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Roger Corman is a strange figure in the world of film. The man is amazingly prolific, having directed 55 films and produced some 385 more during his long career in the industry, which goes back as far as 1954’s Monster from the Ocean Floor. He’s also mentored some of the biggest names in the industry, including James Cameron, Joe Dante, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese, which as far as track records go is pretty solid. Despite his filmography geared almost entirely towards B-movies (and not what you might call ‘cult classics’ if the original Little Shop of Horrors is any indication), the man has made an impression in the medium that won’t soon be washed away. Hell, he was even the youngest director in history to receive a retrospective at the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. Pretty good for a guy who makes monster movies for a living.
Perhaps the most well-known work of Corman’s were in the mid-60’s, with a series of films all based around the works of famous American author Edgar Allen Poe. Though they often only bared a tangential relationship to the actual events in the original texts, they were colourful, just violent enough, and featured some of biggest horror icons of the age, such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Vincent Price. Alouth they’re all weird enough to earn a position on this list, the one I’ve decided to go for this time around is adapted from one of my preferred Poe tales: even though you already know the name of it from the title, it’s The Masque of the Red Death.
If you’ve ever read the original story by Poe, then you already have some idea as to what the story is all about; dickish Prince Prospero from some medieval land holds a grand costume party for all his royal friends in his castle while all the peasants outside die of the plague, and receives a grisly surprise in the end. So it is in the film version, but because that wasn’t enough to fill out a full-length movie, Corman decided to make his own alterations to flesh it out. We get the required attractive romantic leads Francesca (played by the very Caucasian Jane Asher) and Gino (played by some guy), an entire subplot based on another Poe story is added (“Hop-Frog”, the main characters of which are renamed Hop-Toad and Esmeralda in this film for some unknown reason), and of course Prospero is a Satanist. Yes, Prince Prospero (played by the legendary Vincent Price) is now a full-blown Devil worshipper, trying to corrupt the sweet, virginal Christian Francesca to a life of implied debauchery. The grand theological debate might have made for a good theme to focus on, but the movie is so biased towards a certain side that it all feels hokey. Francesca acts like someone glued a red wig to a block of wood, and when the grand defense of Christianity is ‘I’m too stupid to know better, but I know you’re bad because reasons’ (paraphrased), that debate ends up seeming a bit uneven. Which makes it seem like this is a religiously themed movie in America that isn’t pro-Christian, but Prospero comes off as such a murdering dickbag that all his valid criticisms and redeemable actions fall by the wayside. I know I shouldn’t expect that much controversy from some 60s B-movie, but if they’re going thrown those elements into a story they should at least try and do something novel with it, otherwise what was the damn point? It could’ve been just the love triangle between Gino, Francesca, and Prospero without any of the Satan crap, and it the story could have played out exactly the same. I guess the Devil was big that year.
My creative problems with the story aside, Masque of the Red Death is an okay horror/thriller movie for its time. I’ve always loved older films explosive use of color, and this movie is based on color. Vincent Price steals the show of course, as he does with almost every film he’s been in. It’s certainly a twist on an old favorite, and if you know to expect something hokey going into it, this might be a good film to get into this Halloween.
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