Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird Howse Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we have
Speaker 1: an exciting film to discuss this week and a perfect
Speaker 1: seasonal selection for Halloween for us is to return to
Speaker 1: the filmographies of both legendary B movie director Roger Corman
Speaker 1: and the work of legendary actor Vincent Price, as well
Speaker 1: as the work of Hazel Court, who was also in
Speaker 1: Devil Girl from Mars. This one is also an Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe adaptation, perhaps the finest one of several that
Speaker 1: Corman helmed, as well as one of the most well
Speaker 1: regarded films he directed. We're gonna be talking about The
Speaker 1: Mask of the Red Death from nine. It's kind of
Speaker 1: amazing to see what Corman was capable of when he
Speaker 1: had just a little bit more money and like five
Speaker 1: weeks to direct a movie instead of two or three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, what, you know, what if we had a
Speaker 1: little more time. What if we had five weeks instead
Speaker 1: of two. What if we had more money in the
Speaker 1: budget instead of less, And on top of that, what
Speaker 1: if we had British actors to fill in the rest
Speaker 1: of the cast as opposed to uh just you know,
Speaker 1: various actors from California of a varying talent levels exactly.
Speaker 1: So this one isn't just good in the you know,
Speaker 1: the since you might normally say some Corman movies are good,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like scrappy and fun and you can
Speaker 1: see what they were able to pull off on on
Speaker 1: bottom dollar. This one, I think is is just straight
Speaker 1: up a good movie. Yeah, yeah, this, this one's great.
Speaker 1: I I loved this film. Uh this was my first
Speaker 1: viewing of it. I've never seen it before, but I've
Speaker 1: lined it up for us because I knew that it
Speaker 1: was very well regarded. I knew that it was going
Speaker 1: to be colorful. I knew that it was going to
Speaker 1: really showcase Vincent Price, and I was I was not
Speaker 1: disappointed in the least. This is definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a like a Corman connoisseur
Speaker 1: to enjoy this film. And even if you do just
Speaker 1: want something to go to have in the background, uh
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want something that requires close viewing,
Speaker 1: It's still great because it's so colorful. It's so beautiful,
Speaker 1: especially the the more recent releases of it that have
Speaker 1: been fully restored. In the movie just looks better than
Speaker 1: it's ever looked. The colors are amazing, the sets and
Speaker 1: costumes are amazing, like beautiful. I would also say this
Speaker 1: is a real standout role for Vincent Price, because, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think this movie is often classified as as high camp,
Speaker 1: and it is camp, but it's also more than that.
Speaker 1: It there is a subtlety to it that I wasn't
Speaker 1: quite expecting when I went in. I thought it would
Speaker 1: be just you know, delicious Vincent Price, chewing of the
Speaker 1: scenery and all that. Uh. And so Price does play
Speaker 1: in a way a sometimes kind of Hammy Satanist aristocrat,
Speaker 1: but he but there's a little more to his performance
Speaker 1: than you would expect. Yeah, everything with really I have
Speaker 1: to give credit to both Price and the script. Like
Speaker 1: the script seems really solid. And so there's so many scenes,
Speaker 1: so many bits of dialogue where they're doing a thing
Speaker 1: that other films do. Uh. One example that I ended
Speaker 1: up paying close attention to is having some sort of
Speaker 1: a wise crack after somebody is viciously murdered at the
Speaker 1: behest of the of the tyrannical prints. That's something that
Speaker 1: happens in this film. And often when this sort of
Speaker 1: thing happens in a movie, be it a like a
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger movie, a typical horror movie, or like a
Speaker 1: James Bond film, you know, it's really hammy, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a cheeseball moment, it's grown inducing. But when it
Speaker 1: happens in this film, it's it's not. It feels like
Speaker 1: just carefully calibrated so that it's not too hammy. It's
Speaker 1: just uh, it's just sardonic enough and feels off centic
Speaker 1: within the picture and doesn't throw you out of the
Speaker 1: movie viewing experience. I think of the moment where Hazel
Speaker 1: Court does the one of many ceremonies to get married
Speaker 1: to the devil. I don't know how many devil weddings
Speaker 1: she she marries Satan like four times in this movie,
Speaker 1: but I guess in the final one where it's like
Speaker 1: really for real, now she uh, now it went through.
Speaker 1: She is a hell bride. Uh. The ritual ends with
Speaker 1: like a falcon pecking her face off and her dead
Speaker 1: body is found, uh, and all the guests are standing
Speaker 1: around in horror. But then Vincent Price, uh, he very
Speaker 1: coolly just says, uh, oh, there is nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: She's just married a friend of mine. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: and it, it's so perfect. The perfect delivery of the
Speaker 1: line doesn't come off as hammy. It just it's it's
Speaker 1: so good. There are also so many scenes where Vincent
Speaker 1: Price's character, Prince Prospero, is giving some sort of a
Speaker 1: monologue about the nature of evil or darkness or pain,
Speaker 1: and it's become a trope. So any horror films, especially,
Speaker 1: you'll have some evil character telling us all what pains
Speaker 1: about or what horror is and and so forth. And
Speaker 1: in this film, the way it's handled just puts most
Speaker 1: examples I can think up to shame. It's just handled
Speaker 1: so perfectly. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: That there is a tradition, I would say, going way
Speaker 1: way back in in fact, even into the literature of
Speaker 1: the ancient world, of the aristocratic figure who engages in
Speaker 1: perverse kind of morally undermining philosophical musings. I think this
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to like the Bible where
Speaker 1: Pilot asks what is truth? Uh, you know, and you
Speaker 1: get scenes like this, and you know, stories all throughout
Speaker 1: the years. This is a really good example of it
Speaker 1: though it feels actually kind of thoughtful vincent prices musings
Speaker 1: undermining you know, the the good characters. Philosophical assumptions are
Speaker 1: actually kind of clever and more thoughtfully stated than usual. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it can. It can. Actually it actually adds to
Speaker 1: the frightfulness of the film because as a viewer you're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, Prospero was making some some points here. Now
Speaker 1: I'm second guessing myself in my worldview. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: so good. So we'll get into all this some more
Speaker 1: as we proceed talking about the cast and the plot.
Speaker 1: As far as an elevator pitch goes, I was the
Speaker 1: only thing that came to mind for me is what
Speaker 1: if emotion picture where a stained glass window in a
Speaker 1: cathedral of horror? Yeah, the colors in this movie are aggressive.
Speaker 1: There is such use of color and a large uh
Speaker 1: like blocks of color, you know, where like you have
Speaker 1: characters who are who are dressed all in red or
Speaker 1: all in white, and that is complimented by the fact
Speaker 1: that there are rooms that are entirely yellow or entirely purple,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's just fabulous. Yeah, yeah, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: question whether you've seen the color red before, if you've
Speaker 1: seen the color yellow before, because the colors don't seem
Speaker 1: as bright in the real world as they do in
Speaker 1: this film, which is something to say. For you know,
Speaker 1: a gothic horror film, you tend to what you expect,
Speaker 1: the darkness and the grime and the shadows, and this
Speaker 1: film also brings some wonderful usage of those elements as well,
Speaker 1: but also these rainbow colors that are amazing. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's go ahead and listen to I
Speaker 1: think just part of the trailer, the original audio, the
Speaker 1: original trailer for this film, because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a good trailer, and I'll explain why I on a second.
Speaker 1: So let's just let's just hear a little of it
Speaker 1: to get a taste. So, yeah, I love this film,
Speaker 1: but this is not a good trailer. It spoils a
Speaker 1: lot of the film, and it's also just kind of
Speaker 1: an assortment of clips with minimal dialogue and no narration
Speaker 1: that doesn't work so good for the show. No, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I just don't think it's a good trayer.
Speaker 1: Even viewing it, it's not a good trailer in my opinion. However,
Speaker 1: The poster art for this film is amazing. If you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, look it up. Uh, it's Prices face,
Speaker 1: you know, full sardonic Price as the Prince Prospero in red,
Speaker 1: full red face composed. You look closer and you see
Speaker 1: that he's composed. His face is composed of all these
Speaker 1: red bodies intertwined with each other. It's poster art by
Speaker 1: Reynald Brown who lived nineteen seventeen. Who he did magazine
Speaker 1: covers and all sorts of stuff. But he was responsible
Speaker 1: for a slew of great movie posters from the day,
Speaker 1: including Tarantula and Black Sabbath. Also the really iconic poster
Speaker 1: for Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. Beautiful poster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A quick note on where to find this film. Well,
Speaker 1: luckily it's widely available in digital form, but we highly
Speaker 1: recommend the shop Factory screen Factory restored four K blu ray.
Speaker 1: That's how we watched it. It features both the theatrical
Speaker 1: cut and an extended cut. And yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: beautiful looking film. Should be seen in the best quality possible,
Speaker 1: however you go about it. Agreed, you want the full
Speaker 1: buffet for your eyes. Yeah, alright, well, let's get into
Speaker 1: the people involved. Like we said, this one was directed
Speaker 1: by Roger Corman. He was also one of the producers
Speaker 1: born as of this recording still with us. Roger Corman is,
Speaker 1: of course the Wizard of b movies, a prolific generator
Speaker 1: of late fifties drive in Flix. On Weird House, we
Speaker 1: specifically discussed n Not of This Earth as well as
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how many Corman productions films that he
Speaker 1: produced but someone else was directing. Uh. This film, though,
Speaker 1: like we've been saying, is a different egg from any
Speaker 1: of those other films. Shot and five weeks, not too shot,
Speaker 1: for a higher budget and in England, which also allowed
Speaker 1: for some tax breaks and I understand, plus access to
Speaker 1: a better supporting cast. So this is a fine, if
Speaker 1: not the finest, example of of of Corman's work as
Speaker 1: a director, showing that he could not only crank out
Speaker 1: a film on time and on budget, but that he
Speaker 1: could actually be an artist as well. Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1: It is an artful movie. In fact, apparently that was
Speaker 1: one of the criticisms after it came out, Like it didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't perform quite as well as the the the
Speaker 1: main producers in the production company wanted and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: it was probably too artsy. It was it was reaching
Speaker 1: a little too high for the audience, which for weird cinema,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. That's a good sign, all right. Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously this is based on not only one Edgar Allan
Speaker 1: Post tory, but but two. It's based on both The
Speaker 1: Mask of the Red Death and Hot Frog Um. Ed
Speaker 1: Garland Poe lived eighteen o nine through eight forty nine,
Speaker 1: American writer, poet ed in literary critic, best remembered though
Speaker 1: for his spooky poems and stories. Um and uh, I
Speaker 1: was just looking into like some of the adaptations. There's
Speaker 1: been just so many adaptations of Post stories over the years.
Speaker 1: The earliest cinematic adaptation of his work was apparently Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery, based on pose non
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes novel Murders in the Room Morgue. Um. But
Speaker 1: the reason that they're though, I do think, uh, I
Speaker 1: do think it's the case that Arthur Conan Doyle was
Speaker 1: inspired to write the Sherlock Holmes stories by reading pose
Speaker 1: Murders in the Room Morgues. So I think Post sort
Speaker 1: of gave rise to the detective genre in a way.
Speaker 1: M oh interesting, So they're countless adaptations. Again, they're still
Speaker 1: cranking out po adaptations. But this is in part due
Speaker 1: to one key reason, and a key reason that this
Speaker 1: film was greenlit, and that the other Corman films were greenlit.
Speaker 1: All the works were in public domain by this point.
Speaker 1: So I think the other selling factor was, like, they're
Speaker 1: teaching this in schools. Everybody knows Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they saw money on both ends, Like, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to pay for it because now it's
Speaker 1: in the public domain, and because it's part of school curricula,
Speaker 1: there's already a built in audience for it. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, the producers today, who would
Speaker 1: rather make a new entry in an existing franchise than
Speaker 1: do a totally original film because existing franchise has built
Speaker 1: in audience, except in this case, they don't have to
Speaker 1: pay for the rights to that franchise. It's it's public Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's I mean it's still I think it
Speaker 1: is still taught in schools. I I certainly have a
Speaker 1: strong memory of encountering Poe in the classroom, and I
Speaker 1: remember going to see a dramatization of the Telltale Heart
Speaker 1: as part of a school group and being really impressed
Speaker 1: by that. Though it's funny, most of this, of the
Speaker 1: actual narrative content of this film is not in the
Speaker 1: post story. I mean, this is essentially in original a
Speaker 1: totally original plot based on UH just kind of loosely
Speaker 1: based on a scenario described by Poe. So getting into
Speaker 1: the screenwriters that were responsible for this UH, the the
Speaker 1: main one really to highlight here is Charles Beaumont, who
Speaker 1: lived through ninety seven, and he was a pretty big
Speaker 1: and pretty influential name and speculative fiction of the day.
Speaker 1: He panned numerous horror and sci fi stories, as well
Speaker 1: as multiple classic episodes of the original Twilight Zone series
Speaker 1: titles such as The Howling Man, Static Miniature, Printers Devil,
Speaker 1: and Number twelve Looks Just Like You, and many of
Speaker 1: these were adapted from his own stories. He also did
Speaker 1: film screenplays, including Queen Aouter Space, sixty two's Nine of
Speaker 1: the Eagle, also sixty two's premature Burial, and The Intruder,
Speaker 1: which was based on his own novel UH ninety three
Speaker 1: is the Haunted Place in nineteen sixty four's UH seven
Speaker 1: Faces of Dr Law. The other writer on This screenwriter
Speaker 1: is our right, Campbell, who lived seven through two thousand,
Speaker 1: American screenwriter and author who worked on such films as
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven Man of a Thousand Faces, nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: Teenage Caveman, and nineteen sixties The Night Fighters. As we said,
Speaker 1: the screenplay here is very good. Yeah, so yeah, tip
Speaker 1: of the hat to both these gentlemen. But more than
Speaker 1: anything else, this movie is about Vince Price. That's right,
Speaker 1: Vincent Price playing the role of Prince uh Prospero. He
Speaker 1: lived nineteen eleven through nine, American acting royalty, active on
Speaker 1: screen from the late thirties to the early nineties. Just
Speaker 1: I mean everything was great about him. Great voice, great look,
Speaker 1: great mustache, horror icon but was active in various genres
Speaker 1: throughout his career, especially early on in his career and
Speaker 1: then later, you know, especially by the time of these
Speaker 1: po films, he was really cemented as is the horror guy,
Speaker 1: and then towards the end of his career he was
Speaker 1: kind of played more of the celebrity game, doing celebrity appearances,
Speaker 1: product endorsements, which we've we've had some fun discussing already
Speaker 1: on the show. And you know, by by this point
Speaker 1: in his career, he'd very much earned that. Yeah, cameos,
Speaker 1: you know you could to do the Narration and Thriller,
Speaker 1: or to be in commercials for the No Jelly Bars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the No Jelly Bars, or yeah, go on the Muppet Show,
Speaker 1: host the Muppet Show. Go for it. So if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more about Vincent Brice, go back and
Speaker 1: listen to our episodes on Dr Fibes and also Scream
Speaker 1: Scream again. Uh. This film, however, is a better showcase
Speaker 1: for Poe than either of those. He's great in those films,
Speaker 1: but in this you just get pure villainous price, just
Speaker 1: top shelf stuff. Totally agree. Now, another actor that's in
Speaker 1: this one that we've previously discussed in the show, hazel
Speaker 1: Court plays Julianna hazel Court lived through two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: British actor and early horror en a star of Hammer
Speaker 1: Horror as well. There are films include The Curse of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein for fifty seven, The Man Who Could Cheat Death
Speaker 1: from fifty nine. Dr Blood's Coffin from six one and
Speaker 1: sixty three is the Raven She was in a Devil
Speaker 1: Girl from Mars. Most recently, that's what we talked about her.
Speaker 1: That's the film we covered where we were discussing her.
Speaker 1: On TV, she appeared on both The Twilight Zone and
Speaker 1: Thriller and Yeah, and this. She is the consort of
Speaker 1: Prince Prospero, who is almost on board with the whole
Speaker 1: worship the Prince of Darkness thing. But even when she's
Speaker 1: all in, Prospero is more interested in the corruption of innocence.
Speaker 1: You kind of get the sense that, uh, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should describe her role after we describe Jane Asher.
Speaker 1: That's right, Jane Asher plays Francesca uh. Asher was born
Speaker 1: six as of this recording and still still very much alive.
Speaker 1: British child actress who transitioned into quite a career as
Speaker 1: an adult. Some of her most notable film wimes include
Speaker 1: Deep In from nineteen seventy, Alphie from nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: and Death at a Funeral from two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: As a child, she also she appeared in such titles
Speaker 1: as ninety seven's The Quartermass Experiment. She was also pretty
Speaker 1: famous for being Paul McCartney's muse for a number of years,
Speaker 1: inspiring such songs as here, There and Everywhere. So in
Speaker 1: this movie, Jane Asher plays this This peasant girl Francesca,
Speaker 1: who is brought to the palace of Prince Prospero because
Speaker 1: Prospero sees her moral goodness, her Christian piety and her
Speaker 1: innocence and he's like, I gotta corrupt that, I gotta
Speaker 1: turn her over into Satan. Uh. And she has an
Speaker 1: interesting relationship with the character Juliana played by Hazel Court,
Speaker 1: who you get the sense was once in Francesca's place
Speaker 1: like she herself maybe was once a morally good, faithful,
Speaker 1: faithful Christian who was who was innocent as well, but
Speaker 1: has for for some time now been corrupted and turned
Speaker 1: to to the dark side of the force. Now she
Speaker 1: is all in for Satan. And when when Prospero shows
Speaker 1: up with a new innocent person to corrupt and add
Speaker 1: into the coven, Julian is kind of jealous, you can
Speaker 1: feel how you can like she feels snubbed and uh.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I felt kind of like I felt
Speaker 1: a strong sympathy for her in that that prosper Oh
Speaker 1: has now that there's somebody more innocent to corrupt and
Speaker 1: he's just moved on. Yeah, as with everything in this film,
Speaker 1: there's so much more nuanced than than a lesser film
Speaker 1: would give this scenario, and so many other films you
Speaker 1: can imagine, Yeah, here's your villain, here's the bad girl,
Speaker 1: here's the good girl. Bad guy wants to do bad
Speaker 1: things to the good girl. Uh, fair enough, that's, I
Speaker 1: guess a pretty simple recipe for a horror movie or
Speaker 1: what have you. But in this yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a bit more complicated than that. Like she's Francesca is
Speaker 1: not quite a mere damsel in distress. Like as as
Speaker 1: she's being corrupted, it's like she has agency in her
Speaker 1: corrupt shin Um. You get the sense with both these characters,
Speaker 1: it's not like, well, yeah, you know, he overpowered me
Speaker 1: with his suave evil. It's like, no, there's a sense
Speaker 1: that they have listened to the argument for darkness and
Speaker 1: have been overcome by how pervasive that argument is. But
Speaker 1: if you want a simplistic hero in your film, well
Speaker 1: this film's got one as well, and that is the
Speaker 1: character Gino Gino Guino Gino Gino Gino, played by Dave
Speaker 1: David Weston born Um. We were talking before we recorded
Speaker 1: about how a dumber version of the same story would
Speaker 1: have made Gino the main character, because he's sensibly like
Speaker 1: the the young male hero. You know, he he gets
Speaker 1: the sword fight, he gets to be dashing and courageous,
Speaker 1: but he's not the main character of this movie. In fact,
Speaker 1: none of the good characters are the main character. It's
Speaker 1: such an interesting way to arrange in the drama that
Speaker 1: really the main character of the film is the villain,
Speaker 1: and there are heroes, there are good characters to root for,
Speaker 1: but they're all secondary characters. Yeah, And it's this is
Speaker 1: something that I think would definitely work for so many
Speaker 1: modern viewers because it's what we've actually come to expect
Speaker 1: with shows like Game of Thrones and so many other
Speaker 1: properties where the characters in the forefront are the flawed
Speaker 1: characters and the complicated characters and sometimes the outright villains
Speaker 1: of the piece. And like on Game of Thrones, for
Speaker 1: an example, a character like like you know, he Gino
Speaker 1: here would be would be in the background, would not
Speaker 1: be the major character. And and that's the case here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's overshadowed by various other uh characters, and the film
Speaker 1: is largely more concerned with weirder and more complex figures
Speaker 1: as opposed to this typical baby face. He's still important
Speaker 1: to the plot, but he is not the main focus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's likable as a character. I mean, even though
Speaker 1: he's not as a complex as some of these other ones.
