Weirdhouse Cinema: The Masque of the Red Death

Devil Girl from Mars. This one is also an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, perhaps the finest one of several that Corman helmed, as well as one of the most well regarded films he directed. We're gonna be talking about The Mask of the Red Death from nine. It's kind of amazing to see what Corman was capable of when he had just a little bit more money and like five weeks to direct a movie instead of two or three. Yeah, it's like, what, you know, what if we had a

little more time. What if we had five weeks instead of two. What if we had more money in the budget instead of less, And on top of that, what if we had British actors to fill in the rest of the cast as opposed to uh just you know, various actors from California of a varying talent levels exactly. So this one isn't just good in the you know, the since you might normally say some Corman movies are good, they're kind of like scrappy and fun and you can see what they were able to pull off on on

bottom dollar. This one, I think is is just straight up a good movie. Yeah, yeah, this, this one's great. I I loved this film. Uh this was my first viewing of it. I've never seen it before, but I've lined it up for us because I knew that it was very well regarded. I knew that it was going to be colorful. I knew that it was going to really showcase Vincent Price, and I was I was not disappointed in the least. This is definitely worth checking out. You don't have to be a like a Corman connoisseur

to enjoy this film. And even if you do just want something to go to have in the background, uh you know, you don't want something that requires close viewing, It's still great because it's so colorful. It's so beautiful, especially the the more recent releases of it that have been fully restored. In the movie just looks better than it's ever looked. The colors are amazing, the sets and

costumes are amazing, like beautiful. I would also say this is a real standout role for Vincent Price, because, Uh, I think this movie is often classified as as high camp, and it is camp, but it's also more than that. It there is a subtlety to it that I wasn't quite expecting when I went in. I thought it would be just you know, delicious Vincent Price, chewing of the

scenery and all that. Uh. And so Price does play in a way a sometimes kind of Hammy Satanist aristocrat, but he but there's a little more to his performance than you would expect. Yeah, everything with really I have to give credit to both Price and the script. Like the script seems really solid. And so there's so many scenes, so many bits of dialogue where they're doing a thing

that other films do. Uh. One example that I ended up paying close attention to is having some sort of a wise crack after somebody is viciously murdered at the behest of the of the tyrannical prints. That's something that happens in this film. And often when this sort of thing happens in a movie, be it a like a Freddy Krueger movie, a typical horror movie, or like a James Bond film, you know, it's really hammy, it's a it's a cheeseball moment, it's grown inducing. But when it

happens in this film, it's it's not. It feels like just carefully calibrated so that it's not too hammy. It's just uh, it's just sardonic enough and feels off centic within the picture and doesn't throw you out of the movie viewing experience. I think of the moment where Hazel Court does the one of many ceremonies to get married

to the devil. I don't know how many devil weddings she she marries Satan like four times in this movie, but I guess in the final one where it's like really for real, now she uh, now it went through. She is a hell bride. Uh. The ritual ends with like a falcon pecking her face off and her dead body is found, uh, and all the guests are standing around in horror. But then Vincent Price, uh, he very coolly just says, uh, oh, there is nothing to worry about.

She's just married a friend of mine. Yeah, and it and it, it's so perfect. The perfect delivery of the line doesn't come off as hammy. It just it's it's so good. There are also so many scenes where Vincent Price's character, Prince Prospero, is giving some sort of a monologue about the nature of evil or darkness or pain, and it's become a trope. So any horror films, especially, you'll have some evil character telling us all what pains

about or what horror is and and so forth. And in this film, the way it's handled just puts most examples I can think up to shame. It's just handled so perfectly. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. That there is a tradition, I would say, going way way back in in fact, even into the literature of the ancient world, of the aristocratic figure who engages in perverse kind of morally undermining philosophical musings. I think this goes all the way back to like the Bible where

Pilot asks what is truth? Uh, you know, and you get scenes like this, and you know, stories all throughout the years. This is a really good example of it though it feels actually kind of thoughtful vincent prices musings undermining you know, the the good characters. Philosophical assumptions are actually kind of clever and more thoughtfully stated than usual. Absolutely, and it can. It can. Actually it actually adds to the frightfulness of the film because as a viewer you're like,

oh man, Prospero was making some some points here. Now I'm second guessing myself in my worldview. It's it's it's so good. So we'll get into all this some more as we proceed talking about the cast and the plot. As far as an elevator pitch goes, I was the only thing that came to mind for me is what if emotion picture where a stained glass window in a cathedral of horror? Yeah, the colors in this movie are aggressive.

There is such use of color and a large uh like blocks of color, you know, where like you have characters who are who are dressed all in red or all in white, and that is complimented by the fact that there are rooms that are entirely yellow or entirely purple, and uh, it's it's just fabulous. Yeah, yeah, you'll you'll question whether you've seen the color red before, if you've seen the color yellow before, because the colors don't seem as bright in the real world as they do in

this film, which is something to say. For you know, a gothic horror film, you tend to what you expect, the darkness and the grime and the shadows, and this film also brings some wonderful usage of those elements as well, but also these rainbow colors that are amazing. All right, on that note, let's go ahead and listen to I think just part of the trailer, the original audio, the original trailer for this film, because I don't think it's a good trailer, and I'll explain why I on a second.

So let's just let's just hear a little of it to get a taste. So, yeah, I love this film, but this is not a good trailer. It spoils a lot of the film, and it's also just kind of an assortment of clips with minimal dialogue and no narration that doesn't work so good for the show. No, and I don't think I just don't think it's a good trayer. Even viewing it, it's not a good trailer in my opinion. However, The poster art for this film is amazing. If you

haven't seen it, look it up. Uh, it's Prices face, you know, full sardonic Price as the Prince Prospero in red, full red face composed. You look closer and you see that he's composed. His face is composed of all these red bodies intertwined with each other. It's poster art by Reynald Brown who lived nineteen seventeen. Who he did magazine covers and all sorts of stuff. But he was responsible for a slew of great movie posters from the day,

including Tarantula and Black Sabbath. Also the really iconic poster for Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. Beautiful poster. Yeah. A quick note on where to find this film. Well, luckily it's widely available in digital form, but we highly recommend the shop Factory screen Factory restored four K blu ray. That's how we watched it. It features both the theatrical cut and an extended cut. And yeah, this is a beautiful looking film. Should be seen in the best quality possible,

however you go about it. Agreed, you want the full buffet for your eyes. Yeah, alright, well, let's get into the people involved. Like we said, this one was directed by Roger Corman. He was also one of the producers born as of this recording still with us. Roger Corman is, of course the Wizard of b movies, a prolific generator of late fifties drive in Flix. On Weird House, we specifically discussed n Not of This Earth as well as I'm not sure how many Corman productions films that he

produced but someone else was directing. Uh. This film, though, like we've been saying, is a different egg from any of those other films. Shot and five weeks, not too shot, for a higher budget and in England, which also allowed for some tax breaks and I understand, plus access to a better supporting cast. So this is a fine, if not the finest, example of of of Corman's work as a director, showing that he could not only crank out a film on time and on budget, but that he

could actually be an artist as well. Yeah, and it is. It is an artful movie. In fact, apparently that was one of the criticisms after it came out, Like it didn't. It didn't perform quite as well as the the the main producers in the production company wanted and they were like, well, it was probably too artsy. It was it was reaching a little too high for the audience, which for weird cinema, that's a good thing. That's a good sign, all right. Now.

