1964
Director- Roger Corman
Cast- Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David
Weston, Nigel Green, John Westbrook, Skip Martin, Verina Greenlaw, Patrick
Magee
This is
one of the Vincent Price /Roger Corman collaborations that the pair did through
the early 1960’s. It, like the others, is loosely based on the works of Edgar
Allen Poe. The Poe story serves mainly as inspiration for a much larger story.
Prince
Prospero (Price) is an evil nobleman who terrorizes the locals under his power.
He has people taken prisoner and executed at a whim. He is a loyal devotee of
Satan and he seems intent on doing evil purely for the sake of evil. A plague,
the Red Death, is ravaging the countryside. Prospero withdraws behind his
castle walls and invites the landed gentry to join him while the commoners die.
Prospero uses this as a chance to humiliate and degrade his peers. Juliana
(Hazel Court), his mistress, is trying to get him to induct her into the deeper
mysteries of devil worship. She might have succeeded except that a new
plaything has caught his eye.
He meets
a young peasant girl, Francesca (Jane Asher), who is virtuous and kind.
Prospero kidnaps her and holds her fiancé hostage. He wants to corrupt her and turn her to evil.
Prospero treats everyone else like dirt, but he dresses her in finery and is
quite cordial, all the while espousing the virtues of a life devoted to evil.
He
throws a masquerade ball to celebrate the fact that he and all of his hangers
on are safe from the plague while everyone else dies outside. However, an uninvited guest shows up. It’s
not Satan, as he hoped, but rather the spirit of Death itself. Will it spare
Prospero as reward for his life devoted to evil? Will it spare the virtuous
Francesca? Will it spare anyone?
This
movie doesn’t get into deep psychological examinations like Pit and thePendulum or House of Usher. No one is on the verge of losing their mind.
Instead, this movie is about the submission to evil. Prospero has done it and
his mistress Juliana is attempting to do it.
Will Francesca submit to it as well? A well done and dark tale.
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