Speaker 1: But he he's got a kind of righteous defiance in
Speaker 1: the face of Prospero's tyranny. That's it's hard not to
Speaker 1: get behind. Like when when you very first meet him,
Speaker 1: Prosperose in his village, you know, just sort of looking
Speaker 1: down on everybody and condescendingly saying, oh, thank you for
Speaker 1: all the grain, and Gino gets right up in his face.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, you're gonna eat all our grain while
Speaker 1: we starve that. David Weston was a shakespeare was he
Speaker 1: is is of this recording. He's still still alive. I
Speaker 1: don't think he's active anymore. But he was a Shakespearean actor,
Speaker 1: accomplished actor of stage, TV and screen. He apparently acted
Speaker 1: in twenty nine of thirty seven shakespeare plays. He appeared
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty four film Beckett, as well as
Speaker 1: multiple episodes of Doctor Who Uh during the William Hartnell
Speaker 1: era as the human Nicholas Muss and during the excellent
Speaker 1: Tom Baker era. Is a thrill by the name of
Speaker 1: beer Rock, which appears to be a kind of lion man.
Speaker 1: I have and seen these episodes in particular. He was
Speaker 1: also in the Don Sharp film from nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Witchcraft opposite Lawn Cheney Jr. Now, most of the scenes
Speaker 1: that Gino is in, he's sort of part of a duo.
Speaker 1: They were like the two men that Francesca cares about,
Speaker 1: and they are Gino but also her father Ludovico, played
Speaker 1: by Nigel Green. Yeah, Nigel Green is a Ludo here
Speaker 1: uh Green live through ninety two British actor who appeared
Speaker 1: in a bunch of films, including sixty four Is Zulu Nive,
Speaker 1: The Ip Chris File and nineteen sixty three Is Jason
Speaker 1: and the Argonauts, in which he played Hercules. Other films
Speaker 1: include nineteen seventy ones Countess Dracula, sixty five The Skull,
Speaker 1: and his final film was a nineteen seventy three adaptation
Speaker 1: of Sir Gawain and The Green Night, in which he
Speaker 1: plays the Green Night opposite. Looks like a really good
Speaker 1: cast of the likes of Robert Hardy, Ronald Lacey and
Speaker 1: Richard Harndel Lazy. He's the He's the Nazi and uh
Speaker 1: and Indian and Raiders. Yes, he's the man in black
Speaker 1: with the the Peter laure esque character and raiders Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: tote yeah the yeah, the officer who who melts gloriously
Speaker 1: at the end. Now we've said that, uh, of course
Speaker 1: Prices Prospero in this movie is thoroughly evil, but he's
Speaker 1: also kind of complex and kind of interesting and comes
Speaker 1: off as a more thoughtful brand of evil. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are just like straight up, you know,
Speaker 1: mustache twirling evil evil creeps in this movie. And a
Speaker 1: great example of that is Alfredo. Yes, played by the
Speaker 1: accomplished British stagage actor Patrick McGhee who lived through two. Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy, this guy has a very recognizable face and build. Uh.
Speaker 1: Alfredo is a is a blunt object of of a villain,
Speaker 1: and he has the and the McGhee had the physicality
Speaker 1: to back that up. Um. He He did a lot
Speaker 1: of horror films, but he also pops up in a
Speaker 1: number of other works. He was in two Stanley Kubrick films,
Speaker 1: A Clockwork Orange and seventy one and Barry Lyndon and
Speaker 1: seventy five. He was in William Friedkins The Birthday Party
Speaker 1: from sixty eight nineteen seventies Cromwell. He was in Chariots
Speaker 1: of Fire, but he also yeah, it was in a
Speaker 1: ton of horror movies, including uh Lucio folchi one film,
Speaker 1: The Black Cat nineteen seventy two, Demons of the Mind,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy two Amicus film Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 1: sixty five, Die, Monster, Die, and Francis Ford Coppola's Dimentia
Speaker 1: thirteen from nineteen sixty three. I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: if I've seen Fulchiese Black Cat. I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen that one, But now you
Speaker 1: have a reason to because Alfredo is in it. Alfredo
Speaker 1: is so slimy, you just you hate him from the
Speaker 1: moment you see him, and then everything he does makes
Speaker 1: it even worse. Yeah, and he has a number of
Speaker 1: of interactions with Vincent Price. But he's also very much
Speaker 1: the villain of our B plot. We have a B
Speaker 1: revenge plot and it involves both Alfredo and a character
Speaker 1: by the name of hop Toad. Hop Toed is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hop Toad is really good. And and the thing is
Speaker 1: this whole B plot with hop Toad, which is based
Speaker 1: on the Edgar Allan Poe story Hop Frog this would
Speaker 1: I think be otherwise maybe a forgettable distraction in the film.
Speaker 1: You might find yourself saying, well, this is okay, but
Speaker 1: when are we going to get back to the main plot.
Speaker 1: Except the character playing hop Toad is so good, uh,
Speaker 1: played by Skip Martin, who lived this is a short
Speaker 1: statured British actor born Eric George Horowitz and not to
Speaker 1: be confused with I think there's some other actors and
Speaker 1: musicians who use the moniker Skip Martin, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: plays this character that like so much in the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine a version in which this is just
Speaker 1: a straight up like you know, like like evil Dwarf
Speaker 1: sort of a character or something. But with with the
Speaker 1: Skip Martin's hop Toad, you know, he's charismatic, he's believable
Speaker 1: as a as a is a human character, while at
Speaker 1: the same time being whimsical and of course having a
Speaker 1: just vicious revenge plot in motion. So he's he's he
Speaker 1: ultimately is one of the highlights of the film. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Skip Martin is wonderful in this. It's so hard not
Speaker 1: to love him even when he's even when his revenge
Speaker 1: on a nasty character for a nasty act turns extremely brutal.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just doesn't really bother you. It's
Speaker 1: just like, good job, good job, hop toad. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the Prince Prospero's response as well. It's like, that's the
Speaker 1: good give him a tip, give him a reward for
Speaker 1: burning one of my guests alive. Uh. Skip Martin wasn't
Speaker 1: in a ton of films, but he was active through
Speaker 1: seventy five and during the sixties and seventies he was
Speaker 1: in a number of mostly horror films, the likes of
Speaker 1: The hell Fire Club, Psycho Circus, Vampire Circus, Son of Dracula,
Speaker 1: and Horror Hospital. But yeah, during that time he got
Speaker 1: to work in pictures with names like Price Cushing, Lee Uh,
Speaker 1: Patrick mcnaid, Diana Rigg uh some some great names and
Speaker 1: some in many of these like it's not just he
Speaker 1: was in the same picture with him and he had
Speaker 1: screen time with them. He was interacting with with some
Speaker 1: great actors of the day. Skip Martin is wonderful. Now
Speaker 1: this is Mask of the Red Death, and there is
Speaker 1: a character that is the Red Death or the with
Speaker 1: the the man in Red Um. I think he's referred
Speaker 1: to in different different ways, but this is an uncredited
Speaker 1: performance by an actor by the name of John Westbrook,
Speaker 1: who lived any two through nine. He also worked in
Speaker 1: Corman's po follow up to this film, The Tomb of Legia.
Speaker 1: He was the voice of Treebeard in the animated adaptation
Speaker 1: of The Lord of the Rings, and he also apparently
Speaker 1: did a lot of work and with radio plays and
Speaker 1: audio books, which should come as no surprise because he
Speaker 1: has this really rich, velvety voice. When he first spoke,
Speaker 1: I was like, it's Christopher Lee, and I really thought
Speaker 1: it was him until I looked it up and it's
Speaker 1: not Christopher Lee, but he sounds enough like him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very Christopher Lee asked. It has that that, like,
Speaker 1: that rich quality to it. It's it's a voice that
Speaker 1: can go head to head with Vincent Price in these scenes. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I like the way the character is written as well.
Speaker 1: He uh he. He is very economical with his words.
Speaker 1: He speaks often in very pointed, clipped sentences that are
Speaker 1: extremely ominous and effective. Yeah. Now you mentioned how beautiful
Speaker 1: this film is. Is just wonderful to watch, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that also has to do with the cinematography,
Speaker 1: which is the work of Nicholas Rogue, who lived nine
Speaker 1: through two thousand and eighteen. This is a name that
Speaker 1: that should uh ring a bell with a number of you.
