The Masque of the Red Death (1964): adapted by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell from stories by Edgar Allan Poe, including "Hop Frog" and "The Masque of the Red Death"; directed by Roger Corman; starring Vincent Price (Prince Prospero), Hazel Court (Juliana), Jane Asher (Francesca), and Skip Martin (Hop Toad):
"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all." - Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death."
Low-budget horror impresario Roger Corman got more money than he ever had before for this loose adaptation of a couple of Edgar Allan Poe stories. Further aided by British film credits and leftover sets from Becket, Corman made his horror masterpiece. It certainly didn't hurt that the great cameraman and later director Nicholas Roeg was cameraman for the movie.
Above all, the movie looks great. The set design and costumes are impressively bright, fanciful, and intermittently bleak when we visit the blasted heaths of the medieval Spanish countryside.
Set some time during the Middle Ages in Catalan, The Masque of the Red Death focuses on the sinister, Satan-worshiping local lord of the manor, Prince Prospero. The plague of the Red Death has fallen upon the countryside. So Prospero retreats to his castle with his favoured nobles and entertainers. And with a pure and virtuous peasant girl he has kidnapped, along with her lover and her father.
Prospero derives entertainment from the debasement and murder of those around him. The virtuous peasant girl (played solidly by Hazel Court) is someone to 'break.' But her faith in God impresses him, in part because of how seemingly misplaced that faith is in the plague and poverty and violence ravaged country side.
And so begins the Masque of the Red Death, the worst costume ball ever, at least from a survival standpoint. The Red Death isn't simply a disease -- it's a being. And it has promised deliverance to the peasant girl and doom for Prince Prospero and his guests. Prospero has faith that Satan will protect him. We'll see how that goes.
The Masque of the Red Death is a great and poignant spectacle, capped with a couple of show-stopping scenes. Back to back. I guess the second scene would have to be a show-stop-maintaining scene, as the show is already stopped. Vincent Price is magnificent as Prospero, a truly awful being with a certain bleak and oily charm. Skip Martin is also good as Poe's vengeful jester-dwarf Hop Toad. Highly recommended.
Night Ride and Other Journeys by Charles Beaumont (1960) containing the following stories: The Music of the Yellow Brass (1959) ; A Classic Affair (1955); The New People (1958); Buck Fever (1960); The Magic Man (1960); Father, Dear Father (1957); Perchance to Dream (1958); Song for a Lady (1960); The Trigger (1959); The Guests of Chance (1956) (with Chad Oliver); The Love-Master (1957); A Death in the Country (1957); The Neighbors (1960); The Howling Man (1959); and Night Ride (1957):
Charles Beaumont's career output would be good for someone who'd lived to be 80. As he died before he was 40 from what appeared to be Pick's Disease and/or Alzheimer's Disease, that output becomes even more impressive given that his last few years saw many of his friends 'ghosting' for him so that he could meet his writing commitments.
Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt) became one of Rod Serling's go-to writers on The Twilight Zone, credited with writing or co-writing 22 episodes. Much of Beaumont's short-story output was in the fantasy genre, with forays into absurdist science fiction and suspense stories with twists. But not all. This volume, collected in 1960, consists almost entirely of stories from Beaumont's breakthrough years into the well-paying slicks, specifically that new magazine on the block, Playboy.
And one can see, in several of these stories, a writer pushing at his own comfort zone, moving away from a strict genre construction of things. "Buck Fever" seems like an homage to Hemingway, but an homage inverted in its view on hunting and the modern man. "Night Ride" and "The Neighbours" have twist endings of a sort, but neither is even remotely a thriller or a fantasy story. And "The Music of the Yellow Brass" seems like a melancholy tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury in his Mexican phase, with a twist that only increases the mournful quality of the story.
It's the genre stories here that seem slight; the much-anthologized "The Howling Man," adapted for The Twilight Zone, seems like something of a gimmick next to the more realistic rhythms of "A Death in the Country." "The Neighbours," while something of a 'preachy,' nonetheless provides strong characterization and much more satisfaction than the similarly structured "The New People."
Many have noted that Beaumont may be one of the most influential fantasy writers of the 1950's and early 1960's because of his naturalistic prose style, concerns with suburban fantasy, and high-profile Twilight Zone output. This collection also suggests a writer in the process of growing despite the commercial success that had already come his way -- it, too, is melancholy, a gesture towards a later career and a later man that never was. Recommended.
Burn, Witch, Burn (aka Night of the Eagle): adapted by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson from the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber; directed by Sidney Hayers; starring Peter Wyngarde (Norman Taylor), Janet Blair (Tansy Taylor), and Maragret Johnson (Flora Carr) (1962): It's an all-star writing team-up as genre greats Richard Matheson (Duel, Hell House, a lot of Twilight Zone episodes) and Charles Beaumont (a lot of Twilight Zone episodes) adapt Science-fiction-and-fantasy Grandmaster Fritz Leiber's terrific 1940's fantasy novel Conjure Wife for the big screen.
The action is moved to England and compressed in time, doing some violence to the original, but the result is still an enjoyable, fast-paced bit of modern horror-fantasy set in the cut-throat world of academia. Yes, academia. Professor Norman Taylor seems to have led a charmed life both personally and professionally. And he has. But he's about to find out the cost. And witchcraft is involved. And possibly Sexual-Harassment Panda.
Two bits of goofiness mar the very beginning and the very end, seemingly added by a nervous studio. But they're minor. This story of modern witchcraft has some real thrills and horrors awaiting, along with one pissed-off eagle-shaped gargoyle. The film-makers do a nice job of suggesting as much as possible, a necessity given the budget and visual effects limitations of the time. The most chilling scene relies on no visual effects whatsoever -- just Tarot cards, a match, and an increasingly panicked Norman Taylor.
My main beef with the movie would be that the scariest line of the novel -- and the events that flow forwards from it -- have been replaced here by a more conventional ending in which our protagonists are quite a bit less intelligent than they are in the book. Oh, well. Still a superior tale of magic and its discontents. Recommended.
