The Masque of the Red Death (1964 film)
The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 horror film directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. The story follows a prince who terrorizes a plague-ridden peasantry while merrymaking in a lonely castle with his jaded courtiers. The screenplay, written by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell, was based upon the 1842 short story of the same name by American author Edgar Allan Poe, and incorporates a subplot based on another Poe tale, "Hop-Frog". Another subplot is drawn from "Torture by Hope" by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam . It is the seventh of a series of eight Corman film adaptations largely based on Edgar Allan Poe's works made by American International Pictures. Plot. On a mountain in medieval Italy, an old woman meets a red-cloaked figure shuffling Tarot cards. The figure gives the woman a white rose, which then turns red and dappled with blood. Prince Prospero, a Satanist, visits the village over which he holds dominion, and is angrily confronted by two poor and starving villagers, Gino and Ludovico. Upon discovering the old woman who encountered the red figure, infected with a deadly plague known  as the Red Death, Prospero orders the village burned. He abducts Gino and Ludovico, as well as Gino's lover and Ludovico's daughter Francesca, and then sends out invitations to his castle to the local nobility. At the castle, Francesca is finely dressed and tutored in etiquette by Prospero's jealous consort, Juliana, and the gathered nobility are entertained by a pair of dwarf dancers, Esmeralda and Hop-Toad. When Esmeralda accidentally knocks over a goblet of wine, one of Prospero's guests, Alfredo, strikes her. Juliana expresses her wish to Prospero to be initiated into his Satanic cult , and that night Francesca is terrified to discover Juliana and Prospero lying in a hypnotic state in Prospero's Black Room. Gino and Ludovico are being held prisoner within Prospero's castle, with the castle guards teaching them armed combat so that they can fight to the death against one another as entertainment for the nobility, which they refuse to do. Juliana performs a ritual in the Black Room, pledging her soul to Satan. She gives Francesca the key to Ludovico and Gino's cell and tells her to leave. During their escape, Gino and Ludovico fight and kill three  guards but are then recaptured by Prospero, who points out to Francesca how her father and Gino have sinned. At a feast, Prospero summons Gino and Ludovico. He has them each choose daggers to cut themselves with. One of the daggers is coated with poison; when Ludovico attempts to stab Prospero with it, Prospero kills him with his sword. He then casts Gino out of the castle to be killed by the Red Death. In the woods, Gino encounters the red-cloaked figure, who presents him with a Tarot card which he says represents "Mankind". In the Black Room, Juliana  undergoes her final initiation ceremony, drinking from a chalice and suffering hallucinations of figures who stab at her as she lies on an altar. Awakening from her dream, Juliana proudly declares herself the wife of Satan, but hears Prospero's voice telling her "There is more". She wanders out through the different-coloured rooms and is attacked and killed by a falcon. As the nobles gather about her body, Prospero comments that Juliana is now married to Satan. The remaining villagers come to Prospero's castle, intending to beg him for sanctuary. Prospero hears the villagers' plea and orders them  to go away. When they tell him that unless he helps them they will die, he orders his soldiers to shoot down the villagers with crossbow bolts, deliberately sparing only one small girl. Meanwhile, Hop-Toad, enraged by Alfredo's striking of Esmeralda, persuades Alfredo to wear an ape costume to Prospero's masked ball, where Prospero has instructed that no one is to wear red. In the guise of the ape's trainer, Hop-Toad humiliates Alfredo in front of the assembled guests by tying him to a lowered chandelier and raising him above the crowd. He soaks Alfredo  with brandy and fatally sets him on fire before fleeing. Outside the castle walls, Gino returns to rescue Francesca and again encounters the red-cloaked figure. The figure tells him not to enter the castle and promises that he will send Francesca out to him soon. During the ball, Prospero notices the entry of the mysterious, red-cloaked figure. He and Francesca follow the figure through the coloured rooms into the Black Room, where Prospero believes the figure to be an ambassador of Satan. He asks to see the figure's face, but the figure does not show it. The  ball becomes a "danse macabre" as the figure causes all of the nobles to die of the Red Death – and their corpses dance. Prospero asks for Francesca to be spared and given the same high status in Hell as he believes he himself will receive. The figure sends Francesca outside, and she sadly kisses Prospero before leaving. The red-cloaked figure then reveals that he is not a servant of Satan, proclaiming that "Death has no master". Prospero rips off the figure's red mask to reveal his own blood-spattered face beneath. The figure is the Red Death personified . Prospero attempts to flee through the now-infected crowd, but his red-cloaked self is always in front of him. The Red Death finally corners Prospero in the Black Room and, after noting that Prospero's soul "has been dead for a long time", kills him. The Red Death is seen playing with his Tarot cards with the girl who had escaped the massacre of the remaining villagers. Other similarly cloaked figures then gather around him, each wearing a different colour: white, yellow, orange, blue, violet, and black. They discuss among themselves the numbers of people each of them had  claimed that night. When asked of his work, the Red Death notes that only six are left: Francesca, Gino, Hop-Toad, Esmeralda, the little girl, and an old man from a nearby village. The Red Death declares "Sic transit gloria mundi" (Latin for "Thus passes the glory of the world") and the cloaked figures process into the night. Over the procession are Poe's words: "And darkness and decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all". Production. Roger Corman later said he always felt "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Fall of the House of Usher  were the two best Poe stories. After the success of House of Usher" (1960), he strongly considered making "Masque" as the follow-up. In 1961, Corman announced he would make "Masque" from a script by Charles Beaumont to be produced for his