Speaker 1: It totally made sense how good this movie looked when
Speaker 1: I realized he was the cinematographer. Yeah. Yeah, he served
Speaker 1: as a cinematographer on a number of films, and not
Speaker 1: only this, but also nineteen sixty six is Fahrenheit four
Speaker 1: fifty one. But he's probably best known as the director
Speaker 1: of such films as the nineteen seventy one outback thriller
Speaker 1: Walk About nineteen seventy threes. Don't look now, I know
Speaker 1: that's one you've mentioned before, Joe. Oh, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: horrifying film. Is extremely good. Uh And then on the
Speaker 1: like The Trip or End of the Spectrum. He directed
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six is The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: starring David Bowie. Other films of note include nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: The Witches and I was surprised I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about this. But his later career as moves around through
Speaker 1: different genres. I mean there's, for instance, there's some there's
Speaker 1: some erotica in there, but then there's also a nine
Speaker 1: mini series of Samson and Delilah with a really solid cast.
Speaker 1: The production designer on this was also someone of note,
Speaker 1: Daniel Holler born nine. We've talked about him before because
Speaker 1: he directed nineteen seventies The Dunwich Horror Oh with Dean Stockwell,
Speaker 1: Sander d and Ed Begley. Yeah. Yeah, very fun film.
Speaker 1: Go back and listen to the past Weird House episode
Speaker 1: on that if you're interested. That was a Lovecraft adaptation.
Speaker 1: But Holler also directed in nineteen sixty five Lovecraft adaptation
Speaker 1: Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff. He did some biker films,
Speaker 1: he did some TV work, but yeah, he was the
Speaker 1: production designer on this film. And then finally, the music
Speaker 1: for this film is the work of David Lee born
Speaker 1: ninety six. Um. This is one of those scores that
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the kind of thing I would seek
Speaker 1: out to listen into in isolation, But for this film,
Speaker 1: it's really solid. I think it's really effective. It evokes
Speaker 1: a nice Gothic cinema sensibility for the time period. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in the final scenes, like in the confrontation between
Speaker 1: Prince Prospero and the Red Death as the dancers are circling,
Speaker 1: the music gets intense and it's very good. Yeah, Uh.
Speaker 1: David Lee was Slash is a prominent pianist and a
Speaker 1: ranger who also composed for film, TV and a lot
Speaker 1: of television ads apparently, and I think he's also a novelist. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was probably his biggest film that he composed for,
Speaker 1: but he did at least a handful of film scores,
Speaker 1: including nineteen sixty three's The Very Edge, which has been
Speaker 1: sort on my radar before because it's one of the
Speaker 1: very few genre films to to star Jeremy Brett, who
Speaker 1: is famous for his betrayal of his Sherlock Holmes. But
Speaker 1: when you look around for like weird you know, psychatronic
Speaker 1: films that Jeremy Brett was in, there aren't very many,
Speaker 1: uh contenders. The Very Edge is one of the very few.
Speaker 1: Probably not a film we'd we'd necessarily tackle on Weird House,
Speaker 1: but it's it stood out to me before Well, are
Speaker 1: you ready to discuss the plot of this American international picture.
Speaker 1: Let's do it once again? A Corman movie for a
Speaker 1: I p coming in hot with an awesome credit sequence design.
Speaker 1: Even some of his you know, drive in B movies
Speaker 1: had great looking credits, uh, and these are also great
Speaker 1: in a way that I can understand by by uh,
Speaker 1: some of the producers may have been seen as two
Speaker 1: artsy FARTZI, but I think it's wonderful. So we see
Speaker 1: like the mask of the red death title, but in
Speaker 1: the background there is a growing splatter of red, as
Speaker 1: if blood. But the red splatter actually doesn't look exactly
Speaker 1: like blood, because it doesn't look like the splashing of
Speaker 1: round droplets, and instead it looks more like, uh, some
Speaker 1: kind of fibrous growth like hairs or filaments or branches
Speaker 1: of blood. And it gradually spreads and spreads across more
Speaker 1: of the screen until the red holds illimitable dominion. Overall
Speaker 1: very fitting. Now we open on one of my favorite things,
Speaker 1: a spooky indoor for outdoor set. I'm about sure that's
Speaker 1: what it is. I'd say more than ninety This is
Speaker 1: almost definitely an indoor set. But it looks amazing. Fog
Speaker 1: drifting through the darkness, dead tree limbs, uh, and an
Speaker 1: atmosphere that's just like so heavy you can feel it.
Speaker 1: And then you see a peasant woman wrapped in rags
Speaker 1: climbing a hill covered in soft earth. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: ran through my head looking at this is the Thomas
Speaker 1: Hobbes description of life without civilization. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
Speaker 1: and short, just a desolate view of life. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then we see the peasant woman walk up to the
Speaker 1: top of the hill and she walks around collecting dead fall.
Speaker 1: She's gathering twigs I guess to burn, until she finally
Speaker 1: wanders past a dead tree and a figure cloaked in red,
Speaker 1: and the man in red is sitting cradled in the
Speaker 1: roots of the dead tree, and he calls out to her.
Speaker 1: He says, grandmother, come closer, and she does, and he
Speaker 1: produces a white rose and then he waves his hand
Speaker 1: over it and the white rose turns to red. And
Speaker 1: then he hands her the flower and says, take this
Speaker 1: to your village and tell the people the day of
Speaker 1: their deliverance is at hand. She bows to the man
Speaker 1: in red, takes the rose, and totters off on her way.
Speaker 1: This cannot be good, but we immediately sorry, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, it's it's it's such a great scene.
Speaker 1: It's very uh it's it's played seriously, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this does not bode well for the village. We know
Speaker 1: what he's getting at. He's like, here's some here's some
Speaker 1: here's a brand new disease for your grandma. Go share
Speaker 1: this with the rest, right. Uh, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna go viral. Um. You know. The what's also not
Speaker 1: good for the village as a VI it from the Prince.
Speaker 1: He's going to ride in to speak to people. And
Speaker 1: the Prince he's a reckless driver for one thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess he's not driving, but he it seems like
Speaker 1: he has instructed the carriage driver do not mind if
Speaker 1: there are children playing in the street. Yeah, we get
Speaker 1: the great scene where there's a there's a child there
Speaker 1: in the path of the carriage, and our hero Geno
Speaker 1: has to to run into the street and scoop up
Speaker 1: the child to keep the child from me. Just run
Speaker 1: over by the Prospero Express here. And then we get
Speaker 1: a Price reveal. One of the soldiers pulls back the
Speaker 1: curtain from the carriage and there's Price inside, wearing a
Speaker 1: funny hat and glittering gold raiment. Uh, just a beautiful
Speaker 1: outfit standing amidst all these poor peasants. And he comes
Speaker 1: out and he thunders to them, according to my custom,
Speaker 1: I have come here personally to thank you for the
Speaker 1: year's harvest. And to invite you to a feast to
Speaker 1: be held in a fortnite when annually I gather about
Speaker 1: me the nobles of the countryside. So he's being generous,
Speaker 1: it seems he's he's offering that they can come up
Speaker 1: to a feast at his castle. Yeah, and and you
Speaker 1: know they get to look at these fabulous costumes. This
Speaker 1: is the first of so many costumes that Vincent Price
Speaker 1: wears in this film. But Gino is not going to
Speaker 1: stand for this farce. He he uh, you know, he says, oh,
Speaker 1: come to your castle. He gets up in Price's face
Speaker 1: and he says, when you'll throw us the scraps from
Speaker 1: your table as if we were dogs and Prices exactly.
Speaker 1: But these dogs have a loud bark and show their
Speaker 1: teeth why And I love this moment, especially because it
Speaker 1: reminds me of my favorite part of Superman Too, where
Speaker 1: Lex Luthor says something vaguely disrespectful to Tarrant Stamp as
Speaker 1: General's odd and then Zod replies, why do you say
Speaker 1: this to me when you know I will kill you
Speaker 1: for it? But the young man explains why why he's
Speaker 1: got more more bar work than usual. He says, well,
Speaker 1: an old woman from our village. I met a holy
Speaker 1: man up on the hill and he made a prophecy.
Speaker 1: He said, the day of our deliverance was at hand.
Speaker 1: So the stranger and read his message has now spread
Speaker 1: to the village. Yeah, they don't have much to lose.
Speaker 1: Their embolded by prophecy now and so at least a
Speaker 1: couple of them are standing up right, and they interpret
Speaker 1: the prophecy of deliverance as deliverance from Prospero's tyranny. But Prospero,
Speaker 1: Prospero is kind of amused. You know, he's giving them
Speaker 1: the Terrance stamp, and then he just instructs his soldier
Speaker 1: soldiers to garat them. Yeah. Yeah, it turns his back
Speaker 1: on them. It's a what cold moment. He is a
Speaker 1: cold villain in this scene. Yeah, but they're saved. At
Speaker 1: the last moment, a beautiful young woman from the village intervenes.
Speaker 1: She runs to Prince Prospero to beg him for mercy.
Speaker 1: She says, mercy in the name of God, And here
Speaker 1: we get a kind of surprising turn. Prospero so far
Speaker 1: is just a rutal, narcissistic tyrant, So you would think
Speaker 1: he would just say oh, you know Garatta too. But
Speaker 1: when one of his soldiers throws the young woman to
Speaker 1: the ground and Prospero slaps the soldier and rebukes him,
Speaker 1: he says she was addressing me, um, so he seems
Speaker 1: interested by her plea for mercy. She introduces herself as Francesca.
Speaker 1: This is Jane Asher, and Francesca is disheveled and dirty
Speaker 1: to show she's a poor peasant. But she also has
Speaker 1: a huge cross on her neck to show that she
Speaker 1: is pious. Yeah, big silver cross, cleanest thing in the
Speaker 1: whole village, it is yes. Uh. And she she begs
Speaker 1: forgiveness for these two men. But as Prospero going to listen, Prospero,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, he does not forgive. He gives
Speaker 1: a speech about how if my hound bites my hand,
Speaker 1: I cannot you know, let it go on disciplined. However,
Speaker 1: at the same time, having seen the film already, in
Speaker 1: this scene now it makes sense. You can see the
Speaker 1: gears turning in his head. He seems so taken with
Speaker 1: her innocence and her her selfless pleas for for help
Speaker 1: for these two men. Uh. You can see him thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: this humble Christian would be perfect for my satanic covin.