Obviously this is based on not only one Edgar Allan Post tory, but but two. It's based on both The Mask of the Red Death and Hot Frog Um. Ed Garland Poe lived eighteen o nine through eight forty nine, American writer, poet ed in literary critic, best remembered though for his spooky poems and stories. Um and uh, I was just looking into like some of the adaptations. There's been just so many adaptations of Post stories over the years.

The earliest cinematic adaptation of his work was apparently Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery, based on pose non Sherlock Holmes novel Murders in the Room Morgue. Um. But the reason that they're though, I do think, uh, I do think it's the case that Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to write the Sherlock Holmes stories by reading pose Murders in the Room Morgues. So I think Post sort of gave rise to the detective genre in a way.

M oh interesting, So they're countless adaptations. Again, they're still cranking out po adaptations. But this is in part due to one key reason, and a key reason that this film was greenlit, and that the other Corman films were greenlit. All the works were in public domain by this point. So I think the other selling factor was, like, they're teaching this in schools. Everybody knows Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah.

I think they saw money on both ends, Like, so you wouldn't have to pay for it because now it's in the public domain, and because it's part of school curricula, there's already a built in audience for it. So it's kind of like, you know, the producers today, who would rather make a new entry in an existing franchise than do a totally original film because existing franchise has built in audience, except in this case, they don't have to

pay for the rights to that franchise. It's it's public Yeah, and yeah, it's I mean it's still I think it is still taught in schools. I I certainly have a strong memory of encountering Poe in the classroom, and I remember going to see a dramatization of the Telltale Heart as part of a school group and being really impressed by that. Though it's funny, most of this, of the actual narrative content of this film is not in the

post story. I mean, this is essentially in original a totally original plot based on UH just kind of loosely based on a scenario described by Poe. So getting into the screenwriters that were responsible for this UH, the the main one really to highlight here is Charles Beaumont, who lived through ninety seven, and he was a pretty big and pretty influential name and speculative fiction of the day.

He panned numerous horror and sci fi stories, as well as multiple classic episodes of the original Twilight Zone series titles such as The Howling Man, Static Miniature, Printers Devil, and Number twelve Looks Just Like You, and many of

these were adapted from his own stories. He also did film screenplays, including Queen Aouter Space, sixty two's Nine of the Eagle, also sixty two's premature Burial, and The Intruder, which was based on his own novel UH ninety three is the Haunted Place in nineteen sixty four's UH seven

Faces of Dr Law. The other writer on This screenwriter is our right, Campbell, who lived seven through two thousand, American screenwriter and author who worked on such films as nineteen fifty seven Man of a Thousand Faces, nineteen fifty eight, Teenage Caveman, and nineteen sixties The Night Fighters. As we said, the screenplay here is very good. Yeah, so yeah, tip of the hat to both these gentlemen. But more than anything else, this movie is about Vince Price. That's right,

Vincent Price playing the role of Prince uh Prospero. He lived nineteen eleven through nine, American acting royalty, active on screen from the late thirties to the early nineties. Just

I mean everything was great about him. Great voice, great look, great mustache, horror icon but was active in various genres throughout his career, especially early on in his career and then later, you know, especially by the time of these po films, he was really cemented as is the horror guy, and then towards the end of his career he was kind of played more of the celebrity game, doing celebrity appearances, product endorsements, which we've we've had some fun discussing already

on the show. And you know, by by this point in his career, he'd very much earned that. Yeah, cameos, you know you could to do the Narration and Thriller, or to be in commercials for the No Jelly Bars. Yeah, the No Jelly Bars, or yeah, go on the Muppet Show, host the Muppet Show. Go for it. So if you want to hear more about Vincent Brice, go back and listen to our episodes on Dr Fibes and also Scream Scream again. Uh. This film, however, is a better showcase

for Poe than either of those. He's great in those films, but in this you just get pure villainous price, just top shelf stuff. Totally agree. Now, another actor that's in this one that we've previously discussed in the show, hazel Court plays Julianna hazel Court lived through two thousand and eight. British actor and early horror en a star of Hammer Horror as well. There are films include The Curse of Frankenstein for fifty seven, The Man Who Could Cheat Death

from fifty nine. Dr Blood's Coffin from six one and sixty three is the Raven She was in a Devil Girl from Mars. Most recently, that's what we talked about her. That's the film we covered where we were discussing her. On TV, she appeared on both The Twilight Zone and Thriller and Yeah, and this. She is the consort of Prince Prospero, who is almost on board with the whole worship the Prince of Darkness thing. But even when she's all in, Prospero is more interested in the corruption of innocence.

You kind of get the sense that, uh, well, maybe we should describe her role after we describe Jane Asher. That's right, Jane Asher plays Francesca uh. Asher was born six as of this recording and still still very much alive. British child actress who transitioned into quite a career as an adult. Some of her most notable film wimes include Deep In from nineteen seventy, Alphie from nineteen sixty six, and Death at a Funeral from two thousand and seven.

As a child, she also she appeared in such titles as ninety seven's The Quartermass Experiment. She was also pretty famous for being Paul McCartney's muse for a number of years, inspiring such songs as here, There and Everywhere. So in this movie, Jane Asher plays this This peasant girl Francesca, who is brought to the palace of Prince Prospero because Prospero sees her moral goodness, her Christian piety and her innocence and he's like, I gotta corrupt that, I gotta

turn her over into Satan. Uh. And she has an interesting relationship with the character Juliana played by Hazel Court, who you get the sense was once in Francesca's place like she herself maybe was once a morally good, faithful, faithful Christian who was who was innocent as well, but has for for some time now been corrupted and turned to to the dark side of the force. Now she

is all in for Satan. And when when Prospero shows up with a new innocent person to corrupt and add into the coven, Julian is kind of jealous, you can feel how you can like she feels snubbed and uh. For some reason, I felt kind of like I felt a strong sympathy for her in that that prosper Oh has now that there's somebody more innocent to corrupt and

he's just moved on. Yeah, as with everything in this film, there's so much more nuanced than than a lesser film would give this scenario, and so many other films you can imagine, Yeah, here's your villain, here's the bad girl, here's the good girl. Bad guy wants to do bad things to the good girl. Uh, fair enough, that's, I guess a pretty simple recipe for a horror movie or what have you. But in this yeah, it's a it's a bit more complicated than that. Like she's Francesca is

not quite a mere damsel in distress. Like as as she's being corrupted, it's like she has agency in her corrupt shin Um. You get the sense with both these characters, it's not like, well, yeah, you know, he overpowered me with his suave evil. It's like, no, there's a sense that they have listened to the argument for darkness and

have been overcome by how pervasive that argument is. But if you want a simplistic hero in your film, well this film's got one as well, and that is the character Gino Gino Guino Gino Gino Gino, played by Dave David Weston born Um. We were talking before we recorded about how a dumber version of the same story would have made Gino the main character, because he's sensibly like the the young male hero. You know, he he gets the sword fight, he gets to be dashing and courageous,

but he's not the main character of this movie. In fact, none of the good characters are the main character. It's such an interesting way to arrange in the drama that really the main character of the film is the villain, and there are heroes, there are good characters to root for,

but they're all secondary characters. Yeah, And it's this is something that I think would definitely work for so many modern viewers because it's what we've actually come to expect with shows like Game of Thrones and so many other properties where the characters in the forefront are the flawed characters and the complicated characters and sometimes the outright villains

of the piece. And like on Game of Thrones, for an example, a character like like you know, he Gino here would be would be in the background, would not be the major character. And and that's the case here. Yeah, he's overshadowed by various other uh characters, and the film is largely more concerned with weirder and more complex figures as opposed to this typical baby face. He's still important to the plot, but he is not the main focus. Yeah,

and he's likable as a character. I mean, even though he's not as a complex as some of these other ones. But he he's got a kind of righteous defiance in the face of Prospero's tyranny. That's it's hard not to get behind. Like when when you very first meet him, Prosperose in his village, you know, just sort of looking down on everybody and condescendingly saying, oh, thank you for all the grain, and Gino gets right up in his face. He's like, yeah, you're gonna eat all our grain while

we starve that. David Weston was a shakespeare was he is is of this recording. He's still still alive. I don't think he's active anymore. But he was a Shakespearean actor, accomplished actor of stage, TV and screen. He apparently acted in twenty nine of thirty seven shakespeare plays. He appeared in the nineteen sixty four film Beckett, as well as multiple episodes of Doctor Who Uh during the William Hartnell era as the human Nicholas Muss and during the excellent

Tom Baker era. Is a thrill by the name of beer Rock, which appears to be a kind of lion man. I have and seen these episodes in particular. He was also in the Don Sharp film from nineteen sixty four, Witchcraft opposite Lawn Cheney Jr. Now, most of the scenes that Gino is in, he's sort of part of a duo. They were like the two men that Francesca cares about, and they are Gino but also her father Ludovico, played

by Nigel Green. Yeah, Nigel Green is a Ludo here uh Green live through ninety two British actor who appeared in a bunch of films, including sixty four Is Zulu Nive, The Ip Chris File and nineteen sixty three Is Jason and the Argonauts, in which he played Hercules. Other films include nineteen seventy ones Countess Dracula, sixty five The Skull, and his final film was a nineteen seventy three adaptation of Sir Gawain and The Green Night, in which he

plays the Green Night opposite. Looks like a really good cast of the likes of Robert Hardy, Ronald Lacey and Richard Harndel Lazy. He's the He's the Nazi and uh and Indian and Raiders. Yes, he's the man in black with the the Peter laure esque character and raiders Yes, yeah, yeah, tote yeah the yeah, the officer who who melts gloriously at the end. Now we've said that, uh, of course Prices Prospero in this movie is thoroughly evil, but he's also kind of complex and kind of interesting and comes

off as a more thoughtful brand of evil. On the other hand, there are just like straight up, you know, mustache twirling evil evil creeps in this movie. And a great example of that is Alfredo. Yes, played by the accomplished British stagage actor Patrick McGhee who lived through two. Uh. This guy, this guy has a very recognizable face and build. Uh. Alfredo is a is a blunt object of of a villain, and he has the and the McGhee had the physicality

to back that up. Um. He He did a lot of horror films, but he also pops up in a number of other works. He was in two Stanley Kubrick films, A Clockwork Orange and seventy one and Barry Lyndon and seventy five. He was in William Friedkins The Birthday Party

from sixty eight nineteen seventies Cromwell. He was in Chariots of Fire, but he also yeah, it was in a ton of horror movies, including uh Lucio folchi one film, The Black Cat nineteen seventy two, Demons of the Mind, the nineteen seventy two Amicus film Tales from the Crypt, sixty five, Die, Monster, Die, and Francis Ford Coppola's Dimentia thirteen from nineteen sixty three. I'm trying to figure out if I've seen Fulchiese Black Cat. I don't think I have.

I don't think I've seen that one, But now you have a reason to because Alfredo is in it. Alfredo is so slimy, you just you hate him from the moment you see him, and then everything he does makes it even worse. Yeah, and he has a number of of interactions with Vincent Price. But he's also very much the villain of our B plot. We have a B revenge plot and it involves both Alfredo and a character by the name of hop Toad. Hop Toed is great. Yeah,

hop Toad is really good. And and the thing is this whole B plot with hop Toad, which is based on the Edgar Allan Poe story Hop Frog this would I think be otherwise maybe a forgettable distraction in the film. You might find yourself saying, well, this is okay, but when are we going to get back to the main plot.

Except the character playing hop Toad is so good, uh, played by Skip Martin, who lived this is a short statured British actor born Eric George Horowitz and not to be confused with I think there's some other actors and musicians who use the moniker Skip Martin, but yeah, he plays this character that like so much in the film. Yeah, you can imagine a version in which this is just a straight up like you know, like like evil Dwarf

sort of a character or something. But with with the Skip Martin's hop Toad, you know, he's charismatic, he's believable as a as a is a human character, while at the same time being whimsical and of course having a just vicious revenge plot in motion. So he's he's he ultimately is one of the highlights of the film. Yeah. Absolutely, Skip Martin is wonderful in this. It's so hard not to love him even when he's even when his revenge on a nasty character for a nasty act turns extremely brutal.

I don't know, it just doesn't really bother you. It's just like, good job, good job, hop toad. Yeah, that's the Prince Prospero's response as well. It's like, that's the good give him a tip, give him a reward for burning one of my guests alive. Uh. Skip Martin wasn't in a ton of films, but he was active through seventy five and during the sixties and seventies he was in a number of mostly horror films, the likes of The hell Fire Club, Psycho Circus, Vampire Circus, Son of Dracula,

and Horror Hospital. But yeah, during that time he got to work in pictures with names like Price Cushing, Lee Uh, Patrick mcnaid, Diana Rigg uh some some great names and some in many of these like it's not just he was in the same picture with him and he had screen time with them. He was interacting with with some great actors of the day. Skip Martin is wonderful. Now this is Mask of the Red Death, and there is a character that is the Red Death or the with

the the man in Red Um. I think he's referred to in different different ways, but this is an uncredited performance by an actor by the name of John Westbrook, who lived any two through nine. He also worked in Corman's po follow up to this film, The Tomb of Legia. He was the voice of Treebeard in the animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and he also apparently did a lot of work and with radio plays and audio books, which should come as no surprise because he

has this really rich, velvety voice. When he first spoke, I was like, it's Christopher Lee, and I really thought it was him until I looked it up and it's not Christopher Lee, but he sounds enough like him. Yeah, it's very Christopher Lee asked. It has that that, like, that rich quality to it. It's it's a voice that can go head to head with Vincent Price in these scenes. Yes, and I like the way the character is written as well. He uh he. He is very economical with his words.

He speaks often in very pointed, clipped sentences that are extremely ominous and effective. Yeah. Now you mentioned how beautiful this film is. Is just wonderful to watch, and a lot of that also has to do with the cinematography, which is the work of Nicholas Rogue, who lived nine through two thousand and eighteen. This is a name that that should uh ring a bell with a number of you. It totally made sense how good this movie looked when

I realized he was the cinematographer. Yeah. Yeah, he served as a cinematographer on a number of films, and not only this, but also nineteen sixty six is Fahrenheit four fifty one. But he's probably best known as the director of such films as the nineteen seventy one outback thriller Walk About nineteen seventy threes. Don't look now, I know that's one you've mentioned before, Joe. Oh, yeah, that's a horrifying film. Is extremely good. Uh And then on the

like The Trip or End of the Spectrum. He directed nineteen seventy six is The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. Other films of note include nineteen nineties The Witches and I was surprised I didn't know anything about this. But his later career as moves around through different genres. I mean there's, for instance, there's some there's some erotica in there, but then there's also a nine mini series of Samson and Delilah with a really solid cast.

The production designer on this was also someone of note, Daniel Holler born nine. We've talked about him before because he directed nineteen seventies The Dunwich Horror Oh with Dean Stockwell, Sander d and Ed Begley. Yeah. Yeah, very fun film. Go back and listen to the past Weird House episode on that if you're interested. That was a Lovecraft adaptation. But Holler also directed in nineteen sixty five Lovecraft adaptation

Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff. He did some biker films, he did some TV work, but yeah, he was the production designer on this film. And then finally, the music for this film is the work of David Lee born ninety six. Um. This is one of those scores that is not necessarily the kind of thing I would seek out to listen into in isolation, But for this film, it's really solid. I think it's really effective. It evokes

a nice Gothic cinema sensibility for the time period. Oh yeah, especially in the final scenes, like in the confrontation between Prince Prospero and the Red Death as the dancers are circling, the music gets intense and it's very good. Yeah, Uh. David Lee was Slash is a prominent pianist and a ranger who also composed for film, TV and a lot

of television ads apparently, and I think he's also a novelist. Uh. This was probably his biggest film that he composed for, but he did at least a handful of film scores, including nineteen sixty three's The Very Edge, which has been sort on my radar before because it's one of the very few genre films to to star Jeremy Brett, who

is famous for his betrayal of his Sherlock Holmes. But when you look around for like weird you know, psychatronic films that Jeremy Brett was in, there aren't very many, uh contenders. The Very Edge is one of the very few. Probably not a film we'd we'd necessarily tackle on Weird House, but it's it stood out to me before Well, are you ready to discuss the plot of this American international picture.

Let's do it once again? A Corman movie for a I p coming in hot with an awesome credit sequence design. Even some of his you know, drive in B movies had great looking credits, uh, and these are also great in a way that I can understand by by uh, some of the producers may have been seen as two artsy FARTZI, but I think it's wonderful. So we see like the mask of the red death title, but in the background there is a growing splatter of red, as

if blood. But the red splatter actually doesn't look exactly like blood, because it doesn't look like the splashing of round droplets, and instead it looks more like, uh, some kind of fibrous growth like hairs or filaments or branches of blood. And it gradually spreads and spreads across more of the screen until the red holds illimitable dominion. Overall very fitting. Now we open on one of my favorite things, a spooky indoor for outdoor set. I'm about sure that's

what it is. I'd say more than ninety This is almost definitely an indoor set. But it looks amazing. Fog drifting through the darkness, dead tree limbs, uh, and an atmosphere that's just like so heavy you can feel it. And then you see a peasant woman wrapped in rags climbing a hill covered in soft earth. Uh. And what ran through my head looking at this is the Thomas Hobbes description of life without civilization. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish

and short, just a desolate view of life. Uh. And then we see the peasant woman walk up to the top of the hill and she walks around collecting dead fall. She's gathering twigs I guess to burn, until she finally wanders past a dead tree and a figure cloaked in red, and the man in red is sitting cradled in the roots of the dead tree, and he calls out to her. He says, grandmother, come closer, and she does, and he produces a white rose and then he waves his hand

over it and the white rose turns to red. And then he hands her the flower and says, take this to your village and tell the people the day of their deliverance is at hand. She bows to the man in red, takes the rose, and totters off on her way. This cannot be good, but we immediately sorry, no, no, no, it's just yeah, it's it's it's such a great scene. It's very uh it's it's played seriously, and uh, yeah, this does not bode well for the village. We know

what he's getting at. He's like, here's some here's some here's a brand new disease for your grandma. Go share this with the rest, right. Uh, you know it's it's gonna go viral. Um. You know. The what's also not good for the village as a VI it from the Prince. He's going to ride in to speak to people. And the Prince he's a reckless driver for one thing. I mean, I guess he's not driving, but he it seems like he has instructed the carriage driver do not mind if

there are children playing in the street. Yeah, we get the great scene where there's a there's a child there in the path of the carriage, and our hero Geno has to to run into the street and scoop up the child to keep the child from me. Just run over by the Prospero Express here. And then we get a Price reveal. One of the soldiers pulls back the curtain from the carriage and there's Price inside, wearing a funny hat and glittering gold raiment. Uh, just a beautiful

outfit standing amidst all these poor peasants. And he comes out and he thunders to them, according to my custom, I have come here personally to thank you for the year's harvest. And to invite you to a feast to be held in a fortnite when annually I gather about me the nobles of the countryside. So he's being generous, it seems he's he's offering that they can come up to a feast at his castle. Yeah, and and you

know they get to look at these fabulous costumes. This is the first of so many costumes that Vincent Price wears in this film. But Gino is not going to stand for this farce. He he uh, you know, he says, oh, come to your castle. He gets up in Price's face and he says, when you'll throw us the scraps from your table as if we were dogs and Prices exactly.

But these dogs have a loud bark and show their teeth why And I love this moment, especially because it reminds me of my favorite part of Superman Too, where Lex Luthor says something vaguely disrespectful to Tarrant Stamp as General's odd and then Zod replies, why do you say this to me when you know I will kill you for it? But the young man explains why why he's got more more bar work than usual. He says, well,

an old woman from our village. I met a holy man up on the hill and he made a prophecy. He said, the day of our deliverance was at hand. So the stranger and read his message has now spread to the village. Yeah, they don't have much to lose. Their embolded by prophecy now and so at least a couple of them are standing up right, and they interpret the prophecy of deliverance as deliverance from Prospero's tyranny. But Prospero,

