Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Masque of the Red Death

As the Red Death ravages the surrounding countryside, Prince Prospero and his followers celebrate darkness within their rainbow-hued castle. In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1964 Roger Corman film “The Masque of the Red Death,” based on two different works from Edgar Allan Poe and starring the legendary Vincent Price, Hazel Court and Jane Asher. (originally published 10/21/2022)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
today we are bringing you a classic. This is our
episode on the Mask of the Red Death. This is
the one directed by Roger Corman from nineteen sixty four
starring Vincent Price. Let's see this episode originally aired on
October twenty first, twenty twenty two. This is one of

(00:29):
my favorites.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah yeah, worth noting we put out this episode before
Roger Corman passed away. He has of course since passed away,
and this is one of his best, so please enjoy.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And we have an excite film to discuss this week
and a perfect seasonal selection for Halloween. For us, it's
to return to the filmographies of both legendary B movie
director Roger Corman and the work of legendary actor Vincent Price,
as well as the work of Hazel Court, who was
also a devil Girl from Mars. This one is also

(01:19):
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 going to be
talking about The Mask of the Red Death from nineteen
sixty four.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, it's like, 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
a pose to just you know, various actors from California
of varying talent levels exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
So this one isn't just good in the you know,
the sense 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 bottom dollar.
This one, I think is just straight up a good movie.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, Yeah, this one's great. I love this film. This
was my first viewing of it. I'd never seen it before,
but i'd 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 not
disappointed in the least. This is definitely worth checking out.
You don't have to be a like a Corman connoisseur

(02:46):
to enjoy this film. And even if you do just
want something to go to have in the background, 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
more recent releases of it that had been fully restored,
and the movie just looks better than it's ever looked.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
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 I think this movie
is often classified as high camp, and it is camp,
but it's also more than that. There is a subtlety

(03:26):
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, and so Price
does play in a way a sometimes kind of hammy
satanist aristocrat, but there's a little more to his performance
than you would expect.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
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 their films do.
One example that I ended up paying close attention to
is having some sort of a wise crack after somebody

(04:08):
is viciously murdered at the behest of the of the
tyrannical Prince. 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 or a
typical horror movie, or like a James Bond film, you know,
it's really hammy. It's it's a cheeseball moment, it's grown inducing.
But when it happens in this film, it's it's not.

(04:31):
It feels like just carefully calibrated so that it's not
too hammy. It's just it's just sardonic enough and feels
authentic within the picture and doesn't throw you out of
the movie viewing experience.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
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 marries Satan
like four times in this movie, but I guess the
final one where it's like, really for real now now
it went through. She is a hell bride. The ritual
ends with like a falcon pecking her face off, and

(05:07):
her dead body is found and all the guests are
standing around in horror. But then Vincent Price, he very coolly,
just says, oh, there is nothing to worry about. She's
just married a friend of mine.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, And it's so perfect, the perfect delivery of the
line doesn't come off as hammy. 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.

(05:40):
So many horror films, especially, you'll have some evil character
telling us all what pains about or what horror is
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.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about that
there is a true I would say, going way way
back and 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? You know, and you get scenes

(06:21):
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 of Vincent Price's musings undermining
you know, the good character's philosophical assumptions. They're actually kind
of clever and more thoughtfully stated than usual.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
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 is making some points here.
Now I'm second guessing myself in my worldview. 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

(07:01):
that came to mind for me, is what if a
motion picture where a stained glass window in a cathedral
of horror.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, the colors in this movie are aggressive. There is
such use of color and a large like blocks of color,
you know, where like you have characters who are dressed
all in red or all in white, and that is
complemented by the fact that there are rooms that are
entirely yellow or entirely purple, and it's it's just fabulous.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah. Yeah, 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.

(07:58):
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. I'll explain why in a second,
So just let's just hear a little of it to
get a taste. So, yeah, I love this film, but

(08:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
No narration that doesn't work so good for the show.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
No, and I don't think I just don't think it's
a good trade. 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.
Its Prices face, you know, full sardonic price as the
Prince Prospero in red, full red face composed. You look

(09:16):
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 Reynold Brown, who lived nineteen seventeen
through nineteen ninety one, 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

(09:38):
of the Fifty Foot Woman.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Beautiful poster. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Agreed, you want the full buffet for your eyes.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, all right, 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 nineteen twenty
six as of this recording still with us. Roger Corman is,
of course the Wizard of b Movies, a prolific generator
of late fifties drive inflicks. On Weird House, we specifically

