The following is an entry in @NitrateDiva’s Vincent Price blog-a-thon. The Masque of the Red Death has long been one of my favorite flicks and I jumped at the chance to commit some of my love to paper, or in this case bl-g. This was my first viewing of the film in many years and my first evar! in high-def. Horror fans must pick up the new Vincent Price Blu-ray Collection from Shout!/Scream! Factory. You’ve never seen these movies look anywhere near this good. Especially Masque‘s gaudy colors and set design. But enough of all that… some newly formed (old) thoughts about Masque of the Red Death starring Vincent Price. I would have loved to dissect the film in far more detail, but the Patrick family Halloween festivities have seriously taken a toll on my psyche. (He said as the two children lay waste to the entire house while he desperately tries to finish this bl-g.)
The End is Silence: The Masque of the Red Death
Though Vincent Price made scores of movies of without Roger Corman, it is for his seven collaborations with Roger Corman on the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that he is probably most recognized by modern audiences. Before he became the King of the Grand Guignol or the Merchant of Menace (choose your own nom de guerre), Vincent Price acted in a wide variety of films from noir to comedy. It seemed, however, from our point of view that Price was always destined to be the face of horror. His on screen presence, the intensity in his eyes… his low-pitched, rasping voice. Before his first successful starring role in Corman’s House of Usher (1960) – 22 years after his debut, Price had been predominantly a character actor with a few minor starring roles mixed in. This is a notion that’s difficult to reconcile with our conception of the legendary actor.
