The City of the Dead
Year: 1960
Runtime: 78 mins
Language: English
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Visiting a quiet Massachusetts town to study witchcraft, a college student checks into a foreboding inn. She discovers the residents are a hidden community of 300‑year‑old beings who survive by feeding on human blood, granting them unnatural immortality. The truth forces her to confront the chilling secret lurking beneath the town’s calm facade.
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The City of the Dead (1960) – Full Plot Summary & Ending Explained
Read the complete plot breakdown of The City of the Dead (1960), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
In 1692 in fictional Whitewood, Massachusetts, a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn is burned at the stake. Before her death, Selwyn and her accomplice, Jethrow Keane, sold their souls to Lucifer for eternal life and revenge on Whitewood in return for providing the Devil with two yearly virgin human sacrifices on the Hour of Thirteen during Candlemas Eve and the Witches’ Sabbath.
In the present day, after a lecture on witchcraft, Professor Driscoll, a university history professor, advises the eager student Nan Barlow to visit Whitewood during her vacation to study its history. Nan settles in The Raven’s Inn, a hotel run by the inn’s owner, Elizabeth Selwyn (also known as Mrs. Newless), becoming acquainted with the only normal-seeming local, Patricia Russell, who lends her a book on witchcraft. Reading the book, Nan learns that this night is Candlemas Eve.
She is lured to the basement and restrained on a satanic altar by Elizabeth Selwyn and members of her coven. Mrs. Newless then reveals herself to be Elizabeth Selwyn before proceeding to sacrifice Nan.
Two weeks later, Nan’s concerned fiancé, Bill Maitland, and her brother, Richard Barlow, learn The Raven’s Inn does not exist in any phone directory. They are visited by Patricia, who is also concerned with Nan’s disappearance. The men travel separately to Whitewood, and Bill barely survives a car crash caused by an apparition of Selwyn.
Richard reaches Whitewood and meets up with Patricia before visiting her grandfather, Reverend Russell, who reveals that Whitewood is under the control of Selwyn’s coven. Soon after, Patricia is kidnapped as the coven’s sacrifice, and Richard attempts to save her before they are cornered in the graveyard. Professor Driscoll is revealed to be a coven member. A severely-injured Bill arrives at the last minute and succeeds in extricating a large wooden cross from the ground. After being gravely wounded by Selwyn, Bill uses the last of his strength to burn the coven members alive under the cross’s shadow. Selwyn escapes during the chaos. Her pact with the Devil has been undone by the intervention, and Richard and Patricia find her charred corpse in the hotel which was earlier revealed to have been built on the site of her burning.
Last Updated: October 05, 2025 at 12:31
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The City of the Dead Timeline
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