(10:27):
discussed nineteen fifty seven's Not of This Earth as well
as I'm not sure how many Corman productions of films
that he produced. But someone else was directing this film, though,
like we've been saying, is a different egg from any
of those other films. Shot in five weeks, not two,
shot for a higher budget and in England which also
allowed for some tax breaks, and I understand, plus access

(10:48):
to a better supporting cast. So this is a fine,
if not the finest example of Corman's work as a.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Director, showing that he could not only crank out a
film on time I'm an on budget, but that he
could actually be an artist as well.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, and 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 main producers in the production company wanted. And they
were like, well, it was probably too artsy. It was
reaching a little too high for the audience, which for
weird cinema, that's a good thing. That's a good sign,

(11:26):
all right. Now. Obviously this is based on not only
one Edgar Allan posts toy, but two. It's based on
both The Mask of the Red Death and Hot Frog.
Ed Grelan Poe lived eighteen oh nine through eighteen forty
nine American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic, best remembered
though for his spooky poems and stories. And I was

(11:48):
looking into 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 nineteen oh eight
Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder mystery based on Poe's
non Sherlock Holmes novel Murders in the Room Morgue. But
the reason that they're.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Funny though, I do think I do think it's the
case that Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to write the
Sherlock Holmes stories by reading Poe's Murders in the Room Morgue.
So I think Poe sort of gave rise to the
detective genre in a way.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Hmm. Oh interesting. So they're countless adaptations again, they're still
cranking out Poe adaptations, but this is in part due
to one key reason and a key reason that this
film was green lit, and that the other Quorman Poe
films were green lit. All the works were in public
domain by this point, So yeah, I think the other

(12:47):
selling factor was, like they're teaching this in schools. Everybody
knows Edgar Allan Poe.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
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 career ricula, 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

(13:13):
has a built in audience. Except in this case, they
don't have to pay for the rights to that franchise.
It's public.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, and yeah, I mean it's still I think it
is still taught in schools. 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.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
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 an original, a totally original
plot based on just kind of loosely based on a
scenario described by Poe.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
So getting into the screenwriters that were responsible for this,
the main one really to highlight here is Charles Beaumont,
who lived nineteen twenty nine through nineteen sixty seven, and
he was a pretty big and pretty influential name and
speculative fiction of the day. He pinned numerous horror and
sci fi stories, as well as multiple classic episodes of

(14:17):
the original Twilight Zone series, titles such as The Howling Man, Static, Miniature,
Printer's Devil, and Number twelve Looks Just Like You, and
many of these were adapted from his own stories. He
also did film screenplays, including nineteen fifty eight's Queen of
Outer Space, sixty two's Night of the Eagle, also sixty

(14:37):
two's premature Burial, and The Intruder, which was based on
his own novel, nineteen sixty three's The Haunted Place in
nineteen sixty four's Seven Faces of Doctor Lao. The other
writer on this screenwriter is R. Wright Campbell, who lived
nineteen twenty seven through two thousand, American screenwriter and author
who worked on such films as nineteen fifty seven's Man

(14:57):
of one Thousand Faces, nineteen fifty eight's Teenage ca Caveman,
and nineteen sixties The Night Fighters.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
As we said, the screenplay here is very good.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah so yeah, tip of the hat to both these gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
But more than anything else, this movie is about Vincent Price.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
That's right, Vincent Price playing the role of Prince Prospero.
He lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety three, American acting royalty,
active on screen from the late thirties to the early nineties.
Just I mean everything is 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

(15:35):
career and then later, you know, especially by the time
of these po films, he was really cemented as 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 had some fun
discussing already on the show. And you know, by this

(15:56):
point in his career he'd very much earned that.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah cameos, you know, you could to do the narration
and thriller, or to be in commercials for the No
Jelly Bars, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
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 Price, go back and
listen to our episodes on Doctor Fibes and also Scream
Scream Again. 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

(16:27):
top shelf stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Totally agree.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Now, another actor that's in this one that we've previously
discussed in the show. Hazel Court plays Juliana hazel Court
lived nineteen twenty six through two thousand and eight, British
actor and early horror queen, a star of Hammer Horror
as well. There are films include The Curse of Frankenstein
from fifty seven, The Man Who Could Cheat Death from
fifty nine, Doctor Blood's Coffin from sixty one, and sixty

(16:52):
three's 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 we're discussing her. On TV,
she appeared on both The Twilight Zone and Thriller And Yeah,
in this she is the consort of Prince Prospero, who
is almost one hundred percent on board with the whole

(17:13):
worship of the Prince of Darkness thing. But even when
she's all in, Prospero is more interested in the corruption
of innocence.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
You kind of get the sense that, well, maybe we
should describe her role after we describe Jane Asher.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's right. Jane Asher plays Francesca Asher was born nineteen
forty 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 films
include Deep In from nineteen seventy, Alfie from nineteen sixty six,
and Death at a Funeral from two thousand and seven.