Filmgroup Company. However, he later said he was reluctant to move forward because it had several elements similar to "The Seventh Seal" (1957), and Corman was worried people would say he was stealing from Bergman. "I kept moving "The Masque of the Red Death" back, because of the similarities, but it was really an artificial reason in my  mind", he later said. Eventually, he decided to go ahead and do it anyway. Another factor in the delay was that Corman had a great deal of trouble coming up with a screenplay he was happy with. Drafts were written by John Carter, Robert Towne and Barboura Morris, but Corman was not happy with any of them. There were also a number of rival adaptations of "Masque" being mooted around this time. The Woolner Brothers announced a film based on the story as did producer Alex Gordon, who said he had Price as star. Corman was pleased with an early  draft from Beaumont, which introduced the concept of Prince Prospero being a Satanist. Corman felt this draft still needed work, but Beaumont was too ill to come to England for rewriting. So he hired R. Wright Campbell, who had just made "The Secret Invasion" with Corman, to come with him. Corman says it was Campbell who introduced the subplot of the dwarf, from another Poe story, "Hop-Frog". Casting. Corman cast Patrick Magee, with whom he had previously worked on "The Young Racers" (1963). "He could find these strange little quirks which he would bring out during his performance, making  it a richer and more fully rounded characterization", recalls Corman. Filming. AIP had a co-production deal with Anglo-Amalgamated in England, so Sam Arkoff and James H. Nicholson suggested to Corman that the film be made there. This meant the film could qualify for the Eady levy and increase the budget; normally, an AIP film was done in three weeks, but "Masque" was shot in five weeks. (Although Corman felt that five weeks in England was the equivalent to four weeks in the US because English crews worked slower.) Many of the extensive castle sets were left over from  Becket, which had been shot earlier that year and had won a BAFTA award for its sets (as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction). The film was one of the first films shot in color by cinematographer Nicolas Roeg. Dan Haller was used as production designer but not credited to ensure the film qualified as British. Corman says this was why George Willoughby was credited as producer, although it was Corman who was the actual producer. Corman later expressed dissatisfaction with the final "masque" sequence, which he described as "the greatest flaw" in the  film, feeling he did not have enough time to shoot it. He filmed it in one day, which he said would have been enough time in Hollywood but that English crews were too slow. Release. When the film came out, producer Alex Gordon sued AIP, claiming the film was based on a script he had written; however, he lost his case in court. British censors removed part of a scene where Hazel Court's character asks the devil to send her a demon. The BBC wrongly claimed in a documentary the removed scene was one where she imagines a series  of demonic figures attacking her while she lies on a slab. This was proven when journalist Sandy Robertson, using a letter from producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, finally got the BBFC to release their files on the film. The scene where she's attacked by figures while on a slab was in every print seen in the UK, including one Robertson saw as early as the 1960s. British and UK censors required different cuts, which weren't restored until the 2018 restoration by Martin Scorsese's film foundation. Corman recalled years later: From the standpoint of nudity, there was nothing. I  think she was nude under a diaphanous gown. She played the consummation with the Devil, but it was essentially on her face; it was a pure acting exercise. Hazel fully clothed, all by herself, purely by acting, incurred the wrath of the censor. It was a different age; they probably felt that was showing too much. Today, you could show that on six o’clock television and nobody would worry. Reception. Eugene Archer of "The New York Times" wrote, "The film is vulgar, naive and highly amusing, and it is played with gusto by Mr. Price, Hazel Court and Jane Asher  ... On its level, it is astonishingly good." "Variety" declared, "Corman in his direction sets a pace calculated to divert the teenage taste particularly, and past experience with Poe makes him a worthy delineator of this master of the macabre. In Price is the perfect interpreter, too, of the Poe character, and he succeeds in creating an aura of terror." "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote, "Unquestionably Roger Corman's best film to date, "The Masque of the Red Death" has passages of such real distinction that one wishes he could be persuaded to take himself more seriously ... Where most films of  this nature tend simply to pile on the blood, here there is a genuine chill of intellectual evil, because Vincent Price, initiating horrible tortures with a characteristic air of sadistic glee, also conveys a genuine philosophical curiosity as to the unknown territories into which his quest for evil may lead him." The film was not as successful as other Poe pictures, which Sam Arkoff attributed to it being "too arty farty" and not scary enough. Corman later said, "I think that is a legitimate statement. The fault may have been mine. I was becoming more interested in the Poe films  as expressions of the unconscious mind, rather than as pure horror films." Nonetheless, Corman says the film is one of his favourites. Andrew Johnston, writing in "Time Out New York" concluded: "Elaborate sets and costumes and Nicolas Roeg's lush technicolor photography make this as close as Corman ever came to real greatness." Preservation. "The Masque of the Red Death" was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2019. In 2021 a restoration by Martin Scorsese's film foundation was released on blu-ray and dvd. Use in music. A dialogue from the film appears in both the song "And  When He Falleth" by Theatre of Tragedy, on the album "Velvet Darkness They Fear", and in the song "Dopethrone" by Electric Wizard, on the album "Dopethrone". In the intro to "Beneath the Mask" by the doom metal band Bell Witch, dialogue from the scene in which Prospero meets the Red Death in the Black Room was sampled. The movie was also sampled by Entombed, in their song "Living Dead". Remake. A 1989 remake was written and directed by Larry Brand. The cast included British actors Patrick Macnee and Adrian Paul.