The Masque Of The Red Death (for Hazel Court)

"He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all".....Edgar Allan Poe.

A deadly plague ravages the Italian countryside, the hedonistic Prince Prospero takes refuge in his castle along with a group of like minded nobles to celebrate a masked ball in honour of his master Satan.Roger Corman's very first British shot film is without a doubt the closest the cinema has ever come to representing Poe with any accuracy, though titles such as "The Raven", "The Fall Of The House Of Usher", "The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" (though classic terrors) have all suggested the work of Edgar Allan Poe, they rarely bear anything but passing references to the dark bitter fruits of his imagination, and more often than not trade purely on his titles.The Masque Of The Red Death, benefitting from sets left behind at Elstree Studios from such prestige films as Becket, and wonderfully lush and handsome camera work by future director Nicholas Roeg, surpasses all of Corman's other Poe related films with a sense of the truly magnificent macabre on a suitably grand scale, I may venture to say it stands as probably Roger Corman's ultimate film as director. As an essay on the true unrelenting and nature of mortality it supplements Poe's visionary nightmares beautifully (in the end of this film "death" truly does hold "dominion over all" sparing neither the good or the evil as in it's different hued forms it continues on relentless), and the subtle performance of Vincent Price, an irresistable blend of melancholia and sadism, is among his very, very finest.

The Devil Rides Out

Browsing around the internet this morning, a link provided by a discussion forum I frequent led me to a YouTube submission from a chap in the US named James who calls himself a Street Preacher, carrying a large rod and bible, and dressed in an outfit that could of been designed in Berlin around 1933, (all that was missing was the armband) he extolled his manifesto for returning the world to an idyll of which he would be satisfied. In just under ten minutes this purported man of the cloth demonised practically the entire world from Catholics to Gays to TV executives to (of all things) Californians!

Despite myself I have a great respect for people of faith, whatever that faith may be but when I am faced with such hate mongering masquerading as being representative of the word of so many good people's god my cold bloodedness begins to simmer warm enough to boil a curate's egg, I therefore commented on the piece I had just sullied myself with, as one may with regards to YouTube submissions (and quite innocuously I may add) and received a lovely series of emails from James himself describing the many tortures of hell I would be soon enjoying as a result of my "sodomite loving filthy ways"

I have written back enclosing a scanned copy of "The Sermon On The Mount" (not as strange a thing for an Atheist to have to hand as may first be thought) as this chap's bible seems to have lost that particular chapter and verse.

If, as the Duc de Richleau (played so splendidly by Christopher Lee) maintains, "Evil is very real" then it's face is definitely not that of horned goat sitting atop a Sabbatical throne, it's features are much more mediocre than that, and it's pervasive rhetoric is not wrapped up in the language of archaic tongues.

The Mystery Of The Wax Museum

..or looking beyond one's first impressions, when I watched a news report this morning that told of the death of Charlton Heston my immediate thought was of the image of Chuck brandishing his rifle aloft for the benefit of the gun horny folks of the NRA as well as some of his less savoury comments about people who use the internet, but then I got to thinking about how I enjoyed him in The Omega Man, Planet Of The Apes etc. and so I looked a little deeper, ripped off the mask of wax and instead of finding a disfigured Lionel Atwill underneath, the monstrous mask of reactionism that had been my recent impression of Heston, when removed revealed quite an articulate civil rights activist and not a bad actor really, a flawed soul, definitely but we all take up our flaming torches without thinking sometimes, don't we?.

Worth considering now and again, what goes on behind the masks, wax or otherwise, though my Gran always told my that first impressions are the most important, maybe she was only partly correct? Her minced beef pies were 100% though, nevertheless she never ever needed a firearm to protect them.

The Haunted Palace

Well the spiders are back, and about time too, dew dropped webs appearing on my bedroom balcony this morning say Spring is here like nothing else in the world, now to wait, the patient life of glorious anticipation, until one's able to experience the symbolic life and death struggles of a wayward moth or cranefly. Ah, Mother Nature, she believes, it appears, in tough love.

The Ghost Of Frankenstein

Is there really going to be a point to this on and off series of musings? The title itself may have drawn one in under the misapprehension that there maybe something horrific inside, well apart from me, probably not, though what I will be attempting is to equate my constant viewing of old horror films with the everyday aspects of my own meagre and uninteresting existence. Of course peeling the skin from the bones of old enemies won't be on the cards every day, neither I doubt will the cracking of skulls in order to replace perfectly adequate brains with those that formerly belonged to a monkey, though maybe once or twice a month I may get around to my hobbies long enough to share these experiences, no, what you'll probably see here is the minutia, the concerns of the angry villager holding the torch or pitchfork, rather than the mad chap with the windmill or the headwaiter in the castle, how my addled consciousness interprets practically everything I see in terms of the grammar and imagery of the exponents of the macabre, and occasionally i'll throw in a review or two.

Maybe it will be cohesive even, who knows, but in the immortal words of Edward Van Sloan....

"Well......We've Warned You!"