(17:48):
As a child, she also she appeared in such titles
as nineteen fifty seven's The Quartermass Experiment. She was also
pretty famous for being Paul McCartney's muse for a number
of years, inspiring such songs is here, there and everywhere.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
So in this movie, Jane Asher plays 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. And she has an interesting relationship

(18:23):
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 innocent as well, but has for some time
now been corrupted and turned to the dark side of

(18:43):
the force. Now she is all in for Satan, and
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 for some reason I felt kind of like I
felt a strong sympathy for her in that that Prospero has.

(19:04):
Now there's somebody more innocent to corrupt, and he's just
moved on.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, as with everything in this film, there's so much
more nuanced 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.
Fair enough, that's, I guess, a pretty simple recipe for
a horror movie or what have you. But in this yeah,

(19:29):
it's a bit more complicated than that. Like she's Francesca
is not quite a mere damsel in distress. Like as
she's being corrupted, it's like she has agency in her corruption.
You get the sense with both these characters, it's not like, well, yeah,
he overpowered me with his suave evil. It's like, no,
there's a sense that they have listened to the argument

(19:52):
for darkness and have been overcome by how pervasive that
argument is. Yeah, but if you want a simplistic here
in your film, well, this film's got one as well,
and that is the character Geno Gino, Gino, Gino, Yeah,
Gino Gino, play by Dave David Weston born nineteen thirty eight.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
We were talking before we recorded about how a dumber
version of this same story would have made Geno the
main character, because he is sensibly like the young male hero.
You know, he gets to 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

(20:38):
are the main character. It's such an interesting way to
arrange 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.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
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 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

(21:14):
Game of Thrones, for an example, a character like like
Gino here would be would be in the background, would
not be the major character. And that's the case here. Yeah,
he's overshadowed by various other characters, and the film is
largely more concerned with weirder and more complex figures as

(21:34):
opposed to this typical babyface. He's still important to the plot,
but he is not the main focus.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, and he's likable as a character. I mean, even
though he's not as complex as some of these other ones.
But 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 you very first meet him, Prospero's in his village,
you know, just sort of looking down on everybody and
condescendingly saying, oh, thank you for all the grain, and

(22:03):
Gino gets right up in his face. He's like, yeah,
you're gonna eat all our grain while we starve.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
David Weston Shakespeare is is of this recording. He's 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, during the William

(22:30):
Hartnell era as the human Nicholas Muss and during the
excellent Tom Baker era is a thrall by the name
of beer Rock, which appears to be a kind of
lion man. I haven't seen these episodes in particular. He
was also in the Don Sharp film from nineteen sixty four, Witchcraft,
opposite Lawn Cheney Jr.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
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. They are Gino but
also her father Ludovico, played by Nigel Green.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, Nigel Green is Ludo here. Green Live nineteen twenty
four through nineteen seventy two British actor who appeared in
a bunch of films, including sixty four as Zulu, nineteen
sixty five's The Ipcris File, and nineteen sixty three's Jason
and the Argonauts, in which he played Hercules okay. Other

(23:26):
films include nineteen seventy one's Countess Dracula, sixty five's The Skull,
and his final film was a nineteen seventy three adaptation
of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which he
plays the Green Knight opposite. Looks like a really good
cast of the likes of Robert Hardy, Ronald Lacey, and
Richard Harndel Rald Lacey.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
He's the Nazi in Indian and Raiders.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yes, he's the man in black with the Peter Laurie
esque character in Raiders.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yes, Yeah, yeah, tote yeah, the officer who melts gloriously
at the end. Now we've said that, of course, Price
is Prospero in this movie is thoroughly evil, but he's

(24:16):
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 creeps in this movie, and a great
example of that is Alfredo.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yes, played by the accomplished British state actor Patrick McGee
who lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty two. This
guy has a very recognizable face and build. Alfredo is
a blunt object of a villain, and the McGee had

(24:53):
the physicality to back that up. He did a lot
of horror films, but he also pops up in a
a number of other works. He was in two Stanley
Kubrick films, A Clockwork Orange in seventy one and Barry
Lyndon in seventy five. He was in William Friedkins's The
Birthday Party from sixty eight, nineteen seventy's Cromwell. He was
in nineteen eighty one's Chariots of Fire. But he also Yeah,

