Sometimes compared to Psycho for its doubled narrative structure, The City of The Dead begins with college student Nan Barlow visiting the fog-shrouded town of Whitewood, Massachusetts, the site of a notorious witch burning in 1692, in order to research her thesis on the Occult. When Nan goes missing, her brother and boyfriend investigate and uncover a terrifying, centuries-old satanic conspiracy beyond their wildest nightmares. Director John Moxey makes the most of his low-budget circumstances with expressionist panache zooming into looming faces and bathing every corner with shadows and fog.

Do you dare look through the eyes of the Marquis de Sade? How about through his eye sockets? That’s just one of the shocking special effects shots in this Technicolor creepfest starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Christopher Maitland, a collector of Occult objects who acquires the Marquis’ skull only to become possessed by the evil spirit it holds within. Christopher Lee plays a fellow collector who tries to warn his friend before the skull strikes again! Director Freddie Francis, better known as the cinematographer on such films as Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), fills the Cinemascope frame with the lurid details of the devilish artifacts in Maitland’s study, stoking the atmosphere of doom and dread in this psychological tale of terror.