The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964) After a series of successful Poe adaptations—some veering into comedy—AIP Studios took a big leap in budget with a project director Roger Corman had long wanted to do since making his first adaptation House of Usher: Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." Budget and lack of a satisfactory script is what was delaying the project. Plus, Corman was afraid his film would look too much like Bergman's The Seventh Seal (released in 1957), so production kept getting delayed.

 

In terms of financing, that couldn't have been more fortuitous: AIP had made a deal with a British production company to co-produce films and studio heads Samuel Arkoff and James Nicholson made the suggestion to Corman that he might leave the California lots and move production there. Also, England had the Eady Levy, which was a tax on box office receipts that would be rebated to British productions with certain stipulations, meaning that 85% of any film applying for funds would have to be filmed in England, with an emphasis on providing work for British actors and crew (it's one of the reasons Stanley Kubrick moved to England to make Lolita...and stayed there).

But, there were other benefits besides financial. Corman could avail himself of British actors, utilizing Patrick Magee (again...as Magee had appeared in AIP's Dementia 13, written and directed by a young Francis Ford Coppola), Nigel Green, and a 17 year old actress named Jane Asher (who was just getting involved with some musician or other). For cinematography, he graduated from Floyd Crosby to a young up-and-comer named Nicholas Roeg. And he was able to utilize British sets, like the castle that had been built for the recently-filmed Becket.

An old woman gathering fire-wood approaches a figure in red: The figure tells her "Go to your village. The day of their deliverance is at hand." And, indeed, the flower he gives her contains the red death and by the time Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) goes to the village, the woman is already dead and the contagion is spreading. He arrests two defiant men, Ludovico (Green) and Gino (David Weston) and well as the girl who is the one's daughter and other's betrothed, Francesca (Asher). With the three secured, he orders the village burned to prevent the spread of the disease, while he invites the local noblemen to his castle for safe quarantine and salacious partying. "Act according to your nature" is his only request.

Prospero is a Satanist, a sensualist, and cruel master, and for him, the Christian Francesca, is both challenge and prize as he intends to turn her to his way of seeing things by any means necessary—but with her, he finds himself showing a bit of restraint. Sure, he'll make her choose between father and fiance over who should die by Prospero's hand, but, for him, that's uncommon restraint. He's a bad guy. A very bad guy, as fulsomely and charmingly as Price plays him, content to let everything in the city he lords over dies, while him and his lordly pals party all the while. Not exactly a stretch from reality.

Meanwhile, Prospero's mistress, Juliana (Hazel Court), seeing the interest her lord is paying to his new pet, decides she's going to go over his head and appeals to Satan just to ensure her interests don't get overlooked. Such an act even impresses Prospero, but, as they all learn (but for a mere handful of worthy), whatever one does in life, Death will end it. It's merely a question of...when.

Corman had looked commissioned many scripts for Masque, from Barboura Morris (an AIP company player, she'd starred in A Bucket of Blood), and even Robert Towne, who'd written The Last Woman on Earth for Corman, and who would become Hollywood's ultimate script-doctor, the Oscar-winning author of Chinatown and a director in his own right. None satisfied him, until Charles Beaumont, a short-story author and (along with Richard Matheson) one of the "go-to" writers for "The Twilight Zone," came up with the Satanist angle and the majority of the script, but by 1964, he was suffering from Pick's disease, and started farming out jobs to associates—he would be dead from something akin to Alzheimer's at the age of 39. R. Wright Campbell finished the screenplay, using ideas from other Poe works.

There are a lot of contemporary critics who consider The Masque of the Red Death the best of Corman's Poe adaptations, running neck-and-strangled-neck with the year's other Poe/Corman film The Tomb of Ligeia (which was written by Towne), and the film does seem to go beyond the series' formula for strengths and weaknesses, with a depth to it that other of the films lacked, and the dialogue is a little less plummy and the ideas a little more dangerous. The acting, also, has none of the weak spots the other Poe films had, as there doesn't seem to be any callowness in any of the leads—some of the extras seem to be struggling a bit, however.

Corman made Tomb of Ligeia in England, but he wasn't happy there. As he was used to working fast and filming quickly, he was frustrated with the speed of British crews and their insistence on tea breaks. Most of the Poe films were done in three weeks; The Masque of the Red Death took five.

And, yes, Corman was right to worry about comparisons with The Seventh Seal, with manifestations of the world's deadliest diseases walking the Earth (but using tarot cards, not chess-matches, to determine fates), but the multi-colored hues of the plagues' costumes have a tendency to throw one off a bit, reminding one of color-coded CDC threat-levels.

The color-coded plagues:

L-R: Tuberculosis, Yellow Fever, Scurvy, "The Red Death" (Anthrax), Cholera, Porphyria, and Bubonic Plague 

(Covid is probably last in line)

 

Alfie (1966)

Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966) This is the film that catapulted Michael Caine to the A-list of stars—a bit of a wonder, that, as he essays the titular lead in this character study of a complete rotter of a misogynist, a taxi-driver/chauffeur whose relationships with women are as transitory as any fare. 

