This was the poster that introduced me to this film, darlings! It was the second half of a double horror bill at the Rivoli Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ, when I was a child. The poster was featured outside the theater, and in the local paper, the Daily Home News. I cannot remember the name of the main feature, because the poster, and the tantalizing title remained etched in my memory.
With just this to go on, I had no idea this was a minor film masterpiece. The way it was marketed, I thought it was some blood splattered piece of trash where people stay at a hotel inhabited by zombies or ghouls, and are murdered in grotesque ways. Sort of a foreshadowing of the slasher films of the Eighties.
It wasn't until my late childhood--ten or beyond--that I realized anyone well known was in it--namely Christopher Lee. That gave me pause, because I knew by then he never appeared in schlock. But it wasn't until my teens, when I tuned in on it almost accidentally, expecting a piece of trash, that I learned what a masterpiece "Horror Hotel" (a trashy title, Americanized from the original, "The City Of The Dead!!!!!!!!!!") was. Since, then, it has been Elizabeth Selwyn all the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How advertising can mislead. If Selwyn could come back, and the ones who cooked up this campaign are still alive, I would hope she would say to them one of her most famous lines--
"I warned you, Lottie!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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