The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Film: The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Stars: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David Weston
Director: Roger Corman
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

While we didn't get to all of the movies I was hoping to see, it is time for our horror movie marathon to end as it's post-Halloween and we're moving into a new season (I need to start catching more Oscar movies in theaters and we will be encountering the biggest horror of them all: Election Day).  So we will be reviewing today and tomorrow the final two pictures, and hopefully you liked this as we'll continue next October with another season of classic horror films.  But first, it would have been wrong for me to do a month of pre-1970 horror and not invite two of the biggest names of that era: Vincent Price and Roger Corman.  While I have definitely seen some of Price's movies of this ilk, it had been years (I was probably a kid when I last caught one of these), so I was genuinely curious to see how this held up in comparison to my memories.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe of the same name (and also incorporates another Poe story, "Hop-Frog" into its midst).  The movie centers around Prince Prospero (Price), a sadistic man who worships Satan and has an endless parade of sexually-charged parties at his castle.  After realizing that the Red Death (a disease) has spread to the village, he orders it burned to the ground, sparing only a beautiful young woman named Francesca (Asher, most famous today for being the one-time fiancée of Paul McCartney during the heyday of the Beatles) who is devoted to God and won't give in to his advances, as well as her father and lover.  At the castle, we also meet Prospero's lover Juliana (Court), who has decided to wed Satan to be closer to Prospero.  The movie unfolds pretty strangely after this, with a focus on the satanic rituals that Prospero and Juliana do to each other, with a subplot of Francesca and her lover Gino (Weston) trying to escape (her father is killed at a dinner party by Prospero for entertainment).  In the waning hours of the film, Juliana is murdered by Prospero's falcon for being too boastful, and during Prospero's masked ball, the Red Death literally (he's played by Price in a mask) comes for he and his party guests, killing them all in a ballet where all of their faces turn red.  There's a morbid, Bergman-esque final scene where the cloaked Red Death comes to greet other deaths (the Yellow Death, the Violet Death, etc, all code for different diseases) and claims to have murdered more than any of them.  The film ends with them walking offscreen in procession with a quote by Poe across the screen.

I will start out by saying I truly didn't like the first half of the film.  The heightened sexuality of it felt strange and a bit stiff, with Francesca only being valued for her bosom (featured prominently in most shots by Corman, which after seeing the way he lensed Court...this seemed to be a pattern), and Price being more melodramatically dull than campy fun.  I also will admit right now that I have a pretty low tolerance for anything satanic in cinema, so that coming up as a key subplot made my skin crawl a bit (this is why I shy away from some modern-day horror films).  Plus, other than Price there is no interesting acting happening in this movie at all-Court & Asher seem so one-note it almost feels intentional, and the other side players are nonentities in terms of the plot.

The second half is far better, and almost saves the film.  Prospero's cruelty comes on full display (giving Price a chance to elevate his work), and you almost think that he's in on it with the Red Death.  He oversees the violent end of Juliana, and then does nothing to stop the death of a friend of his who is burned alive as entertainment for the guests in a trick perpetrated against him for slapping a woman at the beginning of the film.  When the final death ballet comes and the Red Death confronts the evil Prospero, we learn that his blasphemies will pay a price, and while the message of the film's final moments are unclear, it's obvious that Corman is trying for something profound.

That lack of clarity is why I'm giving this a two even though I'll definitely have to investigate a Corman picture in the future.  The movie seems to want to be more serious than it actually is, but if it's addressing some sort of 1960's-era plight, it was lost on me.  The movie is interesting, and I wonder if with a more substantial Poe plot Corman might make a more impressive film (perhaps The Fall of the House of Usher).  But I will say I left intrigued but unimpressed by this particular work.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Freaks, The Ghost of Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, The House of Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera