The Masque of the Red Death
Short description
In twelfth-century Italy, a plague known as the Red Death spreads across the countryside. Prince Prospero, a cruel ruler who worships Satan and terrorizes the peasants under his control, seals himself inside his castle with a group of nobles to escape the disease. He takes a young peasant woman, Francesca, along with her father and her fiancé as prisoners, and holds a masked ball where the guests are forbidden to wear red. As the festivities descend into depravity, Prospero pursues Francesca, while his companion Juliana grows jealous.
The film is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story. Roger Corman directed, and the screenplay was written by R. Wright Campbell and Charles Beaumont. Corman also produced the film, which had a budget of one million dollars. It was his fifteenth film as director in chronological order, following The Secret Invasion and preceding The Tomb of Ligeia. Vincent Price stars as Prince Prospero, with Hazel Court as Juliana, Jane Asher as Francesca, David Weston as Gino, Nigel Green as Ludovico, and Patrick Magee as Alfredo.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.9 out of 10 from around 18,000 votes, and on TMDB it has a 6.6 out of 10 from roughly 379 votes. A critics' rating of 6.8 out of 10 is based on 15 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- This is the first film shot by Roger Corman in England.
- The Jester's wife, Poppendick, was played by Verina Greenlaw, who was still a child at the time of filming. Her lines were voiced by an adult actress.
- More than 3 kilometers of corridors were built between the three sound stages of the studio, through which the heroine, Jane Asher, ran.
- Roger Corman preferred to film in England because of the tax laws in effect in the country at the time. The film was British, and British actors were filming in it, so the government allocated a certain amount for its filming.
- Roger Corman did not enjoy working in the UK because of the tea breaks that had to be taken during filming.
- Actress Jane Asher asked director Roger Corman for permission for a friend of hers, who wanted to visit the set, to watch the filming and then have lunch with her and Corman. She explained that her friend was a musician and had his first performance in London that evening. Corman didn't object, and at the end of lunch even wished Asher's friend good luck with his performance. Roger Corman had never heard of Paul McCartney before, until he read about the concert's success in the newspapers the next day.
- Hop-Frog and Esmeralda are characters from Edgar Allan Poe's (1809-1849) story "Hop-Frog, or The Eight Chained Orangutans" (1849), which tells the story of the "Bal des Ardents," or "Ball of the Burning Men," which took place in 1393, when four out of five lords celebrating with King Charles VI (1368-1422) died in a fire.
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