THE OBLONG BOX
The Red Mask Of Death
“Some herbal tea should clear up that acne.”
★★★✩✩
EXTRAS ★★★★✩
RELEASED OUT NOW!
1969 | 15 | Blu-ray
Director Gordon Hessler
Cast Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Uta Levka
BLU-RAY DEBUT Though billed on
the poster as “Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale of the living dead”, the only thing this AIP film shares with his short story – not even a supernatural tale – is its title. And while it uses the Poe theme of burial alive (here, the box is a coffin), even that isn’t really the focus. A witch doctor’s ritual curse is more to the fore, in a film which for its time has a surprisingly critical attitude to colonialism.