(25:16):
I was in a ton of horror movies, including Lucio
Fulchi's nineteen eighty one film The Black Cat, nineteen seventy
two's Demons of the Mind, the nineteen seventy two Amicus
film Tales from the Crypt, sixty five's Die, Monster, Die,
and Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia thirteen from nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
I'm trying to figure out if I've seen Fulchi's Black Cat.
I don't think I have.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
I don't think i've seen that one now, But now
you have a reason to because Alfredo's in it.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Alfredo is so slimy, you just you hate him. From
the moment you see him, and then everything he does
makes it even worse.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, and he has a number 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.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Hop Toad is great.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, hop Toad is really good. And the thing is
this whole B plot with hop Toad, which is based
on the Edgar Allan Poe eighteen forty nine 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

(26:32):
is so good, played by Skip Martin who lived nineteen
twenty eight through nineteen eighty four. This is a short
stature British actor born Derek 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,

(26:54):
you can imagine a version in which this is just
a straight up you know, like evil dwarf sort of
a character or something. But with the Skip Martin's hop Toad.
You know, he's charismatic, he's believable as a human character
while at the same time being whimsical and of course
having a just vicious revenge plot in motion. So he's

(27:17):
he ultimately is one of the highlights of the film.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, that's the Prince Prospero's response as well. It's like
that as good good give him a tip.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, give him a reward for burning one of my
guests alive.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
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 Clubs, 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, Patrick mcnead, Diana Rigg, some great names,

(28:14):
and 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 some great actors
of the day.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, skip Martin's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Now this is Mask of the Red Death, and there
is a character that is the Red Death or with
the Man in Red. 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
nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty nine. He also worked
in Corman's Poe follow up to this film, The Tomb

(28:46):
of Legia. He was the voice of Treebeard in the
nineteen seventy eight animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
And he also apparently did a lot of work with
radio plays and audio books, which should come as no
surprise because he has this really rich, velvety voice.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, it's very Christopher Lee esque. It has that, like,
that rich quality to it. It's a voice that can
go head to head with Vincent Price in these scenes.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yes, and I like the way the character is written
as well. He is very economical with his words. He
speaks often in very pointed, clipped sentences that are extremely
ominous and effective.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah. Now we mentioned how beautiful this film 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 nineteen twenty eight through twenty eighteen.
This is a name that should ring a bell with
a number of you.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
It totally made sense how good this movie looked when
I realized he was the cinematographer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
That's a horrifying film. Is extremely good.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
And then on the tripier end of the spectrum, he
directed nineteen seventy six as 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 yeah, his later career has moves around
through different genres. I mean there's, for instance, there's some
there's se erotica in there, but then there's also a

(30:48):
nineteen ninety six mini series of Samson and Delilah with
a really solid cast. The production designer on this was
also someone of note. Daniel Holler born nineteen twenty nine.
We've talked about him before because he directed nineteen seventies
The Dunwich Horror Oh.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
With Dean Stockwell, Sander Die and Ed Begley.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
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.

(31:27):
And then finally the music for this film is the
work of David Lee born nineteen twenty six. 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

(31:47):
the time period.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, David Lee was slash. He 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. 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,

(32:20):
which has been sort of on my radar before because
it's one of the very few genre films to star
Jeremy Brett, who is famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
But when you look around for like weird psychotronic films
that Jeremy Brett was in. There aren't very many contenders.
The Very Edge is one of the very few. Probably

(32:41):
not a film we'd necessarily tackle on Weird House, but
it stood out to me.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Before Well, are you ready to discuss the plot of
this American international picture. Let's do it once again. A
Corman movie for aip coming in hot with an awesome
credit sequence design. Even some of his you know, drive
in b movies had great looking credits, and these are
also great in a way that I can understand by

(33:09):
some of the producers may have been seen as too
artsy FARTSI, 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 some kind

(33:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Overall very fitting.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Now we open on one of my favorite things, a
spooky indoor for outdoor set. I'm about ninety percent 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, and an
atmosphere that's just like so heavy you can feel it.

(34:10):
And then you see a peasant woman wrapped in rags
climbing a hill covered in soft earth. 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. And then we see
the peasant woman walk up to the top of the

(34:32):
hill and she walks around collecting deadfall. 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,

(34:56):
and then he waves his hand over it and the
white rose turns 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 oh sorry, no, no.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
No, it's just yeah, it's it's it's such a great saying.
It's very uh, it's played seriously, and 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.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Go share this with the rest, right, you know, it's
it's gonna go viral, you know. The what's also not
good for the village is a visit 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

(35:56):
there are children playing in the street.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, we get the great it's seen where there's a
child there in the path of the carriage and our
hero Gino has to run into the street and scoop
up the child to keep the child from me. And
just run over by the Prospero Express here and.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
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, just a
beautiful outfit, standing amidst all these poor peasants. And he
comes out and he thunders to them, according to my custom,

(36:34):
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 fortnight when annually I gather about
me the nobles of the countryside. So he's being generous,
it seems he's offering that they can come up to
a feast at his castle.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, 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.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
But Gino is not going to stand for this farce.
He 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 Price says, exactly, But these dogs
have a loud bark and show their teeth.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Why.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And I love this moment, especially because it reminds me
of my favorite part of Superman two where Lex Luthor
says something vaguely disrespectful to Terrence Stamp as General Zod,
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 he's got more bark

(37:41):
than usual. He says, well, an old woman from our
village 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 in red his
message has now spread to the village.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, they don't have much to lose. They're embolded by
prophecy now, and so at least a couple of them
are standing.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Up right, and they interpret the prophecy of deliverance as
deliverance from Prospero's tyranny. Yeah, but pro Prospero is kind
of amused. You know, he's giving them the Terence Stamp
and then he just instructs his soldiers to garat them.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah. Yeah, it turns his back on them. It's a
cold moment. He is a cold villain in this scene.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
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 brutal,
narcissistic tyrant, so you would think he would just say, oh,

(38:44):
you know, garat her 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, so he seems interested by her plea for mercy.
She introduces herself as Francesca. This is Jane Asher, and
Francesca is a disheveled and dirty to show she's a

(39:07):
poor peasant. But she also has a huge cross on
her neck to show that she is pious.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, big silver cross, cleanest thing in the whole village,
it is.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yes, And she begs forgiveness for these two men. But
is 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 undisciplined. However, at the same time, having
seen the film already, in this scene, now it makes sense.

(39:36):
You can see the gears turning in his head. He
seems so taken with her innocence and her selfless. Please
for help for these two men. You can see him thinking, Wow,
this humble Christian would be perfect for my satanic coven.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
So he almost immediately starts playing the mind games here
with her.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yes, so he tries to negotiate. He's like, okay, one
of these guys, you want to say, if one must die,
but the 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. This is also the moment where, incidentally, we
get the first line from Alfredo the Creep. He's this

(40:17):
sniveling aristocrat who leans in 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

(40:38):
in the village. Prospero goes to investigate the scream, and oh, boy,
guess what time it is. It's Red Death time. 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 red blood and pockmarks. And this is the
way the Red Death is depicted in the movie. Price

(41:00):
knows what he's looking at. He's like, that's the Red Death.
We've got to get out of here immediately.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, he's like, all right, pack these three individuals of
interest up and just burn the town to the ground,
burn everything else.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Oh yeah, it's almost as an afterthought when they're leaving. Well, so, yeah,
like you said, he says, okay, take these three to
the castle. These two guys, we're going to send them
to the dungeon. Francesca is going to 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 and win her over for the Lord of Darkness.
So they're leaving, and then prosper is like, yes, by

(41:35):
the way, kill 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 prosper where we will spend pretty much
the entire rest of the movie. Prosper sends out notice
to his other wicked aristocratic friends that they must come

(41:56):
to the castle and shelter with him and tend a
large festival masquerade ball. They're going to party through the plague.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
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

(42:32):
to the dark side of the forest. Price like. There's
a scene where Price says, hey, you're wearing a cross
around your neck. Are you a true Christian believer? And
Francesca says yes she is, and he says, well, you
can't wear that. Nobody's allowed to wear a cross in
this castle, you must never wear it again. And here
in this scene we start to get the conflict between
Juliana and Francesca. As we talked about earlier. Juliana is jealous,

(42:57):
I get, you know, she already got corrupted and turned evil,
and now Prospero has a new friend to satanify and
he's she's feeling left out.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Now this is where we get that scene with the bathtub. Right,
they take her to the h the most gloriously over
decorated bathtub you've ever seen with what are these golden
swans or are they angels?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
I don't know, Well, they're probably not angels. If they're
in Prospero's palace, they might be devils. I don't think
they're probably birds or something.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, some sort of winged creatures. It's just splendid a
royal regal bathtub. And yeah, they're like, all right, you
got to get in there and get yourself cleaned up.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah. Oh, and we're also we're in Juliana is instructed
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

(43:59):
game where he sticks a knife in people's mouths?

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah? I guess so does It isn't a good introduction
to just how brutal and direct he is. Prince Prospero
is all about these strange, dark, philosophic mind games, whereas
Alfredo just wants to stick knives in people's mouths that
sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
And Vincent Price wanders through the room and kind of
disses 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 gear driven
clock with an pendulum shaped like an axe. I think
that might be a nod to the pit and the pendulum,

(44:43):
And people follow him around and he's like, what is terror?
But eventually this ends in the scene where we first
meet hop Toad in Esmeralda.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Aka Tiny Dancer. They do they refer to as tiny
Dancer multiple times?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Oh they do literally yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Okay,
So these are two little people who are dancers in
the court 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?

