What’s really extraordinary about Roger Corman’s movie version of "The Masque of the Red Death" is that the original Poe short story is *very* short. Nearly all the style and drama of the movie is Corman (and the two writers) expanding on a theme while staying totally true to it. And they really do expand: Poe mentions that the party guests are in grotesque costume, but the film has interesting characters even just for the entertainers, and a revenge plot. There is only one colour of death in the book, represented by a corpse, but other deaths as the iconic hooded figures in the movie (and the awesome dealing cards too). In Poe’s version the coloured rooms in the castle are used for the party (except the last one), but the film has them as a separate pilgrimage. Prince Prospero has a religion in the film, leading to vision sequences and horror, but not the book. Basically, all the decadence and eldritch menace of the film was invented, because the (short, short) story went little further than "there was a party and a thing happened". Which means that everything which makes it one of both Roger Corman’s and Vincent Price’s greatest films had nothing to do with Poe, despite fitting his atmosphere perfectly. (Anyone who hasn’t seen it, go see it.)
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 08:21:36 +0000
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