Speaker 1: So he almost immediately starts playing the mind games here
Speaker 1: with her. Yes, so he tries to negotiate. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: one of these guys, you want to say, if one
Speaker 1: must die but the other can live, and you have
Speaker 1: to choose, But she explains she can't choose because one
Speaker 1: of them is her father, Ludovico, and the other Gino,
Speaker 1: is the man she loves. Uh. This is also the
Speaker 1: moment where, incidentally, we get the first line from Alfredo
Speaker 1: the Creep. He's this sniveling aristocrat who leans in h
Speaker 1: and he's all excited about the entertainment. He goes, can
Speaker 1: such eyes have evan known sin? And then Price says
Speaker 1: they will, Alfredo, they will. So Francesca has to choose,
Speaker 1: but she can't. And just when you think they're going
Speaker 1: to force her to choose, they're interrupted because a scream
Speaker 1: draws them to a nearby hut in the village. Prospero
Speaker 1: goes to investigate the scream, and oh, boy, guess what
Speaker 1: time it is. It's red death time. He says. It's
Speaker 1: a lady who's like, you know, laying there trembling. She
Speaker 1: turns her head over and screams, and her face is
Speaker 1: splattered with with red blood and pock marks, and this
Speaker 1: is the way the Red Death is depicted in the movie.
Speaker 1: Price knows what he's looking at. He's like, that's the
Speaker 1: Red Death. We've got to get out of here immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, pack these three individuals of interest
Speaker 1: up and just burn the burn the town to the ground,
Speaker 1: burn everything else. Oh yeah, it's almost as an afterthought
Speaker 1: when they're leaving. Well, so yeah, like you said, he
Speaker 1: he says, uh, okay, take these three to the castle.
Speaker 1: These two guys were gonna send them to the dungeon.
Speaker 1: Francesca is gonna come with me, because again I think
Speaker 1: he's thinking, Francesca is a total goody two shoes. We've
Speaker 1: got to get her some heavy metal records, uh, and
Speaker 1: and win her over for for the Lord of Darkness.
Speaker 1: So they're they're leaving, and then Prospero is like, yes,
Speaker 1: by the way, he killed them all, such a villain,
Speaker 1: so cold. So they head off to the castle. The
Speaker 1: poor village is consumed by flames, and here we go
Speaker 1: to the secluded palace of Prospero, where we will spend
Speaker 1: pretty much the entire rest of the movie. Uh. Prospero
Speaker 1: sends out notice to his other wicked aristocratic friends that
Speaker 1: they must come to the castle and shelter with him
Speaker 1: and attend a large festival, a masquerade ball. They're going
Speaker 1: to party through the plague. Yeah, and he warns them
Speaker 1: don't go visit that town that I just had to
Speaker 1: burn to the ground though. If you do that, you
Speaker 1: can't come inside. Yep, yep, yep. Now Prospero here introduces
Speaker 1: Francesca to his consort Juliana again. This is Hazel Court
Speaker 1: from Devil Girl from Mars, and together they are going
Speaker 1: to turn Francesca to the dark side of the force
Speaker 1: Price like. There's a scene where Price says, hey, you're
Speaker 1: wearing a cross around your neck. Are you a true
Speaker 1: Christian believer in French Usca says yes, she is, and
Speaker 1: he says, well, you can't wear that. Nobody is allowed
Speaker 1: to wear across in this castle. You must never wear
Speaker 1: it again. And here in this scene we start to
Speaker 1: get the conflict between Julianna and Francesca. As we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. Julianna is jealous, I get you know, she
Speaker 1: already got corrupted and turned to evil. And now Prospero
Speaker 1: has a new friend to satan ify, and he's she's
Speaker 1: feeling left out. Now this is where we get that
Speaker 1: scene with the bathtub, right, they take her to the
Speaker 1: most gloriously overdecorated bathtub you've ever seen with what are
Speaker 1: these golden swans or are they angels? I don't know, well,
Speaker 1: they're probably not angels. If they're in Prosperose palace, they
Speaker 1: might be devils. I don't think the probably birds or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some sort of winged creatures. It's just splendid a royal
Speaker 1: regal bathtub. And yeah, they're like, all right, you gotta
Speaker 1: get in there and get yourself cleaned up. Yeah. Uh oh.
Speaker 1: And we're also we're in Julianna's and star to to
Speaker 1: you know, dress Francesca basically like make her appropriate for
Speaker 1: the palace, give her a fancy dress and everything. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we get to see all of the wicked partygoers hanging
Speaker 1: out at the at the castle here doing odd stuff.
Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand this, but is Alfredo playing a
Speaker 1: game where he sticks a knife in people's mouths? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I guess so. Again it does. It is a good
Speaker 1: introduction to just how brutal and direct. He is, uh,
Speaker 1: Prince Prospero is all about these strange, dark philosophic mind games,
Speaker 1: whereas Alfredo just wants to stick knives in people's mouth
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And Vincent Price wanders through the
Speaker 1: room and and kind of dis is Alfredo And then
Speaker 1: he gives a monologue about what is terror? And everybody's
Speaker 1: following him around as he's showing off the awesome sets.
Speaker 1: There's like a big, uh, gear driven clock with an
Speaker 1: pendulum shaped like an axe. I think that might be
Speaker 1: an odd to the pit and the pendulum, and people
Speaker 1: follow him around, uh, and he's like, what is terror?
Speaker 1: But eventually this ends in the scene where we first
Speaker 1: meet hop Toad and Esmerelda a k A. Tiny dancer,
Speaker 1: they do they refer towards tiny dancer multiple times they
Speaker 1: do literally yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah, okay. So these
Speaker 1: are two uh little people who are dancers in the
Speaker 1: in the court uh and uh. And as they're dancing,
Speaker 1: Esmerelda accidentally knocks over Alfredo's wine goblet. First of all, Alfredo,
Speaker 1: why was your goblet on the floor? What was it
Speaker 1: doing there? Yeah? Yeah, that's just asking for you can't
Speaker 1: be mad at a at a child or a tiny
Speaker 1: dancer for knocking over your wine if you're keeping it
Speaker 1: on the floor next to your boot. Alfredo is, of
Speaker 1: course a violent jerk, so he slaps her and instantly
Speaker 1: we we get the look of death from hop Toad
Speaker 1: at Alfredo. There's gonna have to be some revenge here.
Speaker 1: All of the nobles are wicked, but Alfredo just sucks.
Speaker 1: There's no imaginable viewer of this film who's like, I
Speaker 1: think they were too hard on Alfredo. So Prospero announces
Speaker 1: that on the upcoming Sabbath at midnight, there will be
Speaker 1: a masquerade, and he says, all the wardrobes of the
Speaker 1: castle or yours to use. So all the guests dress
Speaker 1: up how you like, but I beg you, even for
Speaker 1: the humor of it, do not wear red. So we'll
Speaker 1: have to remember that no one is allowed to wear
Speaker 1: red at the masquerade. Oh and I forgot about this.
Speaker 1: Price just randomly throws his wine glass in Alfredo's face
Speaker 1: at the end of the scene. I don't know what
Speaker 1: prompts that, but it's really funny, and Alfredo is clearly mad,
Speaker 1: but he can't do anything about it. He makes as
Speaker 1: much of a thread as he can muster, but it's
Speaker 1: not gonna go anywhere. Yeah. So Price again lectures his
Speaker 1: guests on how they're all very lucky to be there
Speaker 1: at his house because otherwise they'd be outside the castle
Speaker 1: walls dying of the red death. And then they present
Speaker 1: Lady Francesca. They have dressed up this peasant girl who
Speaker 1: looked like she the noble herself, and I think they're they're,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to initiate her to the evil debauchery
Speaker 1: of the satanic aristocratic lifestyle. And then Vincent Price walks
Speaker 1: around mocking all of his guests and humiliating them. He like,
Speaker 1: he walks up to a guy and he's like, how
Speaker 1: like a pig you are, b one, and makes him
Speaker 1: crawl around on the floor pretending to be a pig
Speaker 1: and oinking, And then he does this to a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. He's just humiliating all of them by forcing
Speaker 1: them to be animals. But they also for the most part,
Speaker 1: you do see some looks of embarrassment from here and there,
Speaker 1: like one of the characters wives and all, but there's
Speaker 1: also a sense that they're like, yeah, I am now
Speaker 1: liberated to just be a pig. Like, that's that's who
Speaker 1: I am. Do what thou wilt, I will thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like being a worm. Yes, thank you, sir, I
Speaker 1: am a worm. Yeah. He does several of these, and
Speaker 1: he's like, and for the rest of you use your
Speaker 1: imagination animals, and everybody just goes with it. He says,
Speaker 1: show me the lives and loves of the animals. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the next sequences that we have to talk
Speaker 1: about is our introduction to the sequence of mono colored
Speaker 1: rooms like the yellow room, and then the purple room,
Speaker 1: and then the white room and the black room. Yes,
Speaker 1: this these rainbow rooms that are all attached to each other.
