The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 horror film directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. The story follows a prince who terrorizes a plague-ridden peasantry while merrymaking in a lonely castle with his jaded courtiers. The screenplay, written by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell, was based upon the 1842 short story of the same name by American author Edgar Allan Poe, and incorporates a subplot based on another Poe tale, "Hop-Frog". Another subplot is drawn from Torture by Hope by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. It is the seventh of a series of eight Corman film adaptations largely based on Edgar Allan Poe's works made by American International Pictures. Plot On a mountain in medieval Italy, an old woman meets a red-cloaked figure shuffling Tarot cards. The figure gives her a white rose, which then turns red and dappled with blood. Prince Prospero, a Satanist, visits the village he rules, and is confronted by two starving villagers, Gino and Ludovico. Meanwhile, the old woman dies, infected with a deadly plague known as the Red Death. Upon discovering her, Prospero orders the village burned and abducts Gino, Ludovico and Ludovico's daughter and Gino's lover, Francesca. He then tells the local nobility to come to his castle.