La rossa maschera del terrore

We tend to diminish some movies which doesn't fits in ours pre-established concepts, The Oblong Box is one of this case, an exotic picture mixing gothic horror and sorcery from Africa, however has many qualities to overcame a possible low points, the story is about two brothers from British aristocracy Julian Markham (Vincent Price) who maintain imprisoned at your room Edward (Alister Williamson), such fact took place at Africa where they had profitable business, actually Edward fortuitously killed a native child, by this his face was disfigured by voodoo's ritual, at England under order of Julian his lawyer brings from Africa a native sorcerer to try heal his brother, but he was misleading by the greed lawyer, Edward is hit by poison dart, he states as dead and buried alive, but the body snatchers unearth him to sell to Dr. Newhart (Lee) just for scientific purposes, somehow Edward wake up and made an agreement with the Doctor to stay there, in exchange of money to keep his research ongoing, to make his revenge Edward uses a scarlet hood, the producers put a mundane atmosphere on movie as at brothel's house, offering plenty of slight nudity scenes, spicy sequence, further has a twist on final that worthy waiting for, valuable and underrated!!

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5

We have all kind of barbarities featuring in this dark and moody tale. Only the wicked pen of Edgar Allen Poe could have come up with a tale that blends voodoo, body snatching, medical experiments, brotherly betrayal and a taste of what most likely is the worst imaginable nightmare: being buried alive! Set in the second half of the 19th century, Vincent Price (oh, how I love this man) stars as a wealthy landlord who returned from Africa severely traumatized. His brother got cursed by the aboriginals there and now lives locked up in his room, heavily deformed. But he's still clever enough to plan an escape and pays some small crooks to have him appear dead. Due to several unfortunate events, the plan goes wrong and Sir Edward's supposedly dead body ends up in the laboratory of morbid scientist Christopher Lee (another man I love!)

The entire film carries some sort of unnameable eeriness. The depressing set pieces and colorless locations add a great deal to the sublime horrific atmosphere. All this, together with an intriguing and complex screenplay makes this movie yet another highlight in the careers of Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. Both icons of horror give away amazing performances and it's actually a damn shame they don't share many sequences together. This is a marvelous film from the time that horror still was the greatest genre in cinema. They simply can't deliver movies as good as this anymore. Maybe I'm giving it a little too much praise but you can't but agree with me that at least this kind of horror oldies demand a much wider attention span than the nowadays gore-junk. For that aspect alone, I feel obliged to give it a high rating.

Sir Julian Markham (Vincent Price) is an aristocrat of the late 19th century that keeps his disturbed brother Edward locked up in a tower of his manor; the man has been disfigured by natives in Africa when blamed for the accidental killing of a child. But Edward manages to escape and seeks revenge against Julian.

Director Gordon Hessler -not a top one at all if you see his filmography- gets a sort of morbid and languid atmosphere and settings that help the picture; but too many turns and items in the plot (voo-doo, madness, revenge, killings, treason, body snatching, romance and else- sort of disperse the focus in the main events -to put it somehow- and the final product comes out just standard.

Vincent Price and Cristopher Lee as a doctor that steals corpses for experiments are at their usual level and in some way save the picture (without them "The Oblong Box" would have been a complete failure).

Perhaps the main flaw is the character of Edward that appears too light for a villain or monster and even lacks impact when his ruined face is shown at the end; in fact you feel sorry for the guy since he's not scary at all.

Fans of Price, Lee and Gothic horror won't probably be disappointed but even then just one watch is enough. You always have the feeling that keeping the basic story and making it much more simpler would have made a good product in the genre; but it didn't come out that way.

This was going to be the fourth film directed by Michael Reeves ("Witchfinder General," "The Sorcerers," "She Beast"), who's a filmmaker I'm fascinated by, mostly because of the three intriguing horror films he directed before his untimely death. None of these films were horror classics, but they were unique stories and were more of an edge than most horror films of this era. I was particularly taken with "Witchfinder General" where Vincent Price gave a rare non-hammy performance and was terrific. "The Oblong Box" would have again paired Price and Reeves, but sadly Reeves died due to an accidental overdose during pre-production. Veteran horror director Gordon Hessler took over and made the film more in line with the previous AIP Poe film adaptations, which isn't a bad thing, but it's disappointing to not see what Reeves would have brought to this cycle of films. In this Poe tale, Vincent Price's brother, Alister Williamson, is buried alive, and then reappears wearing a red mask, exacting his bloody revenge. Overall, this film is not as classy or smart as the Roger Corman Poe films, but it's entertaining none-the-less.

This movie was rather good, but it had a major flaw. Throughout the movie they hide one character's face. You know he is disfigured and considering how the people act when they see it you know it must be bad. I was expecting something like I saw in the movie "The Projected Man" (bad movie, but they did a good job with the face). Then finally when you see the face at the end, I wasn't all that impressed. The guy was not all that disfigured. However, I did enjoy how the movie played out as Vincent Price was good as was Christopher Lee. Though I find the opening credits funny when they say Lee is the guest star. How do you have a guest star in a movie? You are never quite sure where the movie is going at times and there are some twists and turns. In the end I had very little pity for the messed up brother, rather I felt sorry for Price's character that had done something wrong, but he had regret over it. The murders could have been done a bit better as they usually involved throats being slit and this did not look to good. For the most part it looked liked the killer was wiping blood on the people's neck. There is a rather interesting scene involving a brothel. Lots of cleavage and even a bare breast or two if you like that sort of thing. Overall I enjoyed it.