Speaker 1: Uh it's these are some of the visually most impressive
Speaker 1: sequences in the film. These are used multiple times. So
Speaker 1: this is our first introduction to it, where Prospero is
Speaker 1: bringing her through and describe it. First describes the yellow
Speaker 1: room is one that was you that his father, I believe,
Speaker 1: had used to drive somebody insane, like put him in
Speaker 1: here for an extended period of time, and when they
Speaker 1: were finally let free, they could not even you know,
Speaker 1: glimpse the sun, Like the yellow of this room made
Speaker 1: the sun horrifying. It drove them in saying yeah, and
Speaker 1: so he's describing these twisted experiments done on people, and
Speaker 1: he explains it by saying, somewhere in the human mind
Speaker 1: is the key to our existence. My ancestors tried to
Speaker 1: find it, to open the door that separates us from
Speaker 1: our creator. So Price is an interesting kind of satanist here.
Speaker 1: He's not just seeking power and pleasure like a lot
Speaker 1: of movie satanists. He is seeking a kind of understanding.
Speaker 1: He wants like a metaphysical discovery about the truth of existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a much the satanism in this film. It's easy
Speaker 1: to build up your expectator, to build a certain expectation
Speaker 1: for satanists in your your genre movies. You know you
Speaker 1: expect uh, bloodthirsty murder rituals. You expect a little bit
Speaker 1: of monster worship in there. And there's maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit of both of those in this, but for the
Speaker 1: most part it is this more philosophic approach. Like Prospero
Speaker 1: is not really looking to worship any monster gods. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's not caught up in all of that. This is
Speaker 1: not like the Devil rides out, but he seems to
Speaker 1: see this as an avenue toward darkness that makes the
Speaker 1: most sense in a world consumed by darkness. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot of what this whole sequence is about him
Speaker 1: describing this quest, this philosophy, and it's really well executed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He argues essintially the classic the problem of evil. You know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to disprove her faith, and he says, how
Speaker 1: can you believe a god of goodness rules over this
Speaker 1: world given all of the death and decay and the disease,
Speaker 1: the red death itself. Uh, And he finally says, if
Speaker 1: a god of love and life ever did exist, he
Speaker 1: is long since dead. Someone something rules in his place,
Speaker 1: and this is this is some This feels like some
Speaker 1: hard stuff for the early nineteen sixties, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Um. So Francesca wants to go into the
Speaker 1: final room in the sequence, the Black Door, and he
Speaker 1: suddenly stops her. He says that room is not open
Speaker 1: to you, and she asks, is there's something to fear
Speaker 1: in that room? And he says, for the uninvited, there
Speaker 1: is much to fear, and Prospero himself looks afraid of
Speaker 1: what's behind the last store in the black Room. Now,
Speaker 1: after all this, we go onto a scene between Vincent
Speaker 1: Price and Hazel Court. Juliana, of course, is still jealous
Speaker 1: of the peasant girl. She's trying to, I think, regain
Speaker 1: her spot as like the the the apple of Vincent
Speaker 1: Price's I And she she says, you know, I've been
Speaker 1: an eager student of Satanism, but I've I've held back
Speaker 1: from the final ceremony. I'm ready now for the invocation.
Speaker 1: I am ready to become the bride of Satan. And
Speaker 1: he's he's a little uh sly about this, and this
Speaker 1: is like, oh, of course you are now because you
Speaker 1: want to protect your your status. Yeah, and she's like, no,
Speaker 1: no really, I am, I'm really, I'm ready. I thought
Speaker 1: about it. I'm ready to marry Satan. Yeah. So later
Speaker 1: that night, Francesco wakes up and she wanders from her
Speaker 1: bedroom and wanders about this the spooky empty halls at night,
Speaker 1: until she stumbles and she she goes into the final room,
Speaker 1: the Black Room, and witness is an evil right taking place.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh like Vincent Price is in a coffin
Speaker 1: with his eyes closed like a vampire, and Hazel Court
Speaker 1: is bathed in red light, wearing a crown and sitting
Speaker 1: in a throne next to a raven. And so the
Speaker 1: first time I saw this, I assumed, okay, so this
Speaker 1: is the ceremony, right, this is the one where she
Speaker 1: becomes the bride of Satan. But no, something else is
Speaker 1: going to happen with hazel Court after this, so so
Speaker 1: she's not quite there yet. Francesca just gets freaked out
Speaker 1: seeing all this. I think when Vincent Price opens his
Speaker 1: eyes from the coffin, she screams and runs away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was left unsure if this was a dream or
Speaker 1: if this was something that was really taking place, and
Speaker 1: she's she witnessed it um ultimately, Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: one of the ceremonies perhaps, or this is Satanic naptime.
Speaker 1: This is just what a little little night nap looks like.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's another scene following this that's interesting,
Speaker 1: where Price is doing falconry, like he has a you know,
Speaker 1: the leather glove and the falcon, and he sends it
Speaker 1: up to catch a bird and he explains to Francesca
Speaker 1: that your God has blinded you like a trainer blinds
Speaker 1: a falcon in order to submit its will to his
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say, my master and
Speaker 1: his followers look about the world with open eyes, and
Speaker 1: Francesca says, your master, And if it wasn't already obvious,
Speaker 1: he hasn't directly told this to Francesca yet, but finally
Speaker 1: he admits it. He goes, my master is Satan, the
Speaker 1: Lord flies, the fallen Angel, the Devil. His hat in
Speaker 1: this scene, by the way, is good. Yes. My My
Speaker 1: only regret is that I did not count the costume
Speaker 1: changes that Prince Prospero goes through in this film. Each
Speaker 1: each costume is more magnificent than the last. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a scene where a noble arrives at the palace at
Speaker 1: the gates outside, begging to come inside. But I don't
Speaker 1: think I caught at first the reason why Price wouldn't
Speaker 1: let them in. But I think the second time I
Speaker 1: watched it, I realized it's because he and his entourage
Speaker 1: had been to the village where the Red Death was.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That was my understanding. Yeah, They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're here for the party. We just came from that
Speaker 1: city with the plague, and Prosperose like, no, you can't
Speaker 1: come in. This guy's name is Scar Lottie. He's got
Speaker 1: a big yellow feather on his hat and he's like, oh, please,
Speaker 1: please let us in. I'll do anything, and Price welcomes
Speaker 1: them with a crossbow bolt. Also, let's check back in
Speaker 1: with our with the men that Francesca was so desperate
Speaker 1: to save, with Gino and Ludovico. They are down in
Speaker 1: the dungeon. They were being trained in sword fighting under
Speaker 1: the premise that they are going to have to fight
Speaker 1: to the death in front of Prince the Prince's guests
Speaker 1: for entertainment, and they obviously don't want to do this,
Speaker 1: but the main yard forces them to by sort of
Speaker 1: like prodding at at Gino with the sword until he
Speaker 1: fights back. There are some moments of very floppy fake
Speaker 1: swords in this scene, and yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: like the scene where the this brutish guard who I
Speaker 1: didn't get the gentleman who played this role, but it's
Speaker 1: a he's effective as a is this brutish guard who
Speaker 1: who's just like like Gina's like, you're not gonna kill me.
Speaker 1: You want me to fight my fight my girlfriend's father
Speaker 1: to the death and he's like, yeah, but I'll cut
Speaker 1: you a little bit. And the scenes where he's cutting him,
Speaker 1: like I feel I felt the sting of those like
Speaker 1: I'm like, they look pretty, they look really good. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's gonna get infected. But what do you know, Gino
Speaker 1: is kind of a natural at sword fighting. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: could you expect. Yeah, he turns the tables on him,
Speaker 1: and uh, this is when Prospero comes in and he
Speaker 1: he has a as he often does. He wanders in
Speaker 1: and he instantly sums up um the wisdom of the scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, it is a true fact that the greatest
Speaker 1: swordsman in Italy would not fear the second greatest, but
Speaker 1: would fear the worst, for that one would be unp pictable. However,
Speaker 1: Gino and Ludovico both pledged that they will not fight
Speaker 1: each other, so Prospero resolves to make them to sort
Speaker 1: of punish them or make them face death in some
Speaker 1: other ingenious way. He's gonna have to come up with
Speaker 1: a plan after this. There's more religious and philosophical back
Speaker 1: and forth between Prospero and Francesca on God and the
Speaker 1: devil and so forth. Prospero says that his ancestor who
Speaker 1: lived in this castle was I mean he was for
Speaker 1: the church. He was a torturer for the Inquisition, and uh,
Speaker 1: but and he says, you know, Satan is not a
Speaker 1: god of hate, but a god of reality, a god
Speaker 1: of truth. Yes, it's not a story the Jedi would
Speaker 1: tell you exactly. Yeah, that's a good part. But but
Speaker 1: it is a great that. I mean, both are are
Speaker 1: great scenes of of of subtle and intelligence, seduction to
Speaker 1: the dark side. Like it's it's not just like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't you want to do evil or do evil or else.
Speaker 1: It is let me explain to you the wisdom of
Speaker 1: this alternate point of view. Let me unsow your eyes
Speaker 1: so that you may see the world right. So Price says,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to hurt you, my dear.
