

In MASQUE especially, Price is the picture of perfection as the devil-worshipping Prince Prospero. He's having a ball, albeit one with a guest list of gluttons, slavering toadies and ennui-ridden perverts. Being the only one with anything close to a genuine wit in the whole place (aside from Hop Toad), Prospero relies on his higher purpose--the serving of his dark master Satan--to keep him from getting depressed. Prospero might indulge himself with vice occasionally, but it's always for a point, a spiritual debasing as suits his dark lord's whims; his macabre jests indicate an aesthete beyond petty concerns of greed and lust.
Of course, there's a hardened production code burden this Prospero must bear. For all his freedom, he can't show us any nudity or open wounds. And all McGee has to do is suggest there's "other things" to be done in the name of evil besides silky talk and he's basically marked for death. And what a death! When you find Hop Toad give him ten gold pieces as reward for his magnificent jest!

In short this is the movie that THE PARTY and THE WILD PARTY and THE WILD ANGELS (Corman, 1966) try to be, but don't have the devil on their side. MASQUE's Prospero and ANGEL's Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) actually have a lot in common: each is a charismatic natural leader (a stand-in for Corman himself?) forced to endure the uncouthness of their minions, bound to lead packs of dimwitted trogs who've mistaken their gluttonous earthly lusts for true freedom. Compare the hilariously disturbing scene wherein Prospero orders his guests to roll around on the floor (like the filthy animals they are) to the climax of ANGELS where the gang trashes a church in a drunken orgy of destruction. Heavenly's admonition to the priest, "We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man... and we wanna get loaded... and we wanna have a good time." is not dissimilar to Prospero's decrees, such as: "If a God of love and light ever did exist, He is long since dead. Someone... some...thing rules in his place."
We like Prospero the same way we like Heavenly Blues: we relish their graceful power and admire their lack of insecurity, their ability to be beyond good and evil, genuinely searching for something rather than just spouting hipster credos. Caught between the dull conformity of good (Zzzz) and the banal destructiveness of evil (zzzz), aching for amusement, and too jaded to be satisfied with the gauche pleasures indulged in by their pack, I've been there man. And his relationship with Francesca (Jane Asher) the innocent peasant redhead, prefigures the special bond between Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in LOST IN TRANSLATION. It's beyond some kind of older man lechery or young woman father complex. It's a connection of mentor and mentee fused to a kind of twin star orbit that illuminates the bond between the two actors as well as their characters.
For me and some of us in the group, sex, drugs and rock and roll were a way to expand the mind and get loaded and not be hassled by the man. For a lot of our hairy fans it was a chance to get heheheh fucked up! Wooo! Mexican Mud! Yeah! In that sense, Prospero prefigures Timothy Leary, the acid generation, and the later 'e' generation. And thus MASQUE is one of the most legit psychedelic horror movies until THE TRIP! Do you doubt it? Can you look at Corman's MASQUE and not think of some far away rave or acid test of your dreams?


If you still doubt the lysergic glory of this movie, remember five things: 1. It's got one of the best Corman scores ever (Corman had to use a Brit, so Les Baxter was out, though I thought it was Les for years - as a comment below points out, it's David Lee) / 2. It's genuine Poe - which means you can smell the absinthe from across the sea of time / 3) Nicholas Roeg does the cinematography (lots of great camera movement); and 4) Jane Asher was once engaged to Paul McCartney. 5) It ends with a trippy modern dance. You can argue that that whole rainbow colored deaths and all that's a little pretentious but The Seventh Seal had been very influential a few years earlier and this was--after all--happening after death. Tripping you can always imagine when things get super weird like everyone turning red and freeze-framing that you may have died and not known it out there on the dance floor. The part where all the crowd's red hands are reaching out at him as Prospero tries to escape in a kind of Batman villain sideways dance move captures just what it's like when you're trying to get out of a packed Dead Show on too much acid.

"The zombies just eat you; unlike le gourmand Price, they don't give a shit how you taste."
ReplyDeleteLove this. Seriously great writing.
Thanks, mate. Always good to hear from a representative of the lovely Inuit peoples
ReplyDeleteYou're blog is awesome
ReplyDeleteseriously, keep up the great writing
"...an inherent giddiness in his velvet voice that makes him seem always as if he's restraining his giddy excitement that it's somebody's special birthday."
ReplyDeleteThat is the best-ever description of Price and I shall forever treasure it, to use when trying to explain him to the uninitiated. All glory to you, late though this praise may be.
"It's got one of the best scores ever from Les Baxter...."
ReplyDeleteWrong. The score is by David Lee....but yes, it is fantastic!
"It's got one of the best scores ever from Les Baxter...."
ReplyDeleteWrong. The score is by David Lee....but yes, it is fantastic!
Of course, they had to use a Brit. I forgot. Not sure why I assumed it was Les all this time - but thanks Brandon!
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