 

One shouldn't be too surprised by this, I guess, as audiences have always had a tendency to gravitate to, and even admire, villains, be they "Scarface" or Darth Vader or Brando's "Wild One" or "The Godfather." Maybe it's the nature of film to be a spectator sport and with the safety of being removed from any hurtful fall-out, we can choose to imprint on "bad guys" and their assertive natures to do harm. Maybe it's just wish-fulfillment on audience's parts—"I wish I could get away with that in my own life" and especially nowadays as there's no Hays Code strictures requiring just punishments be meted out by the end of the picture. There don't need to be ramifications anymore, and in this brave new world, the heroes and villains get all mixed up. Here, the term "anti-hero" need not apply.

"I suppose you think you're gonna see the bleedin' titles now.

Well, you're not, so you can all relax..."

Caine's Alfie Elkins is no anti-hero. He's a bloke trying to make do for himself and making no apologies for it ("You've got to live for yourself in this world, not for others."), certainly not to his conquests, and certainly not to the audience, whom he addresses directly from the get-go, in mid-assignation with a married woman (he may be misogynistic, but he doesn't discriminate). In his first-person discourse* he's as cheekily blunt as he is with his ladies in question (and their questions usually revolve around commitment, something Alfie is adamant he'll have no part of—"I don't want no bird's respect - I wouldn't know what to do with it.").

So, we watch as he tramples over hearts in his own memorial parade: There's that married woman, Siddie (Millicent Martin) cheating on her husband, while Alfie goes back to his cheated-upon girlfriend Gilda (Julia Foster) who lives with him for a time, quite unhappily as he refuses to even consider "settling down" with her ("I told Gilda from the start that I ain't the marrying sort." he says by way of explanation. "And do you know what?" he continues cluelessly, "She don't mind. She's a stand-by and she knows it. And any bird that knows its place in this world can be quite content."). That must include—in addition—the manageress of his dry-cleaners, a "foot-comfort" technician, a woman named "Dora", "the odd bird that came by chance" like Carla (Shirley Anne Field)—the nurse at his convalescent home when he's diagnosed with "spots" on his lungs, the girl he picks up on the motorway (Jane Asher), the wife (Vivien Merchant) of a fellow patient (Alfie Bass) at the convalescence, and a woman, Ruby (Shelley Winters), who he chats up while taking photographs as a side-hustle.

"My understanding of women only goes as far as the pleasure. When it comes to the pain I'm like any other bloke - I don't want to know." And he doesn't want to know; if there are complications, inconveniences—like a couple pregnancies—he'll lay down the law of how it's going to be and any reluctance just spells (for him) merely the end of any consistency in his hook-up schedule. He's a hit-and-run heart-breaker, not sticking around to see the damages. Alfie...and Alfie...show the dark underbelly of "the Swingin' 60's" and what happens when the swinging stops—you're left twisting in the wind, basically; things don't look so "gear" when people are chewed up in them.

Caine plays this cad as charmingly as he can, speaking breezily without much change of expression and little irony betraying any self-awareness. For all the winking at the camera that could have been, Caine avoids it with a mostly passive expression that is betrayed by a speech-ending toothy grin or a darkness around the eyes when the situation—and they're usually those rare instances when he's not totally in control—calls for punctuation. That lack of countenance betrays an empty heart inside.

One of the themes I keep harping on throughout these posts through the years is that love is a form of insanity. It's not a disparagement, just an observation that love—and its inherent selflessness—is the one thing that can circumvent the tendency of our alligator-brains to favor self-preservation above all else. Alfie is a movie that leans into that argument to a horrific degree; his predisposition to his wants and needs (as if he needs anything or anyone) lines up with his absolute disdain for anything resembling a caring regard for other human beings. People are opportunities to be taken advantage of, not fostered. And, for awhile, that's suitable.

But, the armor around his heart does have some dents in it. When his girlfriend Gilda gets pregnant, she decides to keep the child—despite Alfie's initial reluctance—and, for a time, Alfie, uncharacteristically, accepts his role as father to little Malcolm, taking pride in his son and devoting time to him (notwithstanding that a baby in a baby carriage helps attract women). But, Gilda grows weary of his fair-weather fatherhood and leaves him to marry another man. Later, he has to actually confront the consequences of his actions, and, in trying to find another path, gets a comeuppance...of sorts...as he finds himself on the receiving end of his past behavior, leading to some soul-searching and to the film's final "What's it all about?" (Cue Burt Bacharach, sung by Cher...produced by Sonny** at least in the States-side release).

It's a tough, funny—in a black-hearted kind of way—film that breaks barriers of subject matter while also shaking its cane at the unraveling moral fabric of its society, both teasing and admonishing with the same strokes, and drives home the scrambled cliche that "Time Wounds All Heels."

* Of, course, it's in first-person—Alfie doesn't think of anybody but himself.

 

** I'm glib about it, but Burt Bacharach's end-credits song is (to my ears) the best of his song-book (reportedly, he thought so, too), providing an "on-the-nose" counter-point to everything that has gone before, with clear-eyed "let-me-spell-it-out-for-you" lyrics by Hal David. Something even non-believers can believe in.