7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Satan-worshiper Prince Prospero invites several dozen of the local nobility to his castle for protection against an oncoming plague, the "Red Death". Prospero orders his guests to attend a masked ball and, amidst a general atmosphere of debauchery and depravity, notices the entry of a mysterious hooded stranger dressed all in red. Believing the figure to be his master, Satan, Prospero is horrified at the revelation of his true identity...
Starring: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, Patrick Magee (I), Skip Martin (II)Horror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Note: This film is currently available as part of The Vincent Price Collection.
Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory imprint is giving horror fans a little early Halloween present this year, bringing six classic
Vincent Price – American International films to high definition for the first time. Though horror tends to be a genre that,
to
paraphrase one Rodney Dangerfield, “gets no respect”, and indeed probably all of these films were thought of as B-
movie
drive in fodder back in the day, most if not all of them hold up surprisingly well today, with several of them offering a
quasi-
hallucinatory quality which Roger Corman, the supposedly low rent auteur who is responsible for the majority of
the
offerings in this set, states was a deliberate choice (not one necessitated by relatively paltry budgets) in an attempt to
viscerally recreate the inner life of the (perhaps troubled) mind. Though Price had made at least a couple of forays into
horror in the fifties with such fare as
House of Wax 3D and The Fly
, it was really the American International pictures that established Price’s “second act” in the film business, offering
him
more or less steady employment when many of his contemporaries had either resigned themselves to the ostensibly
less
glamorous world of television or who had outright retired from show business.
The Masque of the Red Death is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. This is by far the most colorful of the Corman-Poe entries, one which is simply awash in a huge panoply of hues, from bright, bold primaries, to more subtle pastels. The production design here also makes the sets part of the color scheme, with walls varying from bright yellow to deep purple. Nicolas Roeg's sumptuous cinematography looks great here, with beautifully saturated tones and deep, even impressive, black levels. Once again some of the opticals, including the bizarre turquoise inflected dream sequence, look pretty dirty and grainy, as should be expected. The film boasts a generally very sharp looking appearance (there's some slight anamorphic squeezing at the very edges of frame on occasion, with attendant softness), and I'd personally rate this entry somewhere just slightly behind The Fall of the House of Usher and slightly ahead of The Pit and the Pendulum in overall video quality.
The Masque of the Red Death features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix presented via DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. As Steve Haberman points out in his commentary, David Lee's music channels Stravinsky some of the time, notable Le Sacre du Printemps, and the propulsive percussion of the score comes through with abundant clarity and precision. Dialogue is also very well presented. The track has no damage of any kind to report and offers excellent fidelity and wide dynamic range.
The Masque of the Red Death offers Price as a fairly hiss-worthy villain, though it's interesting to see how Beaumont and Campbell crafted the role to include something approaching not one, but two, love interests. Fascinatingly philosophical without being obtuse, The Masque of the Red Death is one of the moodier Corman-Poe outings, and it features absolutely breathtaking cinematography by Nicolas Roeg. If it doesn't quite get to the stratospheric heights of The Seventh Seal, that's nothing to be ashamed of. This Blu-ray offers great video and audio and, like all the other films in this set, comes with some fantastic supplements. Highly recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1963
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1960
1961
1968
1971
La chiesa
1989
1964
The Mask of Satan / La maschera del demonio | The Mario Bava Collection
1960
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1963
Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga
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Collector's Edition
1966
Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride
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Dracula / Warner Archive Collection
1958
1972
1959
The Devil's Bride
1968
1970
1970