Speaker 1: I just want to help save your soul so you
Speaker 1: can join me in the glories of hell. Uh he
Speaker 1: there's some great writing in the scene. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: come with me into the velvet dark. Meanwhile, Hazel Cord
Speaker 1: is getting married to Satan again. She says, I inscribed
Speaker 1: the final mark and offer myself to the and she
Speaker 1: like she like, brands herself on the chest with a
Speaker 1: with an upside down cross a hot iron. She says,
Speaker 1: Lord Satan, send me a demon that I might you know,
Speaker 1: wet wedge you in him or something and says she
Speaker 1: she marks herself as one of Satan's hellmaidens. And then
Speaker 1: we get some update on the B plot with hoptoed
Speaker 1: in Alfredo. Remember Alfredo is the nasty creep from earlier,
Speaker 1: and so they're talking about what kind of costumes they're
Speaker 1: going to wear to the masquerade, and uh, hop Toad's
Speaker 1: point is, you know, it's the seventeenth century or whenever
Speaker 1: this is taking place, we have not figured out yet
Speaker 1: that it's not cool to pretend to be some kind
Speaker 1: of foreigner as a costume. So basically, everybody this masquerade
Speaker 1: is going to becoming as a cultural caricature. But what
Speaker 1: will all of them have in common? They'll all be human, Alfredo,
Speaker 1: if you really want to be something cool, you should
Speaker 1: be a non human animal. Alfredo says, well, I could
Speaker 1: come as a demon, and hop Toad has an even
Speaker 1: better idea. Why not dress up in a guerrilla suit? Amazing,
Speaker 1: this is great. I mean I love a grilla suit
Speaker 1: in any motion picture, So we're gonna get a grilla
Speaker 1: suit at this at this point. And I also just
Speaker 1: love that Alfredo is just such an evil brute. He
Speaker 1: has just a void of creativity. But he he kind
Speaker 1: of realizes that that is the case, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with whatever. Hoptoad says, here because this
Speaker 1: guy's got ideas. This is an entertainer, yes, and this
Speaker 1: revenge b plot is going to have a great payoff. Uh.
Speaker 1: So later Juliana comes to Francesca's room h and Julianna
Speaker 1: is like, hey, uh a few updates. I'm a hellmaiden
Speaker 1: now I want Prospero all to myself. So here's the
Speaker 1: key to the dungeon. You can break Gino and your
Speaker 1: father out of the dungeon. You all escape, then I'll
Speaker 1: be here with Prospero. Everybody wins. Yeah, and she says,
Speaker 1: don't mind if I do, Thank you very much. Well,
Speaker 1: they try to escape and Gino kills some guards in
Speaker 1: the process, but it doesn't quite work. In fact, it
Speaker 1: seems it was all a set up. They like, come
Speaker 1: out to the castle walls and then there's a guard there,
Speaker 1: and the guard turns around and it's Vincent Price, and
Speaker 1: Vincent Price says, oh interesting, how in trying to escape
Speaker 1: you all had to sin because they killed people? Of course,
Speaker 1: it's checkmate. There you go, who bad? Now? Yeah? Another
Speaker 1: lesson in Darkness. We got ahead to the banquet before
Speaker 1: the masquerade, and the nobles are all at their banquet
Speaker 1: tables like the ske Sias at the feast, and Vincent
Speaker 1: Price sets up an interesting game. There's a game he's
Speaker 1: going to play with Ludovico and Gino that has a
Speaker 1: that has a number of daggers with one of them poisoned. Rob, Rob,
Speaker 1: how would you describe this scene? Um? So, before he
Speaker 1: even sets up the game, Prospero is is taking these
Speaker 1: daggers and embedding them in the table, and then he explains,
Speaker 1: all right, I've got what five daggers here, and one
Speaker 1: of these daggers has a deadly poison on it that
Speaker 1: will take hold of your body and what five seconds?
Speaker 1: I think five seconds? Yeah, yeah, quick acting poison. So
Speaker 1: since you two won't fight each other to the death,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do is you're gonna take turns picking
Speaker 1: a dagger cutting your skin and we'll see what happened.
Speaker 1: One of you is going to cut your skin with
Speaker 1: the poison dagger and uh and die. So let's let's see.
Speaker 1: Let's do it start now, and they do take turns.
Speaker 1: It's it's very tense scene. But they get all the
Speaker 1: way to the last dagger, and oh, it's like Russian roulette.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you get to the last chamber and
Speaker 1: it hasn't gone yet, you're in trouble. And they get
Speaker 1: to the last dagger and none of them are poisoned yet,
Speaker 1: and it's Ludovico's turn, so it looks like he's just
Speaker 1: going to have to commit suicide. But then he pulls
Speaker 1: the dagger out and he lunges he tries to kill
Speaker 1: Prospero with it, but he is killed in the process. Yeah, Prospero,
Speaker 1: I mean, Prospero knew. Prospero knew that this was the
Speaker 1: likely end of the game, though he's still a little
Speaker 1: offended that they didn't play it to its uh, its
Speaker 1: final phase. Oh and a quick little note also, uh.
Speaker 1: When Prospero is setting up the game, he's talking to
Speaker 1: all the guests and he says something like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's come to my attention that some of you still
Speaker 1: have faith in the Christian God. Stop that at once.
Speaker 1: So at this point Ludo is dead. Gino is all
Speaker 1: that's left, and at this point Prospero has nothing else
Speaker 1: for him. He just kicks him outside the castle. He's like,
Speaker 1: go out there into the plague stricken world. Uh, you're you're,
Speaker 1: you're done right. He's not gonna kill him directly, He's
Speaker 1: going to banish him from the castle, and of course,
Speaker 1: the assumption is exiled outside the castle walls. He's going
Speaker 1: to meet the Red Death and Francesca begs to go
Speaker 1: with him, but Prospero tells her, no, you You're gonna
Speaker 1: stay here. Uh. Juliana Hazel Cord is once again like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to get married to Satan now. Um. Getting
Speaker 1: married to Satan is a multi stage procedure, apparently, But
Speaker 1: before we get to see how that is finalized, we
Speaker 1: follow Gino outside the castle walls, where he staggers through
Speaker 1: that fog soaked forest of dead trees. Wolves are howling
Speaker 1: in the distance, and he stumbles along until he comes
Speaker 1: across the figure in red at the foot of the tree,
Speaker 1: turning over tarot cards on his lap, and uh, and
Speaker 1: Gino says, my god and then read the figure says
Speaker 1: who is your God? And it's it's very ominous. It's
Speaker 1: a wonderful, creepy scene. And Gino is saying, I have
Speaker 1: to go back and rescue Francesca. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. What weapon can I use against Prospero?
Speaker 1: And the holy Man in Red suggests that he could
Speaker 1: use love. Now back at the castle, we'll get the
Speaker 1: payoff of some b plots. The masquerade is coming up soon,
Speaker 1: so we see, uh, we see Alfredo getting into the
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit, and I think in this scene um hopped
Speaker 1: out is already like whipping him a little bit to
Speaker 1: get into the act. And Julianna is getting married to
Speaker 1: Satan again, and she has this evil dream sequence where
Speaker 1: the dancers of Hell like mimes stabbing at her, and
Speaker 1: then she wanders around through the differently colored rooms and
Speaker 1: she says, I I have tasted the beauties of terror.
Speaker 1: We see like the pendulum from the giant clock ticking
Speaker 1: in the foreground, and you you think she's married to
Speaker 1: Satan now, but she's not quite yet. There's one more thing.
Speaker 1: It's that she has to die. She gets attacked and
Speaker 1: killed by a falcon, and the party goers discover her
Speaker 1: bloody body there after the bird has pecked her face off,
Speaker 1: and they're all like, oh no. But Vincent Price comes
Speaker 1: in and this is that that great moment where he says, oh,
Speaker 1: do not mourn her. She has just married a friend
Speaker 1: of mine. It's great, it's perfect delivery. Um. Now, did
Speaker 1: you watch the theatrical cut of the extended cut of
Speaker 1: the film? Um, I'm not sure. I made a point
Speaker 1: of watching the extended cut, and it's my understanding that
Speaker 1: that we in the extended cut. Basically there are a
Speaker 1: few different bits we get a little bit more of,
Speaker 1: including this whole weird dream psychedelic sequence with Hazel Court.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's there's nothing in it. It's particularly troubling,
Speaker 1: especially to modern viewers, but it does go on a
Speaker 1: bit and it is like they're doing this and not
Speaker 1: in the sense that he gets boring, but it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of like distortions of her screaming face and
Speaker 1: slow mo ocean uh content and it is it's it's
Speaker 1: very trippy. Yeah, but anyway, she's married to Satan. Now
Speaker 1: she's out of the picture. All right, we're in the
Speaker 1: final stretch now, so I think we'll skip a little
Speaker 1: more lightly over what happens. So some more things go
Speaker 1: on inside the palace. There there's a great scene of
Speaker 1: Gino trying to sneak back inside the castle with what
Speaker 1: is essentially an ewok grappling hook Yeah yeah, rope attached
Speaker 1: to a giant uh tree branch or something. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: throws it over the walls. He climbs up. He expects
Speaker 1: to meet guards, but no, instead he just meets the
Speaker 1: Man in Red again, and the holy Man in Red
Speaker 1: tells Gino there's no need to fight. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: just wait here on the rampart shortly after one, I
Speaker 1: will send Francesca to you. And Gino says, well, wait,
Speaker 1: what about the guards? But the Man in Red reveals
Speaker 1: that the guards have all died of the red death.
Speaker 1: They've got the blood splattered faces. And here there is
Speaker 1: the final confrontation, the big party. Well, first we get
Speaker 1: the pay off of the venge plot on Alfredo, where
Speaker 1: hop toed Hog ties Alfredo in a guerrilla suit, ties
Speaker 1: him to a chandelier, hoists him up in the air,
Speaker 1: and then just sets him on fire. Yeah it's horrifying
Speaker 1: to watch. I mean any it's gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where just about any burn suit moment in a in
Speaker 1: a film, old or new, uh kind of gives me
Speaker 1: the that makes me squirm a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1: But this one, Yeah, this is horrifying. You know, you
Speaker 1: almost if you didn't know that, uh Fredo, that Alfredo
Speaker 1: was such a bad dude, you might think that hop
Speaker 1: Toed went a little bit too far. It's revenge execution here.
