras for streaming to bet-placing gawkers worldwide.

The rules of this snuff-y enterprise are murky at best. It seems a straight-up slaughter, though points may be awarded for extra nastiness — as in the “Terrifier” opuses, some victims remain alive and conscious a credulity-stretching length of time so more grisly harm can be heaped upon them. Once Roy realizes his family is in grave danger, he acquires an ally in fellow guest Dave (Tim Reid), an armed ex-LAPD officer. But even the occasional reversal in power dynamics doesn’t keep this trapped populace from rapidly dwindling.

With genre-fan favorites like Bill Moseley, Felissa Rose, Tony Todd and others also turning up briefly, “Stream” is very much conceived and executed as one long shoutout to a target audience schooled in the details of every past slasher franchise. Indeed, an overwhelming sense of deja vu often seems the whole point here — the sole surprise factor being an occasional ahead-of-schedule demise for figures we’d assumed would survive longer.

There’s no real backstory for the “game,” and the four mute, murderous primary “players” have little personality, beyond one being a beefy bodybuilder. Two more comprise a sort of interpretive dance duo (which is just as lame as that sounds). As a producer, Leone contributes the special makeup FX, i.e. gore, which is plentiful. But however prolonged, the kills themselves are seldom imaginative or otherwise memorable, visited upon stock characters whose cliche-riddled dialogue gives the variable performers little to work with. 

Nonetheless, director and co-writer Michael Leavy (with d.p. Steven Della Salla, producer sibling Jason Leavy and Robert Privitera) have assembled a slick, energetic entertainment that will please most viewers by delivering exactly what they expect. The semi-jokey tone doesn’t do much to build tension; ditto the rather too-even pace and somewhat bland hotel atmosphere. At two full hours, “Stream” inevitably begins to feel overextended after a certain point — particularly when it reaches a coda that feels tacked on simply to cram in a few more guest stars. 

Still, this unabashedly derivative movie makes so little pretense of aiming for the qualities it lacks, you can hardly begrudge boilerplate slasher enthusiasts the fun they’ll have with it. Let’s just hope the inevitable sequel expands on a fairly bare-bones premise, as the same team’s “Terrifier 2” managed. 

Reviewed online, Aug. 15, 2024. Running time: 123 MIN.

• Production: (U.S.) An Iconic Events release of a Fuzz On The Lens production in association with Laknar Entertainment. Producers: Steven Della Salla, Michael Leavy, Jason Leavy. Executive producers: Naresh Peter Menezes, Lakshmi Menezes, Scott & Tiana Armstrong, Khun Champ, Vivian Nguyen, Lloyd Kozel, Chris Guttadaro, Joe Patrick Marshall, Susan Leavy, Anna Salvadeo, Thomas Smith, Jason Hippely, Stephen Conca, Marcus J. McGill, Hank Greenberg. Co-producers: Phil Falcone, Damien Leone, George Steuber, Bobby C. King, Jamie Root, Marcus Slabine, Craig Loydgren, George Loydgren. 
• Crew: Director: Michael Leavy. Screenplay: Michael Leavy, Robert Privitera, Jason Leavy, Steven Della Salla. Camera: Della Salla. Editor: Michael Leavy. Music: Paul Wiley. 
• With: Jeffrey Combs, Charles Edwin Powell, Tim Reid, Dee Wallace, Wesley Holloway, Sydney Malakeh, Jason Leavy, David Howard Thornton, Liana Pirraglia, Mark Haynes, Daniel Roebuck, Mark Holton, Felissa Rose, Danielle Harris, Tony Todd, Andrew Rogers, Jadon Cal, Isla Cervelli, Chris Guttadaro, Bill Moseley.

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