The Masque of the Red Death (1964) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 20

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Be safe. Masque up!

Adapted from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death is a cautionary tale about power and being too concerned with one’s status versus proper hygiene. Vincent Price chews up the scenery in this Roger Corman directed film to the delight of audiences.

Before Viewing

This trailer for this film, apparently based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, has costumed revelers at a party watching an ape (or a person in an ape costume-hard to be sure in these 1960s movies) assault a woman. Vincent Price is shown in his normal moody self as he acts creepy around a young woman. He then rips the face mask off a person clad all in red, revealing his own face. The Masque of the Red Death appears to be an extremely stylized film, and may be creepier than it seems.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

Outside the village of Catania, an old woman (Sarah Brackett) comes upon a figure dressed entirely in red (John Westbrook). He gives her a white rose that turns red with a wave of his hand and indicates the day of their deliverance from Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is at hand. Prospero comes to the town to take their harvest and notices a peasant dead with red blotches on their face: The Red Death. He orders the village burned to the ground.

Two men resist the Prince’s actions and he orders them executed. Francesca (Jane Asher) begs for their lives to be spared. Prospero has her choose which should die, her lover, Gino (David Weston) or her father, Ludovico (Nigel Green). She cannot, and so for his amusement, he takes all three back to his castle. With his courtesans present, Prospero presents a young dancer Esmerelda (Verina Greenlaw) and dwarf Hop-Toad (Skip Martin). Esmerelda is struck on the face when she knocks over a goblet of wine belonging to Alfredo (Patrick Magee).

Prospero gives a proclamation about his upcoming masquerade that no one is to wear red. He engages in a series of debates with Francesca about God, Christianity, and belief. Prospero is a Satanist and wants to save Francesca’s soul by teaching her the ways his master. She then watches him kill two nobles that approach the castle and beg for haven from the Red Death. Elsewhere, Hop-Toad comes to Alfredo with a splendid idea for a costume. He convinces the older man to dress up as an Ape, and Hop-Toad will be his trainer.

Prospero’s consort Juliana (Hazel Court) wishes to be initiated into his cult, and brands her bosom with an upside-down cross to prove her worth. She feels pity for Francesca and arranges for her to escape the castle with Gino and her father. Unfortunately, Prospero finds out and stops them. He offers the two men five daggers, of which one is coated in poison. They may either kill themselves or each other. When Ludovico goes for the Prince with the knife he is killed. Gino is cast out of the castle to take his chances with the Red Death.

A group of the remaining peasants that have not been struck by the plague come to the castle walls to beg forgiveness. Prospero orders them all killed, save one child. In the woods, Gino meets a man in red who tells him to avoid going back to the castle for a bit. Juliana begins her ritual and suffers a series of hallucinations of various human sacrifices centered around her. Prospero’s falcon attacks and kills her, and the Prince announces that she is now married to Satan.

At the masque, Alfredo arrives dressed as an Ape, soon to be strung up on a chandelier by Hop-Toad. The dwarf douses him in brandy and lights him on fire. Prospero approves. The Prince then spots an individual in a red costume. Frustrated that his rule was broken, he follows the figure into his black room, where it is revealed the person is the Red Death itself. Prospero requests that Francesca remain unafflicted as he and all his partygoers die. The film ends with seven colored deaths meeting on a foggy hillside discussing the many people they have killed.

“If you believe, my dear Francesca, you are… gullible. Can you look around this world and believe in the goodness of a god who rules it? Famine, Pestilence, War, Disease and Death! They rule this world.” – Prospero

The Masque of the Red Death was director Roger Corman’s seventh of eight films adapting works by writer Edgar Allan Poe, all released between 1960 and 1964! 31 Days of Horror has covered two of these films previously, the first, House of Usher, and the last, The Tomb of Ligeia. As with those two other films, The Masque of the Red Death was also based on a short story, but combines elements from a second tale, “Hop-Frog” to flesh out the film a bit with a secondary storyline. The film appears to be a morality play, exploring heinous behavior by elitists over peasants as well as other peers with a slightly lower status.

Vincent Price does a great job playing a terribly horrible person. His Prospero takes pleasure in creating misery within others. Partially for his own gratification but also for his belief in Satan. As the film opens, he chooses to burn the village to protect himself from the Red Death which had begun to infect the villagers. He spares Francesca, her father, and Gino for his own amusement, but also because they had not had contact with the infected. Prospero takes his safety first. He also refers to the killing villagers seeking asylum at the castle, “a kindness,” as if he did a noble deed. He means that it was better than letting them starve, or become infected, though there were other choices. But it’s not just those of a lower station that he belittles.

Prosepro proudly admits to corrupting all the people within his castle for his “master.” These other Dukes and noble folk mean nothing to him other than a means to an end. He leads them to excess. He scorns them, and chides them to play as animals for their embarrassment and his amusement. His treatment also extends to his disciple, his mistress or consort, Juliana. As one that he has been training, possibly as a a protege, he is terribly cruel towards her. Granted her transgressions go against his litany of terror, as she makes plans to help Francesca and the others escape. He ends up making an example of her, pretending that it is part of her ritual for invocation. He lets her take the potion and have her hallucinations before sending his falcon to kill her–as he would a rat.

Thematically The Masque of the Red Death also deals with the war between ideologies. Prospero, a satanist, and Francesca, a Christian, both have strong morals on either side of the spectrum. She would give herself to protect others and prefers to see the good in others. While Prospero calls her belief gullibility. For him faith is his reality. What he can see and feel and experience. His reality is one in which he protects himself the best way he can: inside a castle, far away from infection. But disease cares not for class, creed, or religion. In this film, Francesca (and Gino to an extent) is spared infection by a request from Prospero. He asks the man in red to pass her by, having never encountered a person of a will as strong as his. And while Prospero seemed to take his quarantine procedures seriously, they were still not the best methods. I mean, who has a giant party with hundreds of people during a pandemic?

One thing this film did was correct a long held misunderstanding. I had assumed that the word “masque” was just a ye olde version of the word “mask,” which would make sense with the masquerade ball Prospero hosts. That’s not accurate however. Prospero refers to having a masque, which appears to be a shorthand for masquerade. But it’s also a form of dramatic entertainment  performed by masked players. This becomes a meta commentary not only on the masque(querade) where the Red Death killed everyone, but also the film itself could be seen as a masque (dramatic entertainment) about the Red Death. But yes, the Red Death is also masked within the film. Poe, and Corman, personify this disease, along with a number of other colored plagues, including one dressed in black, which is presumably the Black Plague. The Red Death wears a red mask that when removed reveals Prospero’s own diseased face, echoing what the Red Death has told him, “your soul has been dead for a long long time.”

The Masque of the Red Death is a solid film, with fun performances by all. It’s one of the more heady stories that Corman has adapted but not as good as some of the other adaptations in terms of terror and horror. Price’s Prospero is really too much of a jerk to be cheered for, and the title really gives away the final moments of the film. It seems pretty obvious that the Red Death would get everyone (or most everyone) in the end.

Assorted Musings

• The film was photographed by cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, who would go on to direct films such as Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth, and The Witches.
• Elements of the film, specifically the foggy forest where the man in red plays with tarot cards, is reminiscent of scenes from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, where a man plays chess with death in a similarly bleak setting.