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah? Yeah, that's you're just asking for you You can't
be mad at a child or a tiny dancer for
knocking over your wine if you're keeping it on the
floor next to your boot.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Alfredo is, of course a violent jerk, so he slaps her,
and instantly we get the look of death from hop
Toad at Alfredo. There's going to have to be some
revenge here. All of the nobles are wicked, but Alfredo
just sucks.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, there's no imaginable viewer of this film who's like,
I think they were too hard on Alfredo.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
So Prospero announces that on the upcoming Sabbath at midnight,
there will be a masquerade, and he says all the
wardrobes of the castle are 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

(46:09):
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, right.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
He makes as much of a threat as he can muster,
but it's not going to go anywhere.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
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 looks like she is
a noble herself, and I think they're trying to initiate
her to the evil debauchery of the satanic aristocratic lifestyle.

(46:50):
And then Vincent Price walks around mocking all of his
guests and humiliating them. He walks up to a guy
and he's like, how like a pig you are? B
one 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.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
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 who I am. Do
what thou wilt. I will thank you.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yes, I like being a worm. Yes, thank you, sir,
I am a worm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
He does several of these, and he's like, and for
the rest of you, yeah, use your imagination be for animals.
And everybody just goes with it.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
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 monocolored rooms
like the yellow room, and then the purple room, and
then the white room and the black room.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yes, these rainbow rooms that are all attached to each other.
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 as

(48:15):
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 glimpse the sun.
Like the yellow of this room made the sun horrifying.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
It drove them insane. 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

(48:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
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 genre movies. You know, you
expect 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, Yeah,

(49:30):
it is this more philosophic approach, Like Prospero is not
really looking to worship any monster gods. 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

(49:51):
what this whole sequence is about him describing this quest,
this philosophy, and it's really well executed.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah. He argues 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, And he finally says, if a
god of love and life ever did exist, he is
long since dead. Someone some thing rules in his place.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
And this is some This feels like some hard stuff
for the early nineteen sixties, you.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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

(50:49):
of what's behind the last door 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 apple of Vincent Price's eye.
And she says, you know, I've been an eager student

(51:09):
of Satanism, but I've held back from the final ceremony.
I'm ready now for the invocation. I am ready to
become the bride of Satan.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
And he's a little sly about this, and this is like, oh,
of course you are now, because you want to protect
your status. Yeah, and she's like, no, no, I really
I am, I'm really, I'm ready. I thought about it.
I'm ready to marry Satan.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah. So later that night, Francesca wakes up and she
wanders from her bedroom and wanders about the spooky empty
halls at night until she stumbles in. She goes into
the final room, the black room, and witnesses an evil
right taking place, and like Vincent Price is in a
coffin with his eyes closed like a vampire, and Hazel

(51:54):
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 gonna happen with Hazel Cord after this, so she's
not quite there yet. Francesca just gets freaked out seeing
all this. I think when Vincent Price opens his eyes

(52:16):
from the coffin, she screams and runs away.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Ultimately, I think it's real.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Yeah, yeah, this is one of the ceremonies perhaps, or
this is Satanic nap time. This is just what a
little night nap looks like. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
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 your 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

(53:00):
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 Francisca 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

(53:22):
the way, is good.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yes. My only regret is that I did not count
the costume changes that Prince Prospero goes through in this film.
Each costume is more magnificent than the last.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
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?

Speaker 1 (53:57):
That was my understanding. Yeah. They're like, hey, we're here
for the we just came from that city with the plague,
and Prospero is like, mm mmm, no, you.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Can't come in. This guy's name is scar Lotti. 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.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Bolt, yeah, shoots him dead.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Also, let's check back in with the men that Francesca
was so desperate to save, with Gino and Ludovico. They
are down in the dungeon. They're 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 guard forces them to by

(54:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
And yet at the same time, like the scene where
this brutish guard who I didn't get the gentleman who
played this role, but it's a he's effective, as is
this brutish guard who who's just like like, Gino's like,
you're not gonna kill me. You want me to fight
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

(55:11):
sting of those Like, I'm like the Loretty, they look
really good. I'm like, that's gonna get infected.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Well, what do you know, Gino is kind of a
natural at sword fighting. Yeah, what could you expect?