Prospero is kind of amused. You know, he's giving them the Terrance stamp, and then he just instructs his soldier soldiers to garat them. Yeah. Yeah, it turns his back on them. It's a what cold moment. He is a cold villain in this scene. Yeah, but they're saved. At the last moment, a beautiful young woman from the village intervenes. She runs to Prince Prospero to beg him for mercy. She says, mercy in the name of God, And here

we get a kind of surprising turn. Prospero so far is just a rutal, narcissistic tyrant, So you would think he would just say oh, you know Garatta too. But when one of his soldiers throws the young woman to the ground and Prospero slaps the soldier and rebukes him, he says she was addressing me, um, so he seems interested by her plea for mercy. She introduces herself as Francesca. This is Jane Asher, and Francesca is disheveled and dirty

to show she's a poor peasant. But she also has a huge cross on her neck to show that she is pious. Yeah, big silver cross, cleanest thing in the whole village, it is yes. Uh. And she she begs forgiveness for these two men. But as Prospero going to listen, Prospero, he says, you know, he does not forgive. He gives a speech about how if my hound bites my hand, I cannot you know, let it go on disciplined. However, at the same time, having seen the film already, in

this scene now it makes sense. You can see the gears turning in his head. He seems so taken with her innocence and her her selfless pleas for for help for these two men. Uh. You can see him thinking, Wow, this humble Christian would be perfect for my satanic covin. So he almost immediately starts playing the mind games here

with her. Yes, so he tries to negotiate. He's like, okay, one of these guys, you want to say, if one must die but the other can live, and you have to choose, But she explains she can't choose because one of them is her father, Ludovico, and the other Gino, is the man she loves. Uh. This is also the moment where, incidentally, we get the first line from Alfredo the Creep. He's this sniveling aristocrat who leans in h and he's all excited about the entertainment. He goes, can

such eyes have evan known sin? And then Price says they will, Alfredo, they will. So Francesca has to choose, but she can't. And just when you think they're going to force her to choose, they're interrupted because a scream draws them to a nearby hut in the village. Prospero goes to investigate the scream, and oh, boy, guess what time it is. It's red death time. He says. It's

a lady who's like, you know, laying there trembling. She turns her head over and screams, and her face is splattered with with red blood and pock marks, and this is the way the Red Death is depicted in the movie. Price knows what he's looking at. He's like, that's the Red Death. We've got to get out of here immediately. Yeah, he's like, all right, pack these three individuals of interest up and just burn the burn the town to the ground,

burn everything else. Oh yeah, it's almost as an afterthought when they're leaving. Well, so yeah, like you said, he he says, uh, okay, take these three to the castle. These two guys were gonna send them to the dungeon. Francesca is gonna come with me, because again I think he's thinking, Francesca is a total goody two shoes. We've got to get her some heavy metal records, uh, and and win her over for for the Lord of Darkness.

So they're they're leaving, and then Prospero is like, yes, by the way, he killed them all, such a villain, so cold. So they head off to the castle. The poor village is consumed by flames, and here we go to the secluded palace of Prospero, where we will spend pretty much the entire rest of the movie. Uh. Prospero sends out notice to his other wicked aristocratic friends that they must come to the castle and shelter with him and attend a large festival, a masquerade ball. They're going

to party through the plague. Yeah, and he warns them don't go visit that town that I just had to burn to the ground though. If you do that, you can't come inside. Yep, yep, yep. Now Prospero here introduces Francesca to his consort Juliana again. This is Hazel Court from Devil Girl from Mars, and together they are going to turn Francesca to the dark side of the force Price like. There's a scene where Price says, hey, you're

wearing a cross around your neck. Are you a true Christian believer in French Usca says yes, she is, and he says, well, you can't wear that. Nobody is allowed to wear across in this castle. You must never wear it again. And here in this scene we start to get the conflict between Julianna and Francesca. As we talked about earlier. Julianna is jealous, I get you know, she already got corrupted and turned to evil. And now Prospero has a new friend to satan ify, and he's she's

feeling left out. Now this is where we get that scene with the bathtub, right, they take her to the most gloriously overdecorated bathtub you've ever seen with what are these golden swans or are they angels? I don't know, well, they're probably not angels. If they're in Prosperose palace, they might be devils. I don't think the probably birds or something. Yeah, some sort of winged creatures. It's just splendid a royal regal bathtub. And yeah, they're like, all right, you gotta

get in there and get yourself cleaned up. Yeah. Uh oh. And we're also we're in Julianna's and star to to you know, dress Francesca basically like make her appropriate for the palace, give her a fancy dress and everything. Meanwhile, we get to see all of the wicked partygoers hanging out at the at the castle here doing odd stuff. I didn't quite understand this, but is Alfredo playing a game where he sticks a knife in people's mouths? Yeah? I guess so. Again it does. It is a good

introduction to just how brutal and direct. He is, uh, Prince Prospero is all about these strange, dark philosophic mind games, whereas Alfredo just wants to stick knives in people's mouth that sort of thing. And Vincent Price wanders through the room and and kind of dis is Alfredo And then he gives a monologue about what is terror? And everybody's following him around as he's showing off the awesome sets. There's like a big, uh, gear driven clock with an

pendulum shaped like an axe. I think that might be an odd to the pit and the pendulum, and people follow him around, uh, and he's like, what is terror? But eventually this ends in the scene where we first meet hop Toad and Esmerelda a k A. Tiny dancer, they do they refer towards tiny dancer multiple times they do literally yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah, okay. So these are two uh little people who are dancers in the in the court uh and uh. And as they're dancing,

Esmerelda accidentally knocks over Alfredo's wine goblet. First of all, Alfredo, why was your goblet on the floor? What was it doing there? Yeah? Yeah, that's just asking for you can't be mad at a at a child or a tiny dancer for knocking over your wine if you're keeping it on the floor next to your boot. Alfredo is, of course a violent jerk, so he slaps her and instantly we we get the look of death from hop Toad at Alfredo. There's gonna have to be some revenge here.

All of the nobles are wicked, but Alfredo just sucks. There's no imaginable viewer of this film who's like, I think they were too hard on Alfredo. So Prospero announces that on the upcoming Sabbath at midnight, there will be a masquerade, and he says, all the wardrobes of the castle or yours to use. So all the guests dress up how you like, but I beg you, even for the humor of it, do not wear red. So we'll have to remember that no one is allowed to wear

red at the masquerade. Oh and I forgot about this. Price just randomly throws his wine glass in Alfredo's face at the end of the scene. I don't know what prompts that, but it's really funny, and Alfredo is clearly mad, but he can't do anything about it. He makes as much of a thread as he can muster, but it's not gonna go anywhere. Yeah. So Price again lectures his guests on how they're all very lucky to be there at his house because otherwise they'd be outside the castle

walls dying of the red death. And then they present Lady Francesca. They have dressed up this peasant girl who looked like she the noble herself, and I think they're they're, you know, trying to initiate her to the evil debauchery of the satanic aristocratic lifestyle. And then Vincent Price walks

around mocking all of his guests and humiliating them. He like, he walks up to a guy and he's like, how like a pig you are, b one, and makes him crawl around on the floor pretending to be a pig and oinking, And then he does this to a bunch of people. He's just humiliating all of them by forcing

them to be animals. But they also for the most part, you do see some looks of embarrassment from here and there, like one of the characters wives and all, but there's also a sense that they're like, yeah, I am now liberated to just be a pig. Like, that's that's who I am. Do what thou wilt, I will thank you. Yes, I like being a worm. Yes, thank you, sir, I am a worm. Yeah. He does several of these, and he's like, and for the rest of you use your

imagination animals, and everybody just goes with it. He says, show me the lives and loves of the animals. Now, one of the next sequences that we have to talk about is our introduction to the sequence of mono colored rooms like the yellow room, and then the purple room, and then the white room and the black room. Yes, this these rainbow rooms that are all attached to each other. Uh it's these are some of the visually most impressive

sequences in the film. These are used multiple times. So this is our first introduction to it, where Prospero is bringing her through and describe it. First describes the yellow room is one that was you that his father, I believe, had used to drive somebody insane, like put him in here for an extended period of time, and when they were finally let free, they could not even you know, glimpse the sun, Like the yellow of this room made

the sun horrifying. It drove them in saying yeah, and so he's describing these twisted experiments done on people, and he explains it by saying, somewhere in the human mind is the key to our existence. My ancestors tried to find it, to open the door that separates us from our creator. So Price is an interesting kind of satanist here. He's not just seeking power and pleasure like a lot of movie satanists. He is seeking a kind of understanding.