Speaker 1: But like you said, Prospero's reaction to his friend here
Speaker 1: getting burned alive is like, oh, quite funny. Guards clean
Speaker 1: up this mess and give hop Toed to reward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, hop Toed knows his audience. He served long
Speaker 1: uh in the in the court of Prince Prospero. In fact,
Speaker 1: he has a whole little monologue earlier in the film
Speaker 1: about that. He's like, yeah, I served Prince Prospero for
Speaker 1: a long time. But in the middle of all this,
Speaker 1: Prospero and Francesca are wandering around, and it seems Francesca's
Speaker 1: zeal for Christianity has sort of been been destroyed. She's
Speaker 1: just like sort of resigned herself to do well. It's
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna be for Satan now. Oh, and
Speaker 1: we should mention that Prospero in in this sequence, in
Speaker 1: the final sequence of the film, is dressed like Lawrence
Speaker 1: of Arabia, of darkness, like Lawrence of Arabia, but all
Speaker 1: in black with gold in the end, like the head dress.
Speaker 1: So it's a great he's just he's like all darkness, yes,
Speaker 1: and but oh he's looking out over all the party
Speaker 1: guests and despite his orders, somebody here at the mask
Speaker 1: is wearing red. Remember they were not supposed to do that,
Speaker 1: so not just red details a red trim, which I
Speaker 1: think was maybe allowed. About this guy's inn all red
Speaker 1: and we know who this surely is. So he's chasing
Speaker 1: him down. He goes through the rainbow rooms, through the
Speaker 1: Yellow room, the Purple room, the White room, into the
Speaker 1: final black room where they have the confrontation. Rob described
Speaker 1: the scene. It is It's so perfect, oh, it is.
Speaker 1: It is just a perfect confrontation. You know this is
Speaker 1: going to happen. There's gonna be this scene where Prospero
Speaker 1: finally speaks with the man in red, speaks with the
Speaker 1: red death personified, And um, I mean it's one of
Speaker 1: these scenes where I I you just have to just
Speaker 1: to see it to get all of the intricacies of
Speaker 1: the dialogue because it's just so perfectly executed. It's like
Speaker 1: this philosophical discussion of of the nature of death and
Speaker 1: the universe and that the nature of Satan and who
Speaker 1: rules the universe. It's uh, it's it's glorious stuff. And
Speaker 1: again in this trippy dark room with this red symbol
Speaker 1: like on the wall that is sometimes a window in
Speaker 1: the other rooms that I don't know if you were
Speaker 1: what you made of this, but it made me think
Speaker 1: of like some sort of a bacterium or a or um,
Speaker 1: like a pustule or something transformed into a symbol. Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a hexagon but with but with bubbles
Speaker 1: at all of the vertices. Yeah. But this is the
Speaker 1: scene where like everything that Prospero believes in is being
Speaker 1: put to the test, Like he has he stands apart,
Speaker 1: or he believes he stands apart from everyone else in
Speaker 1: the world and in his kingdom because he has privileged
Speaker 1: knowledge and a privileged understanding of the true nature of reality.
Speaker 1: And now he stands with this one who um Ultimately
Speaker 1: it's a little vague about you know who and what
Speaker 1: this is? Like is this Satan? Is this a god?
Speaker 1: Is this death? It's it's it's is it the persona
Speaker 1: merely the personification of one type of death? But clearly
Speaker 1: it is a superhuman individual. It is some sort of
Speaker 1: like universal concept made manifest and here he is finally
Speaker 1: able to confront it, and you go through the stages
Speaker 1: of who he thinks he is, right, like Price thinks
Speaker 1: that he's one of the tests. He's like, oh, or
Speaker 1: you doctor so and so, And then the figure in
Speaker 1: red says, the doctor Dance is in the white room,
Speaker 1: you know, next door, so it's not him. And then
Speaker 1: he gets all excited because he's like, oh, I get it.
Speaker 1: You're Satan. You're here to congratulate me on being your
Speaker 1: your best, your most loyal recruiter. But no, he's not
Speaker 1: Satan either, and he keeps it a little vague. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Satan rules the universe and I made a
Speaker 1: prom and we made a pact with each other over this,
Speaker 1: and he's like, he does not rule the universe alone.
Speaker 1: So I love how the film plays it loose with
Speaker 1: exactly what the what theological system is actually in place
Speaker 1: in the universe. It's not one of these films like
Speaker 1: The Devil Rides Out where it's like Satanic threat, Christianity
Speaker 1: comes and saves the day at the end, like it's
Speaker 1: everything is ultimately unclear exactly what sort of superhuman forces
Speaker 1: are at play in reality. Yeah yeah, but of course
Speaker 1: we get the big reveal. It is the Red Death,
Speaker 1: and the Red Death spreads to everyone in the palace
Speaker 1: except Francesca. So we see all the dancers, you know
Speaker 1: that they're they are splattered with the Red Death. And
Speaker 1: then finally Prospero himself kind of melts into a red,
Speaker 1: red puddle. Oh yeah, And there's also the brilliant part
Speaker 1: where he unmasked the Red Death, and the Red Death
Speaker 1: has Prospero's own face, which is the the earlier in
Speaker 1: the In the encounter, he tells him it's like death
Speaker 1: has no face until you know your very own face
Speaker 1: at the moment of your death and so forth. It's
Speaker 1: all the dialogue is just beautiful. Uh, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: absolutely perfectly executed here. But there is a happy ending
Speaker 1: for the good characters Francesca and Uh and Gino and
Speaker 1: Hoptoed and Esmeralda, all all the good characters get to
Speaker 1: escape Uh and they meet outside the castle walls with
Speaker 1: a with a peasant child who was spared earlier when
Speaker 1: peasants came to the gate looking for help and and
Speaker 1: Prospero had them all slaughtered except for the kid. But
Speaker 1: we all also get some more perspective on the world
Speaker 1: at large because it seems like the Red Death is
Speaker 1: not the only death. We get a white death, a
Speaker 1: yellow death, a black death. They're all gathering. There's a
Speaker 1: purple death. They're all gathering by the tree where the
Speaker 1: Red Death was hanging out at the beginning, all wearing
Speaker 1: a robe of of their own color, and it's such
Speaker 1: a spectacular ending. Yeah, I mean, we get the rainbow
Speaker 1: theme once more. Um and and I guess I felt
Speaker 1: like some of these were maybe related to the four humors.
Speaker 1: You know, we have red Death, black Death, yellow Death.
Speaker 1: I guess the grayish looking one is maybe blue blue death,
Speaker 1: White Death. I'm less sure about though, though. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can think of some some fantasy stories that involve
Speaker 1: something called the White Death. So one can imagine that
Speaker 1: these are all just different plagues that are running rampant
Speaker 1: in the world, and they're kind of their personifications are
Speaker 1: checking in and saying, hey, how's it going, what's your
Speaker 1: what's your kill right today? Did you make quota? And
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm doing I'm doing great. I hear,
Speaker 1: I hear. Blue Death is a little behind today. But
Speaker 1: but man, did you hear about black He's really he's
Speaker 1: really cranking in the numbers. But it's not like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's more of a solemn affair, a vague affair,
Speaker 1: and they don't really know exactly what these entities are
Speaker 1: except they they're clearly involved in in death. But it's
Speaker 1: a it's a solemn kind of death. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we get the final words of of the film are
Speaker 1: in Latin, what's sit transit Gloria Munday, which translates to
Speaker 1: thus passes the glory of the world. I think they
Speaker 1: also quote the ending of the post Story. Don't they
Speaker 1: say that the darkness and decay and the red death
Speaker 1: held illimitable dominion overall? Yes, yes they do. And then
Speaker 1: we also get a kind of go back to the
Speaker 1: same style as the opening credits, we get the closing credits,
Speaker 1: which are also splindid. These are this is definitely a
Speaker 1: credit sequence to stick with for the duration, not because
Speaker 1: there's any kind of cool stinger at the end, just
Speaker 1: because they're beautiful to watch, and they they kind of
Speaker 1: play out in a way that builds and then the
Speaker 1: film closes. We go red, increasingly red, and then darkness
Speaker 1: who knew Roger Corman had it in him. This is
Speaker 1: just a fantastic, stylish horror movie. It is. This is
Speaker 1: just peak artful Roger Corman, great Vincent Price film, and
Speaker 1: just just a great Halloween movie. Uh So, definitely worth
Speaker 1: checking out, even if you don't think you're into Vincent
Speaker 1: Price films, if you know you think you're not into
Speaker 1: films from the early nineteen sixties, early mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, uh, this is this is one that I
Speaker 1: think holds up exceedingly well for modern viewers. But hey,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there about this
Speaker 1: film as well. What are your thoughts on Mask of
Speaker 1: the Red Death, What are your thoughts on adaptations of
Speaker 1: Ed Growan post stories in general? I guess this is
Speaker 1: the first time we've discussed one on the show, but
Speaker 1: there are many more out there, and there are some
Speaker 1: we might come back to. There. I can't think of
Speaker 1: one off hand that's better than this one. I can
Speaker 1: think that's they're much ham here, but but there are
Speaker 1: definitely some other choices, and of course there's some other
Speaker 1: ones by Corman and company as well. Yeah, as we
Speaker 1: close out here, we'll remind you that We're primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast, but on Friday's we do Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: That is our time to set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: and just talk about a strange film. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to keep up with the films that we are covering,
Speaker 1: have covered, and will cover on the show, I chronicle
Speaker 1: them at some muta music dot com. That's a just
Speaker 1: a blog that I maintain. But then also weird House
Speaker 1: has its own account on letterbox dot com. That's L
Speaker 1: E T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 1: Our user name is weird House. We have a list
Speaker 1: there that has all of the films that we've watched.
Speaker 1: You can see it all in like a nice visual
Speaker 1: spread of thumbnails, and you can organize them by decades
Speaker 1: or however you want, and their links there that will
Speaker 1: take you to the episodes. It's a great way to
Speaker 1: visualize where we are, what decades we've covered, and I believe,
Speaker 1: as a scording to my accounting, this was the ninetie
Speaker 1: film that we've covered on Weirdol Cinema. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.