The Masque of the Red Death

Roger Corman has done an outstanding job with this film, possibly the best of his Poe adaptations. Although the film really is an incorporation of two Poe stories....The Masque of the Red Death and Hop-Frog...it is an excellent, atmospheric, quality piece of entertainment. At the core of the film's strength are the performance of Price as the evil, malignant, malicious Prince Prospero, follower of the devil and cruel sovereign of an area plagued with a all-consuming Red Death, and the fabulous period sets and costumes, many borrowed from the film Beckett. Price is at his best, and his turn as Prospero easily ranks as his most sinister and wicked performance(closely running against his portrayal of a witch hunter in The Conquerer Worm). Vincent Price blends outrageous showmanship with intricate subtleties of a man reasoning why he is what he is. The dialogue certainly is more important than the action in the story...a reason why some viewers(younger ones more than likely) will find film a bit tiresome. The sets and costumes are just gorgeous and the film looks like the most lavish ever made by Corman and company. A true modern masterpiece of the horror cinema!

The evil Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is riding through the Catania village when he sees that the peasants are dying of Red Death plague. Prospero asks to burn down the village and he is offended by the villagers Gino (David Weston) and his father-in-law Ludovico (Nigel Green). He decides to kill them, but Gino's wife, the young and beautiful Francesca (Jane Asher), begs for the lives of her husband and her father and Prospero brings them alive to his castle expecting to corrupt Francesca. Propero worships Satan and invites his noble friends to stay in his castle that is a shelter of depravity against the plague. When Prospero invites his guests to attend a masked ball, he sees a red hooded stranger and he believes that Satan himself has attended his party. But soon he learns who his mysterious guest is.

"The Masque of the Red Death" is a stylish movie directed by Roger Corman, with wonderful cinematography by Nicolas Roeg and based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent Price has a great performance in the role of an evil Prince that worships Satan and learns that Death has no master and that each man makes his own Heaven and his own Hell. The Death is very similar to the character dressed in black of Ingmar Bergman's "Det sjunde inseglet" (a.k.a. "the Seventh Seal"). My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Orgia da Morte" ("The Orgy of the Dearh")

Once again scripted by Charles Beaumont and produced/directed by Roger Corman, Masque of the Red Death is a much-beloved horror film from a lost era. Movies will never again be made quite like this. It's filled with the same mad characters, gorgeous sets, and colorful dream sequences we're used to seeing from Corman. Vincent Price, however hammy he may be, is perfect as the Satan-worshiping Prince Prospero. This very well could be the most evil I have ever seen Price. The cast is fine but Patrick Magee is definitely worth mentioning. He is delightfully wicked. And the character of the Red Death itself is cryptic and cool. This is one of the most colorful horror pictures ever made. The sets are grand, the story is marvelous, and the ending is brilliant. Masque of the Red Death is perhaps the most expensive Poe production, but it's still not Corman's best. I leave that honor to The Pit and the Pendulum.

Roger Corman frequently gets a hard time from misguided movie snobs who look down on b-grade and exploitation movies. While Corman undoubtedly was involved in more than his fair share of silly schlock (usually as a producer rather than a director), he also made some wonderful movies that are criminally underrated. Some of his best movies as a director were the series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations he made in the Sixties starring horror legend Vincent Price. 'The Masque Of The Red Death' is quite possibly the very best in the series. It is certainly the most unusual and imaginative. Now I'm not sure whether it was filmed in Britain or not, but Price is supported by a largely British cast which includes Jane Asher ('The Stone Tape'), Hazel Court (Hammer's 'Curse Of Frankenstein'), and the legendary character actor Patrick Magee ('Dementia 13', 'A Clockwork Orange'). That and the fact that the cinematographer is none other than Nic Roeg(!), later to become famous for such classics as 'Performance', 'Don't Look Now' and 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', leads me to believe that it was made in England. The involvement of the aforementioned, and a strong script co-written by the talented Charles Beaumont (try and track down some of his short stories, you'll be impressed), make this a memorable experience. But Corman's direction should be given credit, and the single best thing about it is Vincent Price himself, who gives one of his very best performances. This movie has it all, striking visuals, an intriguing plot (with a stronger Satanic theme than generally seen in most mainstream horror movies), good acting, suspense, plenty of atmosphere, and some striking dream-like imagery many have compared to Bergman's 'Seventh Seal'. 'The Masque Of The Red Death' is one of Roger Corman's greatest achievements and one of the very best horror movies made in the 1960s. It has lost very little of its impact over the years and is still essential viewing for any horror fan, or anybody who appreciates imaginative cinema.

No need to go into storyline details after so many reviews. Looks like Corman's movie is Bergmann for the rest of us. The screenplay's heavy with philosophical themes about God, evil, and death. However, except for the themes and some of the imagery, the movie's a stylistic opposite of the grim Swedish filmmaker's Seventh Seal (1956). Here candy box colors are lavishly piled on top of one another. No shades of gray or bleak shorelines to depress viewers. Instead, it's manic gaiety interspersed with diabolical games of death and corruption. Looks to me like meaningful horror can be done even with a vivid color scheme, contrary to what some b&w purists have held. Then too, the movie shows that Price is quite capable of giving a non-hammy performance as his icily heartless Prospero proves in a tailor-made performance.

For a minute, however, I thought Hollywood might actually carry through with a tough- minded existential theme (a morally indifferent world) that is suggested by such remarks as our making our own heaven and hell or death being the only overarching reality. But no. Even death, it seems, has a soft spot for love and lovers. So at the last minute Hollywood sneaks in, after all. Nonetheless, the movie's easily the best of Corman's adaptations of Poe, echoes of Bergmann or no.