Main Cast: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David Weston, Patrick Magee
Release Year: 1964
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Though based on two Edgar Allen Poe stories, Masque of the Red Death relies more upon its mood and atmosphere than its story values for its success. During a devastating 12th-century plague called "The Red Death," the decadent, devil-worshipping Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) holds court over a bizarre masked ball. Already established as a sadistic torturer, Prospero insists that his "guests" indulge in numerous depraved games, most of them ending with someone's death. Only two innocents are permitted to escape intact, but they go through the torments of the Damned to do so. Hazel Court is on hand as a Satanist who brands her breast for Price's bored amusement, while Patrick Magee is horribly burned to death by "Hop Frog" (Skip Martin), Price's demonic flunkey. The literally diabolical performance of Vincent Price is superbly complemented throughout by the crimson-dominated cinematography of Nicholas Roeg. Unlike many of Roger Corman's economical Price/Poe projects, The Masque of the Red Death boasts a generous budget, which the canny filmmaker exploits to the utmost. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Roger Corman was nearing the end of his cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations when he made The Masque of the Red Death, the best and the grimmest film in the series; while such earlier Poe adaptations as Tales of Terror and The Raven seemed to show Corman getting bored with his own formula, turning Poe's stories into comedies, here he creates a dark, somber mood that's the perfect match for the story. Corman was always a capable visual stylist, but he crafted the best-looking film of his career with Nicolas Roeg as his cameraman, generating a powerful sense of both luxury and dread. While Vincent Price often approached lackluster material with a wink and a nudge, here he treats the screenplay by Charles Beaumont and Robert Wright Campbell with respect, and his Prince Prospero ranks with the most sinister performances of his career. The Prince's cold, blunt evil is never leavened with comic relief (his smile is more alarming than his scowl), and it seems nearly as disquieting to the cast as to the audience. Corman stalwart Hazel Court gives a strong performance that helped make her a favorite of horror buffs, and Jane Asher is excellent as the innocent sullied by Prospero's corruption. Like most of Corman's Poe adaptations, it doesn't always honor the source material (the original story is a bit sketchy to make much of a film on its own), but The Masque of the Red Death probably gets the spirit of Poe's original onto the screen better than any of Corman's other projects; anyone approaching this film for a campy laugh may be quite startled by what they find. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Nigel Green - Ludovico; Skip Martin - Hop Toad; John Westbrook - Man in Red; Gaye Brown - Senora Escobar; Julian Burton - Senor Veronese; Doreen Dawn - Anna-Marie; Paul Whitsun-Jones - Scarlatti; Jean Lodge - Scarlatti's Wife; Verina Greenlaw - Esmeralda; Brian Hewlett - Lampredi; Harvey Hall - Clistor; David Davies; Sarah Brackett; Robert Brown - Guard
Credit
Robert Jones - Art Director, Jack Carter - Choreography, Laura Nightingale - Costume Designer, Roger Corman - Director, Ann Chegwidden - Editor, David Lee - Composer (Music Score), George Partleton - Makeup, Alex Thomson - Camera Operator, Daniel Haller - Production Designer, Nicolas Roeg - Cinematographer, Roger Corman - Producer, George W. Willoughby - Producer, George Blackwell - Special Effects, Richard Bird - Sound/Sound Designer, Charles Beaumont - Screenwriter, Robert Wright Campbell - Screenwriter, R. Wright Campbell - Screenwriter, Edgar Allan Poe - Short Story Author
The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is an American International Pictureshorror film starring Vincent Price in a tale about a prince who terrorizes a plague-ridden peasantry while merrymaking in a lonely castle with his jaded courtiers. The film was directed by Roger Corman; the screenplay by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell was based upon an 1842 short story of the same name by American author Edgar Allan Poe. The film is one in a series of eight Corman film adaptations of Poe's works, and incorporates a sub-plot based on another Poe tale, "Hop-Frog". The Masque of the Red Death has been televised in America and has been released on DVD.
The story is set in a semi-mythical medieval Europe. The corrupt Satanist Prince Prospero invites several dozen of the local nobility to his castle for protection against an oncoming plague, the Red Death. The local peasantry, or anyone that the Prince suspects of being infected by the plague, are killed by crossbow fire outside the castle walls, or their villages are burned to the ground.
Subplots include the abduction and attempted corruption of Francesca, an innocent Christian peasant girl, the revenge of a dwarf entertainer Hop-Toad upon the brute who abuses his beloved miniature mistress, and the Satanic self- initiation and downfall of Prince Prospero's consort Juliana. The film includes one of Corman's distinctive psychedelic dream sequences.
Prospero orders his guests to attend a masked ball, with the stipulation that no one is to wear red. At the ball, amidst a general atmosphere of debauchery and depravity, Prospero notices the entry of a mysterious hooded stranger dressed all in red. Believing the figure to be an ambassador from his master, Satan, Prospero addresses him as "your Excellency". As the ball is transformed into a danse macabre, the red-masked figure asks why Prospero keeps calling him "your Excellency", declaring "I have no title". Realizing his error, Prospero rips off the red mask, revealing his own face.
The figure is not an emissary of Satan, but the Red Death himself, declaring that "When you look into the face of Death, you see yourself. Each man makes God for himself — his own heaven, his own hell."
Prospero attempts to flee through the now-infected crowd, but his red-cloaked self is always in front of him. The Red Death finally corners him, asks him, "Why should you be afraid to die? Your soul has been dead for a long time", and strikes him down.
In an epilogue, the Red Death is playing with his Tarot cards with a young child, laughing as he shows her a card. He then picks up the cards and puts the deck in his robes as other similarly cloaked figures gather around him, each wearing a different colour: the "Green Death", the "Yellow Death", the "Black Death", etc. They discuss among themselves the numbers of people each of them had 'claimed' that day, each remorseful of their endless terrible task. When asked of his work, the Red Death says to them "I claimed many, only six remain." The cloaked figures then file offscreen in a grim procession.
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