Tyrant Satanist Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) protects a kingdom of depraved individuals in his castle from the epidemic of the red death sweeping across the land. Based off Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the same name, the red death is a fictional elaboration of a disease similar to the black death where instead blood spewing from the pours is used as the symptom of disease. Prospero shuns the villagers who challenge his rule from protection within his castle walls and imprisons others for entertainment purposes during his orgies of celebrated madness. At one of these celebrations Prospero notices a figure cloaked in the colour of the illness and pursues it to learn of it’s identity, an identity that to Prospero can’t possibly be true. Masque of the Red Death is a sadistic little medieval tale that is as mean as it’s leading man. Corman makes great use of his sets making the castle seem much larger than what it actually is, and the gore effects match that quality making the production feel like a high budget effort. The Prospero character is one of Vincent Price’s darkest and least apologetic roles placing Masque among the great additions to sadist cinema.
