The Masque of the Red Death (film)
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| The Masque of the Red Death | |
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| Directed by | Roger Corman |
| Produced by | Roger Corman, George Willoughby |
| Written by | Charles Beaumont, R. Wright Campbell, Edgar Allan Poe |
| Starring | Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher |
| Cinematography | Nicolas Roeg |
| Distributed by | AIP Anglo-Amalgamated |
| Release date(s) | 1964 |
| Running time | 90 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Masque of the Red Death is a classic 1964 horror film, directed by Roger Corman, based on the short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1842. It incorporates a sub-plot based on another Poe tale, "Hop-Frog". The film stars Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher and Patrick Magee.
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[edit] Plot Summary
The story is set in a semi-mythic Medieval Europe. The corrupt Satanist Prince Prospero (Price) invites several dozen of the local nobility to his castle for protection against an oncoming plague, the Red Death. The local peasantry, or anyone the Prince suspects of having the plague, are killed by crossbow fire outside the castle walls.
Subplots include the attempted corruption of an innocent Christian village girl, played by actress Jane Asher, the revenge of a dwarf entertainer Hop-Frog upon the brute who abuses his beloved miniature mistress, and the damnation and suicide of Prince Prospero's consort Juliana. The film includes one of Corman's distinctive psychadelic dream sequences.
Prospero orders his guests to attend a masked ball and, amidst a general atmosphere of debauchery and depravity, notices the entry of a mysterious hooded stranger dressed all in red. Believing the figure to be his master, Satan, Prospero, addresses him as 'your Excellency'. The figure reveals himself to be, not Satan but the Red Death itself, further declaring that 'Man Makes his own God, his own Devil' and that Prospero's 'soul has been dead for years'.
Prospero flees through the now-infected crowd who are conducting a danse macabre and is finally cornered and struck down by the Red Death.
Only six people are reported as surviving the plague, all distinguished by their innocence and goodness; a detail that belies the self-description of the Red Death as an indiscriminate killer in an amoral universe without God or the Devil.
[edit] Trivia
- The cinematographer for the movie was Nicholas Roeg, later director of the celebrated horror classic Don't Look Now and Walkabout. The Masque of the Red Death is distinguished from several of Corman's more rushed efforts by its lush cinematography.
- The epilogue, with the Red Death playing cards with a child survivor before meeting with his compatriots, the Black, Yellow and other Deaths, may be seen as an homage to the work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, in particular his epic The Seventh Seal, which featured a chess game between Death and a medieval knight. Corman himself said “The works of Poe and the films of Bergman have been lasting influences on my artistic life, yet my only goal as a filmmaker was to be a good craftsman.” Roger Corman (2006)
- The film is considered the finest of his Poe adaptations, of which there were eight, including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tomb of Ligeia, all starring Vincent Price. It boasts a layer and lyrical script, a distinctive score, lush set design, rich and garish photography and a supremely malevolent performance from Vincent Price.
- The film took eleven weeks to film, far in excess of Corman's usual high-speed three or four weeks. Corman was well known as a journeyman film-maker and a maverick but his intense technical competence and faith in young talent jump-started the careers of several cinematic luminaries, including Jack Nicholson and Francis Ford Coppola as well as the aforementioned Nicholas Roeg.
- Actor Patrick Magee, who features in the film, was a stalwart of the British stage, famously appearing as the depraved Marquis de Sade in the Peter Weiss play [[The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade]] also known as the Marat/Sade. He also appeared in Stanley Kubrick's film of A Clockwork Orange. All may be considered as drawing on the theatrical tradition developed by Antonin Artaud known as the Theatre of Cruelty.
- Dialogue from the movie can be heard during almost two minutes of the gothic metal/doom metal Norwegian band Theatre of Tragedy's most acclaimed song, And When He Falleth, acompained by instrumental arrangements.
- Several short quotes have been used by Entombed on the album Clandestine.
- While in the film Prince Prospero is depicted as being in awe of the Red Death on believing him to be his master; in Poe's book, he is angry at his arrival and believes him to be one of his guests, making a statement against his indifference to the plague and initially goes forward to arrest him.