He wants like a metaphysical discovery about the truth of existence. Yeah, it's a much the satanism in this film. It's easy to build up your expectator, to build a certain expectation for satanists in your your genre movies. You know you expect uh, bloodthirsty murder rituals. You expect a little bit of monster worship in there. And there's maybe a little bit of both of those in this, but for the most part it is this more philosophic approach. Like Prospero

is not really looking to worship any monster gods. Uh, he's not caught up in all of that. This is not like the Devil rides out, but he seems to see this as an avenue toward darkness that makes the most sense in a world consumed by darkness. And that's a lot of what this whole sequence is about him describing this quest, this philosophy, and it's really well executed. Yeah.

He argues essintially the classic the problem of evil. You know, he's trying to disprove her faith, and he says, how can you believe a god of goodness rules over this world given all of the death and decay and the disease, the red death itself. Uh, And he finally says, if a god of love and life ever did exist, he is long since dead. Someone something rules in his place, and this is this is some This feels like some hard stuff for the early nineteen sixties, you know, yeah,

yeah yeah. Um. So Francesca wants to go into the final room in the sequence, the Black Door, and he suddenly stops her. He says that room is not open to you, and she asks, is there's something to fear in that room? And he says, for the uninvited, there is much to fear, and Prospero himself looks afraid of what's behind the last store in the black Room. Now, after all this, we go onto a scene between Vincent Price and Hazel Court. Juliana, of course, is still jealous

of the peasant girl. She's trying to, I think, regain her spot as like the the the apple of Vincent Price's I And she she says, you know, I've been an eager student of Satanism, but I've I've held back from the final ceremony. I'm ready now for the invocation. I am ready to become the bride of Satan. And he's he's a little uh sly about this, and this is like, oh, of course you are now because you want to protect your your status. Yeah, and she's like, no,

no really, I am, I'm really, I'm ready. I thought about it. I'm ready to marry Satan. Yeah. So later that night, Francesco wakes up and she wanders from her bedroom and wanders about this the spooky empty halls at night, until she stumbles and she she goes into the final room, the Black Room, and witness is an evil right taking place. Uh and uh like Vincent Price is in a coffin with his eyes closed like a vampire, and Hazel Court is bathed in red light, wearing a crown and sitting

in a throne next to a raven. And so the first time I saw this, I assumed, okay, so this is the ceremony, right, this is the one where she becomes the bride of Satan. But no, something else is going to happen with hazel Court after this, so so she's not quite there yet. Francesca just gets freaked out seeing all this. I think when Vincent Price opens his eyes from the coffin, she screams and runs away. Yeah.

I was left unsure if this was a dream or if this was something that was really taking place, and she's she witnessed it um ultimately, Yeah, yeah, this is one of the ceremonies perhaps, or this is Satanic naptime. This is just what a little little night nap looks like.

I don't know. There's another scene following this that's interesting, where Price is doing falconry, like he has a you know, the leather glove and the falcon, and he sends it up to catch a bird and he explains to Francesca that your God has blinded you like a trainer blinds a falcon in order to submit its will to his And then he goes on to say, my master and his followers look about the world with open eyes, and Francesca says, your master, And if it wasn't already obvious,

he hasn't directly told this to Francesca yet, but finally he admits it. He goes, my master is Satan, the Lord flies, the fallen Angel, the Devil. His hat in this scene, by the way, is good. Yes. My My only regret is that I did not count the costume changes that Prince Prospero goes through in this film. Each each costume is more magnificent than the last. Now, there's a scene where a noble arrives at the palace at

the gates outside, begging to come inside. But I don't think I caught at first the reason why Price wouldn't let them in. But I think the second time I watched it, I realized it's because he and his entourage had been to the village where the Red Death was. Is that right? That was my understanding. Yeah, They're like, hey, we're here for the party. We just came from that city with the plague, and Prosperose like, no, you can't

come in. This guy's name is Scar Lottie. He's got a big yellow feather on his hat and he's like, oh, please, please let us in. I'll do anything, and Price welcomes them with a crossbow bolt. Also, let's check back in with our with the men that Francesca was so desperate to save, with Gino and Ludovico. They are down in

the dungeon. They were being trained in sword fighting under the premise that they are going to have to fight to the death in front of Prince the Prince's guests for entertainment, and they obviously don't want to do this, but the main yard forces them to by sort of like prodding at at Gino with the sword until he

fights back. There are some moments of very floppy fake swords in this scene, and yet at the same time, like the scene where the this brutish guard who I didn't get the gentleman who played this role, but it's a he's effective as a is this brutish guard who who's just like like Gina's like, you're not gonna kill me. You want me to fight my fight my girlfriend's father to the death and he's like, yeah, but I'll cut

you a little bit. And the scenes where he's cutting him, like I feel I felt the sting of those like I'm like, they look pretty, they look really good. I'm like, that's gonna get infected. But what do you know, Gino is kind of a natural at sword fighting. Yeah, what could you expect. Yeah, he turns the tables on him, and uh, this is when Prospero comes in and he he has a as he often does. He wanders in

and he instantly sums up um the wisdom of the scene. Yeah, he says, it is a true fact that the greatest swordsman in Italy would not fear the second greatest, but would fear the worst, for that one would be unp pictable. However, Gino and Ludovico both pledged that they will not fight each other, so Prospero resolves to make them to sort of punish them or make them face death in some other ingenious way. He's gonna have to come up with

a plan after this. There's more religious and philosophical back and forth between Prospero and Francesca on God and the devil and so forth. Prospero says that his ancestor who lived in this castle was I mean he was for the church. He was a torturer for the Inquisition, and uh, but and he says, you know, Satan is not a god of hate, but a god of reality, a god of truth. Yes, it's not a story the Jedi would tell you exactly. Yeah, that's a good part. But but

it is a great that. I mean, both are are great scenes of of of subtle and intelligence, seduction to the dark side. Like it's it's not just like, hey, don't you want to do evil or do evil or else. It is let me explain to you the wisdom of this alternate point of view. Let me unsow your eyes so that you may see the world right. So Price says, you know, I don't want to hurt you, my dear. I just want to help save your soul so you can join me in the glories of hell. Uh he

there's some great writing in the scene. He says, you know, come with me into the velvet dark. Meanwhile, Hazel Cord is getting married to Satan again. She says, I inscribed the final mark and offer myself to the and she like she like, brands herself on the chest with a with an upside down cross a hot iron. She says, Lord Satan, send me a demon that I might you know, wet wedge you in him or something and says she

