The Masque of the Red Death

 Year of Release:  1964

Director:  Roger Corman

Screenplay:  Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell, based on the short stories "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Hop-Frog" by Edgar Allan Poe

Starring:  Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Medieval Italy, a pestilence called the "Red Death" ravages the countryside.  The evil Prince Prospero (Price) and his friends and courtiers hole up in his palatial castle to wait out the epidemic.  To pass the time, Prospero decrees a lavish masquerade to be held.

This was the seventh of producer/director Roger Corman's series of eight films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and is widely regarded as the best of the bunch.  The script co-written by horror author and Twilight Zone veteran Charles Beaumont and screenwriter R. Wright Campbell combines elements from two Poe stories, "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Hop-Frog" about the brutal vengeance of an abused jester (which makes up the film's main subplot).  Vincent Price who is often seen as very hammy actor, here gives a very strong performance of quiet, silky malevolence.  He is really magnetic here and shows what a good actor he was.  Hazel Court plays Juliana his ill-treated consort, who seeks supernatural vengeance, and Jane Asher plays Francesca, the innocent peasant girl who Prospero seeks to corrupt.  The extraordinarily strange Patrick Magee (best known for his roles in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975)) plays one of Prospero's most depraved friends.  The film's nominal heroes, David Weston as Francesca's square-jawed lover, and Nigel Green as her noble father, barely register.  The film boasts higher production values that the usual Corman effort, and has strong images, with striking colour photography from cameraperson and future director Nicolas Roeg.  There is real atmosphere in the film, with some dashes of sixties psychedelia.  There are some baffling supernatural elements that don't really work, but this is one of Roger Corman's strongest films.

       Vincent Price and Jane Asher in The Masque of the Red Death