By Keri O’Shea
There’s been a strange sort of circularity to the career of Roger Corman. Whilst as a young man he made films about anything and everything he could (as did many directors and/or producers of his generation and longevity) he definitely seems to have had a soft spot for no-budget, turn-a-buck creature features: Crab Monsters, Blood Beasts and Wasp Women were the stuff of his early works, reflecting the 1950s ‘B’ movie predilection for nature gone awry, tainted by outsider influences and bad, bad science. Oddly fitting, then, that Mr. Corman has recently come back to the nature-gone-bad motif at this stage in his career as a producer: his work for SyFy will soon be bringing us Sharktopus vs. Mermantula, folks. Bask in that knowledge – but remember that, between these poles, he did his finest directorial work in what has come to be known as the ‘Corman Poe Cycle’.
I think that most would agree that Roger Corman’s proudest legacy as a filmmaker is his work on these Poe adaptations, a series of films undertaken for teen audience specialists American International Pictures – a company that, seeing the success of Hammer in the UK at this time (and, ahem, no doubt bearing in mind the public-domain nature of Poe’s work) decided to try their hand at a bit of High Gothic. The rest is history. In the short space of four years, Corman (usually collaborating with writer Lou Rusoff) directed a series of seven lavish Poe adaptations. All of these films, to a lesser or a greater extent, used the Poe short stories as a starting-point, adding depth and development whilst retaining the sickly, deranged protagonists and their profound isolation. Of all the Corman Poe movies, however, it’s his penultimate one which has left the most lasting impression on fans and critics alike. That film is The Masque of the Red Death: of all the adaptations, this one is probably truest to the original story, albeit with moments of great bleakness which even surpass the original tale. It is a lurid, oddly disturbing film – a film which alludes to sickness almost constantly, but keeps it outside the castle walls for the most part; a film which hints at sex but averts its eyes, or transposes it onto something which still has the power to make us uncomfortable; a film which promises violence but, even in its uncensored state, is more about psychological harm than scenes of torture.
The inmates of Prospero’s castle, in its setting in Medieval Italy, are in the throes of something which has become a cliché of the behaviour of the rich in times of trouble: from the rumour of Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burns, to the reports of Queen Marie Antoinette innocently asking why those starving in the suburbs of Paris don’t just eat cake (both stories almost certainly complete bollocks, of course), here we have a group of wealthy and indolent people partying as the poor die – here, die of a virulent plague known only as the ‘red death’. Like the Italian noblemen and noblewomen of The Decameron who flee the Black Death by removing to their country estates (telling the stories which make up the book in order to pass the time, as they go on surviving a disease which wiped out up to half of the population of Europe), Prospero’s rich, pampered allies are doing just the same. However, their behaviour is debauched, their morals lax: Corman has done a superb job of capturing an image of utter abandon on screen which has rarely, if ever, been equalled. And, despite the time period in which the story takes place, The Masque of the Red Death is a truly Decadent horror movie, in the sense that its main events focus on the utter abandonment of old moral laws and the fatalistic grab for more and more sensual satiety – a sort of deliberate rejection of the soul, with Prospero (Vincent Price in a stand-out performance) and his consort, the stunningly-beautiful Juliana (Hazel Court) moving beyond dissatisfaction with what they perceive as an anaemic, aimless Christianity, to the practice of outright Satanism. Move the film into the 1890s, and several scenes in Masque could be a rendition of the Black Mass scenes in Là-Bas, a Decadent novel about Devil-worship in Paris. The film is a 60s take on a 19th Century story, with interesting precedents elsewhere; it’s this eclectic and aesthetically-heady mix which has helped the film to maintain its impact across half a century.
In terms of linear plot, then, there is a surprisingly little amount in Masque of the Red Death. The bulk of the movie is there to establish the insular, unreal world of the castle – in which the vast majority of scenes take place. Chief amongst Prospero’s amusements throughout the film is the study of a village girl, Francesca (Jane Asher). Francesca finds herself in the castle through a series of unhappy events, but her innocence and faith in God mark her out for especial attention, with Prospero working to show to her that her beliefs are wrong and wasted. In his words, what he does is “not corrupting” but “instructing”; his interest in the girl, however, rouses the jealousy of his chief consort, and propels her to take the final rites she needs in order to ‘betroth’ herself to the Devil and, as Prospero guesses, consolidate her position in the castle.
Yet all of this might have passed as just another cycle of endless amusements, for Prospero at least: the key factor here is not God, or Satan, but Death. Death – just as seen in the Danse Macabre artistic tradition of the time period in which the story is set – doesn’t respect wealth or status. Death – “his own death” – is the only thing which Prospero fears. The deaths of others merely entertain him; when the performer Hop-Toad conspires to burn an old associate of his to death (thus referencing another Poe story, itself called Hop-Toad), Prospero wants to reward him for his efforts, not punish him. When Juliana is killed, Prospero can only smile that at last she is truly ‘married’ to Satan. But when faced with the striking, menacing red-clad figure, Prospero collapses in terror when he realises that he is not face to face with the Devil at all, but with the Great Leveller. The bleakness of this revelation is stronger than any spiritual comeuppance. It’s Prospero’s only moment of weakness, the end to his cold certainty. Death is more terrifying than Hell. Hell had a hierarchy; Prospero was sure he’d enjoy high status there. But in the end, he is struck down.
The similarities between the figure of Death in Masque of the Red Death – he who is later joined by other, similarly-cowled figures, all of whom have claimed ‘many lives’ – was originally the reason which production on the film was briefly delayed. Corman had wanted to make the film second in his Poe cycle, uncertainties over a workable screenplay notwithstanding, but it had been decided that the similarities to the recently-released Bergman movie The Seventh Seal (with its own allegorical figure of Death of course) would weaken its impact. However, in waiting before releasing Masque, it has allowed the later film to really blossom. It’s an allegorical horror story with a vivid, even garish colour palate. Much has been said about the significances of the colours used for the various rooms in the castle (which correspond to the coloured robes worn by the other plague-bearers in the closing scenes); there is a theory that as Francesca moves through the inner rooms to the ‘forbidden’ black room, that the colours represent the passing of a day, adding to the sense of time being enclosed within the castle’s walls. You could also assess the significance of the colours themselves, with certain colours being associated with various mental states – purity, love, cowardice, death. The symbolism of the ‘red’ colour of the plague and Prospero’s superstitious terror of it, and of course the black room, is more straightforward. The Masque of the Red Death is certainly unusual in the level of allegory it offers, and the aesthetics it uses to do so. The overall effect of the film can be sensually quite overwhelming accordingly. And, whilst the Poe story itself is evocative enough, Corman’s film is a piece of unsettling art.
It takes a great deal to make a film that can sustain a name for itself over a fifty-year timespan, much less one which seems to still be attracting new fans. I found myself wondering as I wrote this piece – which of the films of the last ten years will still be written about in fifty? And what, given developments in filmmaking, will be the elements which really stand the test of time? It’s hard to predict that in some ways, but by the same token, the sorts of films which we still know and love from generations back have a certain abundance of wit, vision and originality. Combine those elements with the worst excesses of human nature and behaviour, and you’ll have a successful, lasting horror story. The Masque of the Red Death is a superb example of this; it’s a beautiful tale of “pain and terror and madness” which deserves its enduring reputation.