The penultimate film in Roger Corman’s wildly successful and wickedly entertaining series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations finds the director at his most ingenious and brilliant. In this darkly elegiac vision of humanity, Vincent Price plays the sadistic and tyrannical Prince Prospero, who loves nothing more than being amused by the torment of others. When he hears that a prophecy has spread about his demise—arriving hand-in-hand with a strange sickness known as “The Red Death”—he throws a masked ball of debauched decadence, and torments attendees with his warped games. But then an unexpected guest, a mysterious prophet in a red cloak, shows up with his own infernal surprises. With its sumptuous, stylized design and decadent cinematography that seems to bleed red, Corman’s evocative work of horror is as rich and complex as it is visually astonishing. His seamless blend of beauty and horror challenges traditional distinctions between high and low art in a classic work that ranks among his best. In Person: Roger Corman.