the masque of the red death (roger corman, 1964)

It seemed appropriate to visit the films of Roger Corman on the news of his death at 98. I've probably seen Attack of the Crab Monsters more times than any of the others ... I could watch it again right now. And that film could easily stand in for much of Corman's work. But I thought I might honor his passing by watching one of his better films, The Masque of the Red Death (I'd choose either this or A Bucket of Blood as Corman's best).

Corman's Poe films are in general his classiest, and The Masque of the Red Death might be the creme of that creme. Masque was the penultimate film in the Poe series that began in 1960 with House of Usher. It gives the lie to any notion that Corman was an inept filmmaker ... he may have considered turning a profit to be the primary aim of a movie, but he wasn't incompetent about what turned up on the screen. (I just finished reading a book by Katharine Coldiron, Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter, and Corman only gets a brief mention ... Attack of the Crab Monsters might be awful, but compared to Plan 9 from Outer Space, it's Citizen Kane.) The budget for Masque was limited, of course, but it was still 20 times higher than that for A Bucket of Blood. And Corman was always a master of finagling to reduce costs ... a deal with the studio allowed Corman to film in England on a slightly longer shoot, and he was able to use sets leftover from the Oscar-nominated Becket. Nicolas Roeg signed on as the cinematographer, fresh off of second-unit work on Lawrence of Arabia ... the cinematography is one of the highlights of The Masque of the Red Death.

Vincent Price once again added his pleasingly hammy touch. Poe's story is short indeed, so another of his stories, "Hop-Frog", is worked in as a subplot. The build up is a bit draggy, and the final appearance of the Red Death lacks something ... Corman himself said he was dissatisfied with the sequence. The point isn't to dismiss the movie, which is better than just "Roger Corman's best", but it's a good movie without reaching the heights of a great movie.