Between 1960 and 1965 Roger Corman, master of exploitation filmmaking and financing, made a string of eight films for low-budget powerhouse American International Pictures from unusual source material: the decidedly antiquarian (and public domain!) short stories of 19th-century writer Edgar Allan Poe. The seventh of these films, a comparatively more expensive production (only by Corman’s standards, mind you), is a medieval tale of a villainous prince and his castle guests attempting to outwit and outwait the mysterious “red death” which ravages the countryside around them. They pass the time with sadomasochistic masquerade balls and satanic rituals (“let me speak to you about the anatomy of terror” is a party pick-up line for the ages), but even deals with the devil may not be enough when the plague without becomes the plague within. Vincent Price is truly at home as Prince Prospero, a genteel monster who enjoys commanding his party guests to bark like dogs and mansplaining Satanism to Francesca, a young God-fearing girl he’s kidnapped from the village, played by a wide-eyed 19-year-old Jane Asher. Masque is spellbinding, wicked, and unabashedly indulgent — a groovier, trashier Powell & Pressburger film with comically large candles, ludicrous hats, and dripping dungeons for days. Scripted by Twilight Zone stalwart Charles Beaumont and shot in dazzling color by cinematographer (and future director) Nicolas Roeg, Masque screens in a new restoration which returns several censored scenes removed from the original release. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

35mm from the Academy Film Archive, permission Park Circus

Preceded by: “Bimbo’s Initiation” (Fleischer Studios, 1931) – 16mm – 7 min