This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I see several reviews on here making this film out to be some sort of Bergmanesque masterpiece. I don't see it that way. I found the characters rather uninteresting, including their final fates. There's no optimistic coda with the young lovers, and the only thing the film seems to have to say about the cruel Satan worshiping Prospero is "everyone dies eventually". Meh. It didn't strike me as scary or suspenseful at all. The only things I liked were that Jane Asher's quite the cutie, and Price gives a good performance.

As Guillermo del Toro has said it, RED is the color of ghosts and sin. And no one does the colors better than Nicolas Roeg who photographed this film. It's a feast for the eyes and death comes in bright colors as a mysterious stranger. Vincent Price scares himself to death which is something to look at. Production design is gorgeous. A true artwork from King B!

Once again Roger Corman succeeds in creating a classic film based (however loosely) on a Poe story. All the ingredients are present and correct, from an over the top Vincent Price to the lavish costumes and sets. It constantly amazes me how much Corman achieved on a fairly low budget, the scenery is scrumptious and never false for a minute, probably because once again the costumes were left over from a high budget film. Clever man, clever plan.This time the thrust of the story is dialogue-based, with Price expounding on the qualities of Satan-worshipping, the Red Death story becomes lost around the middle of the film only to surface again at the end as a form of retribution. Price is on top form here, conveying the charm and hypnotic power of evil, his Prince Prospero is a cunning and evil man, yet intelligent, warped by his sadistic ways and only achieving self-pleasure through violence and torture. There is still a human underneath his cold exterior, after having peasants shot to death outside his castle he spares the young child with them. That Price can still be charismatic and likable (or maybe I'm biased) even though he's a terrible character is simply a testament to his skill. You can read stories about him becoming lazy and campy, not in this viewer's opinion though.Price is surrounded by a good cast which probably helps to bring out the best in him. Hazel Court, doing a turnaround from her innocent victim role in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, plays Prospero's wife, herself willing to succumb to the Devil, in some of the film's most psychedelic and disturbing scenes she is attacked by fetish-dancing demons while the camera elongates her face into a nightmarish distortions. Jane Asher plays the innocent, a young peasant girl taken in by Prospero, she is given a fleshed-out role and comes across as both believable and a highly capable actress. Further down in the cast list are plenty of familiar faces, like Nigel Green as another peasant. Patrick Magee, usually playing doctors in psychological stuff, plays a cruel nobleman. Skip Martin is Hop Toad, a young jester-type who has a relationship with the beautiful Esmerelda. This was based on another of Poe's short stories and the relationship is used as a sub plot here, to good effect, Martin is wonderful.Aside from all the lavish trappings and despite the title, this film is primarily about Satanism and devil worship, and attempts to shed some light on a man's reasons for following it. It succeeds and must be praised for not showing Satanism in a necessarily bad light, but treating it in a realistic and authentic way, it's not just a shallow excuse for some black magic rituals like it is in many other films. The ending to this film is also a classic, where the Red Death himself walks around, destroying those who he passes in an instant. The confrontation between Price and the Death is a smart one, a battle of wills and religion. Of course it's religion on which this film is based, especially faith. These factors make the story a complex one and more than just a horror film, indeed it's worthy of higher status than the other films in the Poe cycle because of this.

Another addition to Roger Corman's series of movies adapted from Edgar Allan Poe stories casts Vincent Price as a Satan-worshiping medieval prince holding a party while a horrible plague ravages his fiefdom. I saw the movie as an allusion not only to the feudal system, but as an indictment of decadence in general, as Prospero tortures and humiliates people to entertain his guests. As for Jane Asher, she and Paul McCartney were an item in the '60s. My mom liked her so much that she cut her hair like Asher wore hers. Asher more recently appeared in the original version of "Death at a Funeral". Who ever would've guessed that there would be a link between Poe and the Beatles? Anyway, "The Masque of the Red Death" is a fun movie, and I suspect that they had fun making it.