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)

 

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) Psychological thriller about a mad British couple, who decide to kidnap a child for nefarious purposes, and they might get away with it if both of the perpetrators weren't both mad as hatters!

 

Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) has a cottage industry as a medium in London, that is only moderately successful. This puts a financial strain on the couple as her husband Billy (Richard Attenborough) cannot hold down a job, due to his asthma. Billy's guilt for that and his general lack of spine accounts for his being totally under Myra's sway, probably initiated when the couple lost their child, Michael, in childbirth and he accommodated her every whim during her break-down afterwards. Whether this encouragement contributed to Myra's living in a fantasy where she speaks to the soul of Michael in her seances is up for debate. But, what's not debatable is who has the power in the family dynamic.

It's Myra...and Michael.

Then, Myra comes up with a plan to make more money and it's indicative of her madness...but there is some method to it. As her powers as a psychic are medium to none, she decides that she will scare up some business. She proposes to Billy that he kidnap the daughter of some well-off neighbors. They will keep the child in their home—and, of course, demand a ransom—and Myra will offer her services—as a psychic, mind you—to help the police find the missing girl. Her "reputation" as a spiritualist will then For Myra, it's a slam-dunk. For Billy, it's a potential charge of kidnapping if they get caught. Billy cannot say "no" to Myra. But, neither can Bill depend on Myra to keep herself together and not have something catastrophic happen.

If only he had someone around who could...I don't know..."see the future".

Forbes' direction is, to put it charitably, lethargic. The film does pick up a bit of pace as Billy is in London attempting to retrieve the ransom money knowing full well that the drop is being watched. Suddenly, Forbes camera becomes less claustrophobic and takes on the look of a security cam as Billy furtively tries to "blend in" with the pedestrian traffic. The sequence is helped by John Barry's underscore—which prior to this time has been dominated by ethereally echoing vibraphones—kicks in to the type of inexorably escalating music that he'd used for long sequences in the James Bond films. Barry was Forbes' secret weapon, shoring up his films like a masterful frosting hides a less-than-successful cake.

And then, there's Kim Stanley. Seance is notable, if only for Stanley's presence in it, as she preferred stage work to film and her film roles are few and far between...but memorable in the exquisite detail she brought to her work. Her Myra is a fascinatingly manipulative character, never a harpy, but quietly insistent and almost seeming to float in another dimension from reality. It's superb work, and almost makes sitting through this Seance a worthwhile experience.

Marat/Sade

Marat/Sade (aka The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade) (Peter Brook, 1967) July 13, 1793 Jean-Paul Marat, revolutionary fire-brand afflicted by a debilitating skin-disease that confined him to a bath was murdered by Charlotte Corday, who had once sided with Marat and now thought his more radical views of the revolution would only bring more disaster and destruction onto France. 

July 13, 1808. It is 15 years later to the day, when Napoleon is Emperor of France and the revolutionary fervor has died down now that France is in the ascendancy as a world-power, even while things are pretty much the same for its citizens that still have their heads attached. In the asylum of Charleton, one of its inmates, the Marquis DeSade takes advantage of some revolutionary therapeutic techniques to stage the murder of Marat with the inmates of the asylum acting out all the parts. An audience of gentry are invited to observe the performance behind bars, while the asylum's director uses the opportunity to curry favor and talk up the sanitarium's accomplishments through its advanced therapies, demonstrating them by holding the performance in the facility's hydrotherapy chamber. 

What could possibly go wrong?

The play goes well after the director's flowery and self-congratulatory introduction, the inmates escorted to the "stage," Marat is played by a paranoiac (Ian Richardson), Corday by a woman (Glenda Jackson) suffering from narcolepsy, the chorus commenting in verse and in song are all done up in clown face, and the Marquis (Patrick Magee) sits sullenly, feigning civility and docility, while putting his invective into the script.

Oh, the layers. It's a film of a play within a play. We are an audience watching (and standing in for) an audience, who could be considered either in front of or behind bars. The play itself is a historical drama with commentary and interjections from the author who inserts himself frequently in the narrative. And the dynamic of jailers overseeing the production of mad-men reflects the government thinking themselves in charge of an unruly mob, a revolution has been mollified, after all, and the right people are in charge in a France that is stronger than ever, led by the proverbial man on a white horse.

Oh, what one could say if one wanted to be pedantically current. But, one could find undercurrents of all sorts of transitions and "revolutions" in the discussions in Marat/Sade—how, for awhile, when things get bad, the public spontaneously combusts, worries the power-brokers about their handle on things, things get better and go back into a torpor as the crowd is satiated with their bread and circuses. Nothing much changes but attitude. And maybe some budgets to be allowed to "trickle-down."

But the play is a microcosm of revolution. De Sade was once a revolutionary, but by the time of play's events, he's found another way. at various times, protests are made of the script and the asylum director steps in to say that things have gone too far, names should not be named to avoid scandal and the Marquis symbolically rips up the script to appear to allow the play to keep going. Because the play is the revolution. To allow it to go on keeps the flame of anarchy alive until such a time as spark can flame and everything descends to chaos.

Because that is the aim. It is one thing to rant and rave and wave one's arms in the air and make a big show. It is quite another to appear docile and allow small victories to keep the show going on. Placate to distract. The end result will still be chaos, because that is the Nature of things, despite our schemes to control them. And when the root is madness...well...

Not even Napoleon could control that.