Background: It's the Halloween season, and that means that The Depths Of Netflix, like every other website, is going spooky. Today, we're going to take a look at The Masque Of The Red Death, one of the last of Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe series. All told, he made 8 movies based on Poe tales. The Pit And The Pendulum, The Premature Burial, The Raven and more all got movie adaptations over the course of 4 years. The Raven is a bit of a curiosity. It was reimagined as a comedy and was written by famous Sci-Fi/Horror author Richard Matheson. Corman was famous for playing fast and loose with Poe's story lines and The Masque Of The Red Death is certainly no exception.
The original story, to refresh your memory from 10th grade English class, follows the nobleman Prince Prospero in his attempts to avoid the hot new plague that's sweeping the nation, The Red Death. He, along with a bunch of his noble buddies hole up in his abbey and naturally they throw a masquerade ball. The abbey consists of seven color coded rooms, blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and finally black. The black room is lit by a blood red light and in it is a large clock. As the clock strikes each hour, the party momentarily stops, no more dancing, no more orchestra. At midnight, a mysterious shrouded figure enters the party. The figure is, of course, the Red Death incarnate. Though Prospero tries to stop him, the entire party succumbs to the horrible illness. That was the original plot, what of Corman's vision?
Plot: The first thing viewers see is The Red Death himself asking a woman to deliver a message to a town. The message isn't important, but it signals the coming of the horrible disease. Prince Prospero soon rolls into that very town and quickly establishes himself as a total wad. Before he even gets out of his carriage, he almost runs over a little boy. He sees that that town was infected with the red death and orders it to be burned to the ground. He rescues the fair Francesca in the process and imprisons her lover, Geno, and her father.
As in the original, Prospero hides out with the other members of the aristocracy in his castle. They're a hedonistic bunch, starting off with the feasting and partying quickly. On a tour through the castle, Francesca is introduced to the colored rooms, here truncated to only 4. Each has its own story, but the last, the black room, remains mysterious. Francesca goes sneaking around for some answers though, finding that the black room is where Prospero and his lady friend do their satanic rituals.
Prospero being a satanist figures prominently into why he's such a dick to everyone. He murders the peasantry, calling it a favor. He sets up life and death games, etc. It also sets up the way Vincent Price refers to Satan as "The Lord Of Flies" which is sublime. After some useless messing around between Francesca and her lover and father, the time for titular masque arrives. At that masque is The Red Death, obviously.
Why Was It Forgotten? Corman films always have a tough battle in the minds of the movie lover. He may have made a lot of movies, but very few of them are held in high regard. He was always known for quantity well before quality. This seems to be one of his better ones though. This suffers that curse more than even most of his other movies for being part of his series of Poe movies. As previously noted, Corman made 8 of these in a mere 4 years. It's a shame really, because this is probably the best of the bunch along with The Pit And The Pendulum, but they all get lumped in with dreck like The Raven, so it would take one hell of a movie to climb out of that hole
This movie really suffers, though, from the additions made by the screenwriters. Prospero being a satanist is okay and leads to some neat imagery. Sometimes, it leads scenes to drag on way too long though. The Francesca character is where the movie really falls apart sometimes, she's almost completely needless. The side plots with her father and lover are tedious and the movie would probably be much better if it had stuck more closely to the source material or at least just focussed on the hedonism of the noble class hiding with Prospero.
What Went Right? First off, this movie looks great. Far and beyond anything Corman or really anything from American International Pictures is known for. The shots are crisp and often framed in interesting ways. Though the movie does away with some of the colorful symbolism, there are plenty of great colors to be seen. The great hall, where much of the movie takes place has particularly striking floors.
Directorially, there's a lot of interesting stuff also. Corman uses a lot of wide angle lenses when shooting the great hall and he's not afraid to move the camera. This leads to an optical illusion where it seems like the walls and background characters are panning slightly faster than the objects in the foreground. It leads to everything shot this way having a ghostly, other-worldly quality. One can only hope this was done on purpose.
Verdict: Saying "Best of Corman" might be a pretty low bar, but this movie sails way above it.
Score: 75%
No comments:
Post a Comment