![]() Lots of cobwebs-on-candelabra in the customary Corman-Poe manner, with special emphasis on Milland's crypt, with its supposedly foolproof exit schemes. ![]() Luscious Hazel Court is Milland's new missus, and old-school cameraman Floyd Crosby proves his facility for photographing women in a classical style. This single-minded focus limits the film, but it also adds to the smothering sense of anxiety that prevails throughout its unhealthy scenario. He's a snarky landowner (with a sideline in art-dig those mod paintings) haunted by the fear of being buried alive. The Premature Burial (1962) substitutes Ray Milland in the usual Price role. Vincent Price is in fine fettle as Prince Prospero, the devil-worshipping sadist who throws lavish parties while the countryside is ravaged by the plague. ![]() (Corman was operating as much under the influence of Ingmar Bergman as of Edgar Allan Poe.) Nicolas Roeg's color cinematography and Daniel Haller's elaborate production design would be stellar in any Hollywood A-movie the mono-colored rooms of the prince's castle are a startling effect. Masque offers the expected creepy atmosphere and violence against peasants, plus metaphysical ponderings and pointed satanic cruelty. The masked figure is the dark judge who brings death to Prospero and his friends. ![]() ![]() The clock is time, the indomitable presence that establishes the confines of reality and the inevitability of death. The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is Roger Corman's, and most people's, choice as the best of the Edgar Allan Poe pictures. In The Masque of the Red Death, the clock, the masked figure, and blood serve as an unholy trinity, representative of death rather than salvation. ![]()
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