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yeah, he turns the tables on him, and this is
when Prospero comes in, and he has, as he often does,
he wanders in and he instantly sums up the wisdom
of the scene.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
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 unpredictable.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
However, Gino and Ludovico both pledge 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

(56:03):
the Devil and so forth. Prospero says that his ancestor,
who lived in this castle was a member. He was
for the church. He was a torturer for the Inquisition.
And he says, you know, Satan is not a god
of hate, but a god of reality, a god of truth.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yes, it's not a story the Jedi would tell you.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Exactly. Yeah, that's a good part.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
But it is a great that. I mean, both are
great scenes of subtle and intelligent seduction to the dark side.
Like 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

(56:47):
may see the world right.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
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.
There's some great writing in the scene. He says, 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 thee and she like

(57:12):
brands herself on the chest 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 marks herself as one
of Satan's hell maidens. And then we get some update
on the b plot with hop Toad and Alfredo. Remember

(57:34):
Alfredo's the nasty creep from earlier, and so they're talking
about what kind of costumes they're going to wear to
the masquerade, and 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

(57:55):
a cultural caricature. But what will all of them have
in common? They'll all 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 gorilla suit? Amazing, this is great.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
I mean I love a gorilla suit in any motion picture.
So we're gonna get a gorilla suit at this at
this point. And I also just love that Alfredo is
just such an evil brute. He has just avoid of creativity,
but he kind of realizes that that is the case,
and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna go with whatever. Hop
Toad says, here because this guy's got ideas.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
This is an entertainer, yes, and this revenge b plot
is gonna have a great payoff. So later Juliana comes
to Francesca's room and Juliana is like, hey, few updates.

(58:54):
I'm a hellmaiden. Now I want Prospero all to myself.
So here's a 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.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Yeah, and she says, don't mind if I do, Thank
you very much.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
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 setup. They 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

(59:30):
you all had to sin because they killed people? Of
course it's check may there you go, who's bad now?

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah? Another lesson in darkness.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
So we got a head to the banquet before the masquerade,
and the nobles are all at their banquet tables like
the skexxies 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 that has a number

(01:00:02):
of daggers with one of them poisoned. Rob how would
you describe this scene?

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I think five seconds?

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
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 going to take turns picking a dagger cutting
your skin and we'll see what happens. One of you
is going to cut your skin with the poisoned dagger
and and die. So let's let's see. Let's do it
start now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
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 go 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

(01:01:11):
he lunges he tries to kill Prospero with it, but
he is killed in the process.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
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
final phase.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Oh and a quick little note also, 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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
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. You're You're
done right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
He's not going to 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're gonna stay here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Juliana Hazel Kord is once again like, well, I'm ready
to get married to Satan. Now, getting married to Satan
Nigga 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,

(01:02:27):
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 Gino says, my god,
and then the red figure says, who is your god?
And it's it's very ominous. It's a wonderful, creepy scene.

(01:02:48):
And Gino's 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 cat,
so we'll get the payoff of some b plots. The
masquerade is coming up soon, so we see we see
Alfredo getting into the gorilla suit, and.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
I think in the scene hopped Toat is already like
whipping him a little bit to get into the act.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
And Julianna is getting married to Satan again, and she
has this evil dream sequence where the dancers of Hell
like mime stabbing at her, and then she wanders around
through the differently colored rooms and she says, I have
tasted the beauties of terror. We see like the pendulum
from the giant clock ticking in the foreground, and you

(01:03:37):
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
partygoers 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 great
moment where he says, oh, do not mourn her. She

(01:03:59):
is just married friend of mine.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
It's great, it's perfect delivery. Now, did you watch the
theatrical cut or the extended cut of the film.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
I made a point of watching the extended cut, and
it's my understanding 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 Cord. And yeah, there's nothing in it that's
particularly troubling, especially to modern viewers, but it does go

(01:04:31):
on a bit and is like they're doing this, not
in the sense that it gets boring, but it's just
a lot of like distortions of her screaming face and
slow motion content and it is it's very trippy. Yeah,
but anyway, she's married to Satan. Now she's out of
the picture.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
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's
a great scene of Gino trying to sneak back inside
the castle with what is a sense an ewok grappling hook.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Yeah, yeah, rope attached to a giant tree branch or something.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
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

(01:05:29):
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 revenge plot on Alfredo, where
hop toed Hog ties Alfredo in a gorilla suit, ties
him to a chandelier, hoists him up in the air,

(01:05:49):
and then just sets him on fire.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Yeah it's horrifying to watch. I mean, it's gotten to
the point where just about any burn suit moment in
a film, old or new, kind of gives me the
that makes me squirm a little bit, you know, But
this one, Yeah, this is horrifying. You wrote you almost
if you didn't know that Fred, that Alfredo was such

