The Masque of the Red Death may have already been discussed to death on Swampflix. It was Movie of the Month in February 2015 (so slightly before my time), was reviewed in conversation with its 1989 remake (Adrian Paul?!), and served as inspiration for a Mardi Gras costume as immortalized here. But I just saw it for the first time and was completely blown away by it. It’s the exact flip side of Premature Burial, figuratively, and—since they were released together on a double sided MGM Midnite Movies DVD—literally. I couldn’t believe just how cool it was, especially since Roger Corman, despite how dearly I hold him in my heart, does not have a reputation for being a good filmmaker. The set & costume designs were really terrific, and Vincent Price is an absolute great in this role, treating the whole thing as if he’s doing Shakespeare at The Globe. 

Price plays Prince Prospero, whom I always imagined from the original Edgar Allan Poe short story as being a much younger man, possessed of a kind of haughtiness of youthful royalty. Here, he is instead portrayed by the fifty-three-year-old Price, and his indifference towards the suffering of his subjects is not an aristocratic apathy toward the suffering of the poor as he and his sexy friends (as I always imagined them based on their descriptions as being “hale and light-hearted”) wait out an epidemic. Prospero is instead an out-and-out worshipper of the devil who takes delight in committing acts of evil and depravity and who spends much of the film trying to undermine the faith of a peasant girl named Francesca (Jane Asher). As the film opens, Prospero and his men ride carelessly through a village in his domain, narrowly avoiding trampling a child to death in the thoroughfare through the quick intervention of Gino (David Weston). When the prince stops in the village, he takes umbrage at the underhanded things being said about him, and he plans to kill both Gino and another man named Ludovico (Nigel Green), but Francesca intervenes on their behalf and Prospero humors her; he tells her to choose which one will die, but she cannot choose between her beloved and her father (the former and the latter, respectively). When Prospero learns that there is plague in the village, he cuts his visit short and takes all three back to his castle to deal with them later, and orders the village burnt to the ground. 

I mentioned before that Corman wasn’t known for being one of the greats, but what he was known for in his time and beyond is that he was a very economical filmmaker. When writing about Targets years ago, I mentioned an anecdote in which Corman said that he had managed to shoot entire movies in two days; the Corman interview that is the only special feature to speak of on this home video release is pretty illuminating about his process. When talking about American International Pictures’ higher-ups, he says that they learned about a special tax credit that the UK was offering for films shot there. Feeling that they were leaving money on the table by not taking advantage of it, AIP relocated Corman from his normal filming environs and sent him to Associated British Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England (where Jamaica Inn was filmed!). Corman praises this decision, as it allowed him to hire actor Patrick Magee, whose performance as Prospero’s friend Alfredo conveys both vulnerability and menace in a way that Corman highlighted when meditating on the making of the film. 

Also here in the castle is Julianna (Hazel Court, who was also in Premature Burial), Prospero’s mistress who has heretofore enjoyed the fruits of being Prospero’s concubine without having to commit to marriage. The presence of Francesca (and Julianna’s eviction from her own suite to make way for her) complicates these matters, prompting Julianna to commit to going “all the way” in her dark studies and present herself to the devil as his willing bride. She goes through with the final ceremony and then the film goes into a weird psychedelic dream in which she’s attacked by an entire United Colors of Benetton ad’s worth of international stereotypes before she gets pecked to death by one of Prospero’s birds. This might be part of what makes this one so memorable and novel, as the film has all of the trappings of being a very different, Shakespeare-for-the-BBC, self-serious film, but because Roger’s at the helm, he brings a little bit of that Hollywood flavor to it so we also get to have a series of excitingly violent sequences, including the burning of Francesca’s village, Prospero murdering a guest who arrives late to the party with a crossbow, dungeon-based sword-fighting, a man being burned alive in a gorilla costume, and the aforementioned death-by-bird. What’s also impressive is the scale of this one, as production was completed in a mere four weeks, and yet there are many impressive camera movements around the ballroom where the festivities largely take place while the dancers in the background never lose a single step in their choreography. In fact, Corman said that he considers it to be a 3.5-week picture that just happened to take four weeks to complete because of what he considered to be a slower pace. (James Cameron is still sour about British crew’s slow pace making Aliens, and Stanley Kubrick was likewise vexed by the high number of tea breaks taken during the making of Full Metal Jacket, which is not bad company for Corman to find himself, to be honest.)

I had quite a good time with this one. It’s very well made, has extremely high production values, and is never dull for a single moment. The only really puzzling thing about it is the casting of Esmerelda; without watching the Corman interview that explained it, I would never have known that the child actress was supposed to be portraying an adult little person, especially as they had her in the same scenes with Hop-Toad, who was portrayed by an actual little person (Skip Martin). This confusion works in the context in the first scene in which she appears, as we see that Alfredo talks about her with a kind of lust that helps to illuminate the depths of the depravity that Prosper’s boon companions are filled with. In her only other scene, when Hop-Toad is preparing for his vengeance on Alfredo for striking Esmerelda, he warns her to be ready to flee the castle, and she speaks with an adult voice, which didn’t make sense until Corman admitted in the interview that he couldn’t find a little person actress for the role in England and cast her with eight-year-old Verina Greenlaw instead. Just have that in mind when you check this one out. And you should! 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond