THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (53)

Directed by: Roger Corman (1964)

Starring: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher

The Pitch: The evil Prince Prospero hosts a masked ball for his decadent aristocratic guests while the plague - the Red Death - rages beyond the castle walls.

Theo Sez: Most of the shocks, and even the creepy atmospherics, have been eroded from this (very loose) Poe adaptation, leaving a handsome, effectively baroque fantasy in which the horror climax is more like a modern-ballet routine from some mildly daring Broadway musical. A lot of very good things - notably Price's imperviously cruel Prince Prospero and the proto-psychedelic effects in the Satanic-initiation dream sequence - but generally even the good things are a mere mood-twitch away from low-budget cheesiness : it all depends how you look at it. Like many fantasy movies from the genre's more modest age you have to help it along a little, fill in the gaps with imagination. Even the portentous coda, with Death's representatives gathered together in their cloaks of many colours (to make pronouncements like "Ten thousand sleep where I have walked") can all too easily be seen - if you're not in the mood - as a bunch of plummy English actors in heavy makeup trying unsuccessfully to crash a Power Rangers convention.