(01:06:12):
a bad dude, you might think that hop Toad went
a little bit too far. It's revenge execution here, but like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
You said, Prosper's reaction to his friend here getting burned
alive is like, oh, quite funny. Guards clean up this
mess and give hop Toad a reward.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Yeah, I mean, hop Toad knows his audience. He's served
long in the in the court of Prince prosper In fact,
he has a whole little monologue earlier in the film
about that. He's like, yeah, I served Prince prosper for
a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
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 it. Well, I guess I'm
gonna be for Satan now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Oh, and we should mention that Prospero 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 like the head dress.
So it's a great look. He's just he's like all.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Darkness, yes, but uh 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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
So not just red details or red trim, which I
think was maybe allowed. But this guy's in all red
and we know who this surely is, so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
He's chasing him down. He goes through the rainbow rooms,
through the Yellow room, the Purple room, the White room,
and to the final black room where they have the confrontation.
Rob described the scene. It is it's so perfect, oh,
it is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
It is just a perfect confrontation. You know this is
going to happen. There's going to be this scene where
Prospero finally speaks with the man in red, speaks with
the red death personified. And I mean, it's one of
these things where 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

(01:08:13):
discussion of the nature of death and the universe and
that the nature of Satan and who rules the universe.
It's 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 what you made of this,

(01:08:35):
but it made me think of like some sort of
a bacterium or a or like a pustule or something
transformed into a symbol.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Oh well, yeah, it's kind of a hexagon with but
with bubbles at all of the vertices.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
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 believe 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

(01:09:10):
with this one who 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? Is
it the persona merely the personification of one type of death?
But clearly it is a superhuman individual. It is some

(01:09:31):
sort of like universal concept made manifest And here he
is finally able to confront.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
It, and you go through the stages of who he
thinks he is, right, like Price thinks that he's one
of the guests. He's like, oh, are you doctor so
and so? And then the figure in red says, the
doctor Danse 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

(01:09:58):
most loyal recruiter. But no, he's not Satan either.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
And he keeps it a little 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

(01:10:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
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 are splattered with
the Red Death and then finally Prospero himself kind of
melts into a red red puddle.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Oh yeah, And there's also the brilliant part where he
unmasks the Red Death and Red Death has Prospero's own face,
which is the earlier 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. It's

(01:11:16):
absolutely perfectly executed here.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
But there is a happy ending for the good characters.
Francesca and Gino and hop Toad and Esmeralda. All the
good characters get to escape and they meet outside the
castle walls with a peasant child who was spared earlier
when peasants came to the gate looking for help and
Prospero had them all slaughtered except for the kid. But

(01:11:40):
we 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 their own color, and it's such a spectacular ending.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Yeah, I mean, we get through the rainbow theme once more.
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

(01:12:25):
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 your what's your kill rate today?
Did you make quota? And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm
doing great. I hear, I hear Blue Death is a
little behind today. But man, did you hear about Black
He's really he's really cranking in the numbers. But it's

(01:12:48):
not like that. It's it's more of a solemn affair,
a vague affair. They don't really know exactly what these
entities are except they're clearly involved in death. But it's
a it's a solemn kind of Death, and in fact
we get the final words of the film are in
Latin what sic transit Gloria Monday, which translates to thus

(01:13:12):
passes the glory of the World.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
I think they also quote the ending of the Pose story,
don't they say that the darkness and decay and the
red death held illimitable dominion overall?

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
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 splendid.
These 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 kind of play out in a way that builds,
and then the film closes, we go red increasingly read

(01:13:47):
and then darkness.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Who knew Roger Corman had it in him? This is
just a fantastic, stylish horror movie.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
This is just peak artful Roger Corman Vincent Price film
and just just a great Halloween movie. So definitely worth
checking out. Even if you don't think you're into Vincent
Price films. I think you're not into films from the
early nineteen sixties early mid nineteen sixties. This is one

(01:14:18):
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 Edgar Allan poet 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

(01:14:40):
of one off hand that's better than this one. I
can think it's someone they're much hammier, but there are
definitely some other choices, and of course there are some
other ones by Corman in company as well. Yeah, as
we close out here will remind you that we're primarily
a science podcast, but on Fridays 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

(01:15:00):
to keep up with the films that we are covering,
have covered and we'll cover on the show, I chronicle
them at Simmuta music dot com. That's just a blog
that I maintain. But then also weird House has its
own account on letterboxed dot com. That's l E T
T e r box d dot com. Our username is

(01:15:21):
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 there are links there that'll take you to the episodes.
It's a great way to visualize where we are, what
decades we've covered, and I believe as according to my accounting,

(01:15:41):
this was the ninetieth film that we've covered on Weirdouse Cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
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 topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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