she marks herself as one of Satan's hellmaidens. And then we get some update on the B plot with hoptoed in Alfredo. Remember Alfredo is the nasty creep from earlier, and so they're talking about what kind of costumes they're going to wear to the masquerade, and uh, hop Toad's point is, you know, it's the seventeenth century or whenever this is taking place, we have not figured out yet that it's not cool to pretend to be some kind of foreigner as a costume. So basically, everybody this masquerade

is going to becoming as a cultural caricature. But what will all of them have in common? They'll all be human, Alfredo, if you really want to be something cool, you should be a non human animal. Alfredo says, well, I could come as a demon, and hop Toad has an even better idea. Why not dress up in a guerrilla suit? Amazing, this is great. I mean I love a grilla suit in any motion picture, So we're gonna get a grilla suit at this at this point. And I also just

love that Alfredo is just such an evil brute. He has just a void of creativity. But he he kind of realizes that that is the case, and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna go with whatever. Hoptoad says, here because this guy's got ideas. This is an entertainer, yes, and this revenge b plot is going to have a great payoff. Uh. So later Juliana comes to Francesca's room h and Julianna is like, hey, uh a few updates. I'm a hellmaiden now I want Prospero all to myself. So here's the

key to the dungeon. You can break Gino and your father out of the dungeon. You all escape, then I'll be here with Prospero. Everybody wins. Yeah, and she says, don't mind if I do, Thank you very much. Well, they try to escape and Gino kills some guards in the process, but it doesn't quite work. In fact, it

seems it was all a set up. They like, come out to the castle walls and then there's a guard there, and the guard turns around and it's Vincent Price, and Vincent Price says, oh interesting, how in trying to escape you all had to sin because they killed people? Of course, it's checkmate. There you go, who bad? Now? Yeah? Another lesson in Darkness. We got ahead to the banquet before the masquerade, and the nobles are all at their banquet tables like the ske Sias at the feast, and Vincent

Price sets up an interesting game. There's a game he's going to play with Ludovico and Gino that has a that has a number of daggers with one of them poisoned. Rob, Rob, how would you describe this scene? Um? So, before he even sets up the game, Prospero is is taking these daggers and embedding them in the table, and then he explains, all right, I've got what five daggers here, and one of these daggers has a deadly poison on it that will take hold of your body and what five seconds?

I think five seconds? Yeah, yeah, quick acting poison. So since you two won't fight each other to the death, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take turns picking a dagger cutting your skin and we'll see what happened. One of you is going to cut your skin with the poison dagger and uh and die. So let's let's see. Let's do it start now, and they do take turns. It's it's very tense scene. But they get all the way to the last dagger, and oh, it's like Russian roulette.

It's like, if you get to the last chamber and it hasn't gone yet, you're in trouble. And they get to the last dagger and none of them are poisoned yet, and it's Ludovico's turn, so it looks like he's just going to have to commit suicide. But then he pulls the dagger out and he lunges he tries to kill Prospero with it, but he is killed in the process. Yeah, Prospero,

I mean, Prospero knew. Prospero knew that this was the likely end of the game, though he's still a little offended that they didn't play it to its uh, its final phase. Oh and a quick little note also, uh. When Prospero is setting up the game, he's talking to all the guests and he says something like, you know, it's come to my attention that some of you still have faith in the Christian God. Stop that at once.

So at this point Ludo is dead. Gino is all that's left, and at this point Prospero has nothing else for him. He just kicks him outside the castle. He's like, go out there into the plague stricken world. Uh, you're you're, you're done right. He's not gonna kill him directly, He's going to banish him from the castle, and of course, the assumption is exiled outside the castle walls. He's going to meet the Red Death and Francesca begs to go with him, but Prospero tells her, no, you You're gonna

stay here. Uh. Juliana Hazel Cord is once again like, well, I'm ready to get married to Satan now. Um. Getting married to Satan is a multi stage procedure, apparently, But before we get to see how that is finalized, we follow Gino outside the castle walls, where he staggers through

that fog soaked forest of dead trees. Wolves are howling in the distance, and he stumbles along until he comes across the figure in red at the foot of the tree, turning over tarot cards on his lap, and uh, and Gino says, my god and then read the figure says who is your God? And it's it's very ominous. It's a wonderful, creepy scene. And Gino is saying, I have to go back and rescue Francesca. But I don't know what to do. What weapon can I use against Prospero?

And the holy Man in Red suggests that he could use love. Now back at the castle, we'll get the payoff of some b plots. The masquerade is coming up soon, so we see, uh, we see Alfredo getting into the guerrilla suit, and I think in this scene um hopped out is already like whipping him a little bit to

get into the act. And Julianna is getting married to Satan again, and she has this evil dream sequence where the dancers of Hell like mimes stabbing at her, and then she wanders around through the differently colored rooms and she says, I I have tasted the beauties of terror. We see like the pendulum from the giant clock ticking in the foreground, and you you think she's married to Satan now, but she's not quite yet. There's one more thing.

It's that she has to die. She gets attacked and killed by a falcon, and the party goers discover her bloody body there after the bird has pecked her face off, and they're all like, oh no. But Vincent Price comes in and this is that that great moment where he says, oh, do not mourn her. She has just married a friend of mine. It's great, it's perfect delivery. Um. Now, did you watch the theatrical cut of the extended cut of

the film? Um, I'm not sure. I made a point of watching the extended cut, and it's my understanding that that we in the extended cut. Basically there are a few different bits we get a little bit more of, including this whole weird dream psychedelic sequence with Hazel Court.

And yeah, it's there's nothing in it. It's particularly troubling, especially to modern viewers, but it does go on a bit and it is like they're doing this and not in the sense that he gets boring, but it's just a lot of like distortions of her screaming face and slow mo ocean uh content and it is it's it's very trippy. Yeah, but anyway, she's married to Satan. Now she's out of the picture. All right, we're in the final stretch now, so I think we'll skip a little

more lightly over what happens. So some more things go on inside the palace. There there's a great scene of Gino trying to sneak back inside the castle with what is essentially an ewok grappling hook Yeah yeah, rope attached to a giant uh tree branch or something. Yeah. He throws it over the walls. He climbs up. He expects to meet guards, but no, instead he just meets the Man in Red again, and the holy Man in Red

tells Gino there's no need to fight. He says, you know, just wait here on the rampart shortly after one, I will send Francesca to you. And Gino says, well, wait, what about the guards? But the Man in Red reveals that the guards have all died of the red death. They've got the blood splattered faces. And here there is

the final confrontation, the big party. Well, first we get the pay off of the venge plot on Alfredo, where hop toed Hog ties Alfredo in a guerrilla suit, ties him to a chandelier, hoists him up in the air, and then just sets him on fire. Yeah it's horrifying to watch. I mean any it's gotten to the point where just about any burn suit moment in a in a film, old or new, uh kind of gives me the that makes me squirm a little bit, you know.

