The Excessive Decadence of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’
Why should you be afraid to die? Your soul has been dead for a long, long time.
- The Man in Red
by Nia Edwards-Behi
I am a great fan of sensuous films. The Roger Corman/Vincent Price collaborations are often sensual overloads, colour and sound coming together in garish smorgasbords of undefined historical and national settings. One of my favourite Vincent Price films is House of Usher, which sees Price portray a character who is acutely sensitive; to touch, to sound, to smells. Embodying precisely what makes the Corman/Price collaborations so effective, Roderick Usher is probably my favourite Price role, his sinister sympathy for his ailing sister made all the more dangerous thanks to his softly-spoken lies. However, my favourite Corman/Price collaboration, and my favourite Price film full-stop is by far The Masque of the Red Death.
The Masque of Red Death offers an experience that should leave the viewer as sensitive as Roderick Usher. Based on the Edgar Allan Poe novel, it tells the tale of Lord Prospero, played by Price, a sadistic and jaded Satanist. Prospero ignores the peasantry while inviting local nobility to seek refuge in his castle while plague riddles his lands. Life inside the castle is awash with decadence and blasphemy, and one peasant is allowed entry: the devoutly Christian Francesca (Jane Asher), who is abducted by Prospero with the intention of corrupting her. Prospero’s wife, Juliana (Hazel Court), is having her own dalliance with Satan himself, while the court jester-dwarf takes revenge on an abusive nobleman. The various narrative threads come together spectacularly in the film’s lengthy and elaborate climactic sequences. Those residing within the castle are invited to a masked ball, under strict instruction not to wear red. But! A figure in red does appear, and brings about Prospero’s downfall. His courtiers partake in a danse macabre, falling victim to the Red Death, who saves Prospero for last.
The film’s climax brings together the cacophony of colour that’s been witnessed throughout: various rooms of Prospero’s castle are coloured differently, best seen in a tracking shot through all four rooms as Prospero shows Francesca through the castle. Perhaps representing different aspects of the human psyche, perhaps used simply as an aesthetic appeal, by the film’s close the usually empty rooms are over-run by masked revellers, their garish attire an intrusion on the colourful uniformity. Prospero meets the Man in Red in the black room, the room used for consultation and adoration of Satan. Prospero is slow to realise that the man he assumes to be an emissary of the Dark Lord is no such creature: the Man in Red is the Red Death that has plagued his people, come for the corrupt nobility. Prospero begs to see the face of death, only for it to be revealed as his own face, dripping in blood. A sign that Prospero’s Satanism has doomed all his people, or merely an indication of the inescapable nature of death? I won’t speculate on the film’s meanings here. I don’t want to make guesses as to the significance of the yellow room, the purple room, the white room or the black room. I don’t want to delve into the psychosexual nature of Juliana’s demonic undoing, nor the implication of the Red Death’s variously-coloured cohorts at the film’s close. These are all matters that are offered as something to reflect upon as you watch the film, and all are reflections that make me love the film. Foremost, though, it is the look of the film that I love. It’s a visual masterpiece, and so it is little surprise to learn that The Masque of the Red Death’s cinematographer was Nicolas Roeg. Almost a decade before he directed Don’t Look Now, Roeg cements himself as a man with an eye for truly terrible beauty.
Of course, it’s not Roeg’s centenary we’re celebrating today. Central to The Masque of the Red Death is Vincent Price’s Prospero, disturbingly sympathetic for such a horrendous character. Ruthless and vicious, Price somehow imbues Prospero with a degree of relatability: his clutching at Satanism seems to stem from a simple loss of faith elsewhere. Even so, Prospero is a vile protagonist and his downfall is deserved and timely, second perhaps only to Mathew Hopkins as Price’s most hateful villain.
Vincent Price has become something of an unofficial patron saint of the Abertoir horror festival, every year since its beginnings in 2006 a Vincent Price film has been screened. This coming November we’re over-joyed to have Victoria Price as guest of honour at our festival, to celebrate the life and work of her father. This weekend we’re celebrating with a one-off special screening of The Last Man on Earth, with live musical accompaniment. I’m excited to have so many opportunities to celebrate one of horror’s finest artists, a man without whose charm and talent the genre would be significantly poorer.
