La máscara de la muerte roja

Roger Corman has done an outstanding job with this film, possibly the best of his Poe adaptations. Although the film really is an incorporation of two Poe stories....The Masque of the Red Death and Hop-Frog...it is an excellent, atmospheric, quality piece of entertainment. At the core of the film's strength are the performance of Price as the evil, malignant, malicious Prince Prospero, follower of the devil and cruel sovereign of an area plagued with a all-consuming Red Death, and the fabulous period sets and costumes, many borrowed from the film Beckett. Price is at his best, and his turn as Prospero easily ranks as his most sinister and wicked performance(closely running against his portrayal of a witch hunter in The Conquerer Worm). Vincent Price blends outrageous showmanship with intricate subtleties of a man reasoning why he is what he is. The dialogue certainly is more important than the action in the story...a reason why some viewers(younger ones more than likely) will find film a bit tiresome. The sets and costumes are just gorgeous and the film looks like the most lavish ever made by Corman and company. A true modern masterpiece of the horror cinema!

No need to go into storyline details after so many reviews. Looks like Corman's movie is Bergmann for the rest of us. The screenplay's heavy with philosophical themes about God, evil, and death. However, except for the themes and some of the imagery, the movie's a stylistic opposite of the grim Swedish filmmaker's Seventh Seal (1956). Here candy box colors are lavishly piled on top of one another. No shades of gray or bleak shorelines to depress viewers. Instead, it's manic gaiety interspersed with diabolical games of death and corruption. Looks to me like meaningful horror can be done even with a vivid color scheme, contrary to what some b&w purists have held. Then too, the movie shows that Price is quite capable of giving a non-hammy performance as his icily heartless Prospero proves in a tailor-made performance.

For a minute, however, I thought Hollywood might actually carry through with a tough- minded existential theme (a morally indifferent world) that is suggested by such remarks as our making our own heaven and hell or death being the only overarching reality. But no. Even death, it seems, has a soft spot for love and lovers. So at the last minute Hollywood sneaks in, after all. Nonetheless, the movie's easily the best of Corman's adaptations of Poe, echoes of Bergmann or no.

A reviewer linked to this site described "The Masque of the Red Death" as Bergmanesque. A Roger Corman film Bergmanesque? Since I've only seen one Ingmar Bergman film, and it bored me silly, this was not much of an endorsement.

When I was a kid and Corman's Edgar Alan Poe adaptations were new, they scared the be-jeebers out of me. So would have "The Masque of the Red Death". After watching the movie recently, I didn't gain any insight into Mr. Bergman's film style, but I was entertained. And happily, the movie is free of the campy acting that seeps into so many of the Corman opus. Especially good is Vincent Price as the Satan-worshipping Prince Prospero, in whose castle his debauched guests wait out the plague that is ravishing the countryside. Dark and grotesque, this is an excellent example of Corman's work. Actually, one of the best I've seen.

Visually appealing and trippy in its telling, The Masque of the Red Death is a very acquired taste. Directed by Roger Corman, the film stars Vincent Price as the diabolical Prince Prospero who holds fear over a plague infested peasantry while jollying it up in his castle. The screenplay by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell is based upon a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, while part of the film contains a story arc based on another Poe tale titled Hop-Frog. It's the 7th of 8 Corman film adaptations of Poe's works.

Sinister yet beautiful (Nicolas Roeg genius like on photography), "Red Death" has proved to be the most divisive of all the Corman/Poe adaptations. Choosing to forgo blood in favour of black magic dalliance and general diabolism, the film is arguably the most ambitious of all Corman's love affairs with Poe's literary works. With Price gleefully putting gravitas of meanness into Prospero, the film also greatly benefits from the intelligent input to the script from Beaumont (many Twilight Zone credits). This is, strangely, an intellectual type of horror film, offering up observations on the indiscrimination of death and proclaiming that cruelty is but merely a way of life.

God, Satan and a battle of faith, are all luridly dealt with as the story reaches its intriguing and memorable closure. It's a very tough film to recommend with confidence, and certainly it's not a film one wishes to revisit too often (myself having viewed it only twice in 30 years!). However, the one thing that is a cast iron certainty is that it's unlike most horror film's from the 60s. It's also one of Price's best performances. Gone is the camp and pomposity that lingered on many of his other horror characterisations, in its place is pure menace of being. A devil dealer shuffling his pack for all his sadistic worth.

You may feel afterwards that you must have eaten some weird mushrooms, or that the last glass of wine was one too many? You are however unlikely to forget "The Masque of the Red Death" in a hurry. 7/10

The evil Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is riding through the Catania village when he sees that the peasants are dying of Red Death plague. Prospero asks to burn down the village and he is offended by the villagers Gino (David Weston) and his father-in-law Ludovico (Nigel Green). He decides to kill them, but Gino's wife, the young and beautiful Francesca (Jane Asher), begs for the lives of her husband and her father and Prospero brings them alive to his castle expecting to corrupt Francesca. Propero worships Satan and invites his noble friends to stay in his castle that is a shelter of depravity against the plague. When Prospero invites his guests to attend a masked ball, he sees a red hooded stranger and he believes that Satan himself has attended his party. But soon he learns who his mysterious guest is.

"The Masque of the Red Death" is a stylish movie directed by Roger Corman, with wonderful cinematography by Nicolas Roeg and based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Vincent Price has a great performance in the role of an evil Prince that worships Satan and learns that Death has no master and that each man makes his own Heaven and his own Hell. The Death is very similar to the character dressed in black of Ingmar Bergman's "Det sjunde inseglet" (a.k.a. "the Seventh Seal"). My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Orgia da Morte" ("The Orgy of the Dearh")