This probably goes without saying, but if Vincent Price wasn't a well known character actor, he would be a really, really strange dude. I mean, he was anyways, but at least it could be attributed to him doing his Vincent Price "thing". Let's just say if he was just some random guy that lived next door to me who had his mannerisms, I would definitely keep my children away from him. Maybe it was just the mustache. I'm not sure. He definitely creeps me out, but not in Ambassador of Fear sort of way...ok, for instance, the scene in this movie with the little person (which is clearly a child with an adult's voice dubbed in-apparently there was a strike of some sort going on) dancing in his court, he takes a little too much interest in his "pretty toy's" "appearance of innocence". Ok. I'll leave it be now. Let's get to the movie. This movie was really not frightening at all. It's color and contrast are so vibrant that I often forgot that I was supposed to be watching a "horror" movie. I think the masquerade was supposed to be like Sodom and Gomorrah but it was more like a junior high dance. Much like the Poe story, it was supposed to be a tale of morality. Except that in the movie, that moral is sort of lost. What I took away from this movie was-don't be an a-hole to your rich friends just because you can...and don't worship the devil...?...worship death instead...because we KNOW for certain that death exists??? Well,the one aspect of the Poe story that remained was the a-hole getting his comeuppance although the devil worshippers thing was probably thrown in to spice things up. The most redeeming quality of this film is seems like it serves as a cinematic legacy of rich a-holes worshipping the devil...Rosemary's Baby...The Omen...Ninth Gate. If you haven't seen these films, spoiler alert: like good ol' Prospero, they too should not have worshipped the devil. It doesn't work out so well for them either.
To me it seemed as though the moral of the story was that it does not matter if you believe in and worship God or the Devil! Either way, you die at the end. It also says, it does not matter if you are rich or poor, in the favor of powerful people or not, feel "protected" by something outside of yourself, enjoy life or hate it. We paraphrased Hobbes' quote in class:...and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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