But this one, Yeah, this is horrifying. You know, you almost if you didn't know that, uh Fredo, that Alfredo was such a bad dude, you might think that hop Toed went a little bit too far. It's revenge execution here. But like you said, Prospero's reaction to his friend here getting burned alive is like, oh, quite funny. Guards clean up this mess and give hop Toed to reward. Yeah, I mean, hop Toed knows his audience. He served long

uh in the in the court of Prince Prospero. In fact, he has a whole little monologue earlier in the film about that. He's like, yeah, I served Prince Prospero for a long time. But in the middle of all this, Prospero and Francesca are wandering around, and it seems Francesca's zeal for Christianity has sort of been been destroyed. She's just like sort of resigned herself to do well. It's

I guess I'm gonna be for Satan now. Oh, and we should mention that Prospero in in this sequence, in the final sequence of the film, is dressed like Lawrence of Arabia, of darkness, like Lawrence of Arabia, but all in black with gold in the end, like the head dress. So it's a great he's just he's like all darkness, yes, and but oh he's looking out over all the party guests and despite his orders, somebody here at the mask

is wearing red. Remember they were not supposed to do that, so not just red details a red trim, which I think was maybe allowed. About this guy's inn all red and we know who this surely is. So he's chasing him down. He goes through the rainbow rooms, through the Yellow room, the Purple room, the White room, into the final black room where they have the confrontation. Rob described the scene. It is It's so perfect, oh, it is. It is just a perfect confrontation. You know this is

going to happen. There's gonna be this scene where Prospero finally speaks with the man in red, speaks with the red death personified, And um, I mean it's one of these scenes where I I you just have to just to see it to get all of the intricacies of the dialogue because it's just so perfectly executed. It's like this philosophical discussion of of the nature of death and the universe and that the nature of Satan and who

rules the universe. It's uh, it's it's glorious stuff. And again in this trippy dark room with this red symbol like on the wall that is sometimes a window in the other rooms that I don't know if you were what you made of this, but it made me think of like some sort of a bacterium or a or um, like a pustule or something transformed into a symbol. Oh well, yeah, it's kind of a hexagon but with but with bubbles

at all of the vertices. Yeah. But this is the scene where like everything that Prospero believes in is being put to the test, Like he has he stands apart, or he believes he stands apart from everyone else in the world and in his kingdom because he has privileged knowledge and a privileged understanding of the true nature of reality. And now he stands with this one who um Ultimately it's a little vague about you know who and what this is? Like is this Satan? Is this a god?

Is this death? It's it's it's is it the persona merely the personification of one type of death? But clearly it is a superhuman individual. It is some sort of like universal concept made manifest and here he is finally able to confront it, and you go through the stages of who he thinks he is, right, like Price thinks that he's one of the tests. He's like, oh, or you doctor so and so, And then the figure in red says, the doctor Dance is in the white room,

you know, next door, so it's not him. And then he gets all excited because he's like, oh, I get it. You're Satan. You're here to congratulate me on being your your best, your most loyal recruiter. But no, he's not Satan either, and he keeps it a little vague. He's like, well, you know, Satan rules the universe and I made a prom and we made a pact with each other over this, and he's like, he does not rule the universe alone.

So I love how the film plays it loose with exactly what the what theological system is actually in place in the universe. It's not one of these films like The Devil Rides Out where it's like Satanic threat, Christianity comes and saves the day at the end, like it's everything is ultimately unclear exactly what sort of superhuman forces are at play in reality. Yeah yeah, but of course we get the big reveal. It is the Red Death, and the Red Death spreads to everyone in the palace

except Francesca. So we see all the dancers, you know that they're they are splattered with the Red Death. And then finally Prospero himself kind of melts into a red, red puddle. Oh yeah, And there's also the brilliant part where he unmasked the Red Death, and the Red Death has Prospero's own face, which is the the earlier in the In the encounter, he tells him it's like death has no face until you know your very own face at the moment of your death and so forth. It's

all the dialogue is just beautiful. Uh, it's it's it's absolutely perfectly executed here. But there is a happy ending for the good characters Francesca and Uh and Gino and Hoptoed and Esmeralda, all all the good characters get to escape Uh and they meet outside the castle walls with a with a peasant child who was spared earlier when peasants came to the gate looking for help and and

Prospero had them all slaughtered except for the kid. But we all also get some more perspective on the world at large because it seems like the Red Death is not the only death. We get a white death, a yellow death, a black death. They're all gathering. There's a purple death. They're all gathering by the tree where the Red Death was hanging out at the beginning, all wearing a robe of of their own color, and it's such a spectacular ending. Yeah, I mean, we get the rainbow

theme once more. Um and and I guess I felt like some of these were maybe related to the four humors. You know, we have red Death, black Death, yellow Death. I guess the grayish looking one is maybe blue blue death, White Death. I'm less sure about though, though. I mean, I can think of some some fantasy stories that involve

something called the White Death. So one can imagine that these are all just different plagues that are running rampant in the world, and they're kind of their personifications are checking in and saying, hey, how's it going, what's your what's your kill right today? Did you make quota? And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm doing I'm doing great. I hear, I hear. Blue Death is a little behind today. But but man, did you hear about black He's really he's

really cranking in the numbers. But it's not like that. It's it's more of a solemn affair, a vague affair, and they don't really know exactly what these entities are except they they're clearly involved in in death. But it's a it's a solemn kind of death. And in fact, we get the final words of of the film are in Latin, what's sit transit Gloria Munday, which translates to thus passes the glory of the world. I think they

also quote the ending of the post Story. Don't they say that the darkness and decay and the red death held illimitable dominion overall? Yes, yes they do. And then we also get a kind of go back to the same style as the opening credits, we get the closing credits,

which are also splindid. These are this is definitely a credit sequence to stick with for the duration, not because there's any kind of cool stinger at the end, just because they're beautiful to watch, and they they kind of play out in a way that builds and then the film closes. We go red, increasingly red, and then darkness who knew Roger Corman had it in him. This is just a fantastic, stylish horror movie. It is. This is just peak artful Roger Corman, great Vincent Price film, and

just just a great Halloween movie. Uh So, definitely worth checking out, even if you don't think you're into Vincent Price films, if you know you think you're not into films from the early nineteen sixties, early mid nineteen sixties. Um yeah, uh, this is this is one that I think holds up exceedingly well for modern viewers. But hey, we'd love to hear from everyone out there about this film as well. What are your thoughts on Mask of the Red Death, What are your thoughts on adaptations of

Ed Growan post stories in general? I guess this is the first time we've discussed one on the show, but there are many more out there, and there are some we might come back to. There. I can't think of one off hand that's better than this one. I can think that's they're much ham here, but but there are definitely some other choices, and of course there's some other

ones by Corman and company as well. Yeah, as we close out here, we'll remind you that We're primarily a science podcast, but on Friday's we do Weird House Cinema. That is our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. If you'd like to keep up with the films that we are covering, have covered, and will cover on the show, I chronicle them at some muta music dot com. That's a just a blog that I maintain. But then also weird House

has its own account on letterbox dot com. That's L E T T E R B O x D dot com. Our user name is weird House. We have a list there that has all of the films that we've watched. You can see it all in like a nice visual spread of thumbnails, and you can organize them by decades or however you want, and their links there that will take you to the episodes. It's a great way to visualize where we are, what decades we've covered, and I believe, as a scording to my accounting, this was the ninetie

film that we've covered on Weirdol Cinema. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.