Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16031 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-08-27
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 169 minutes

Customer Reviews

Classic 1962 horror!

PLEASE NOTE: THIS REVIEW REFERS TO 'THE PREMATURE BURIAL' ONLY

Anyone with a fascination for graves, death, tombs and crypts will simply love this 1962 classic starring Ray Milland and Hazel Court, featuring blood-stained coffins from the scratches of the living corpses that lay within... One of the most morbid and brooding horror movies based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Ray Milland is tortured by the terrible morbid fear of being buried alive - enhanced during the discovery of a recently opened grave where scratch marks are found on the inside of the coffin lid, and the corpse within is found in the 'stiffened' scratching position! Milland almost drives himself insane with the fear and builds himself various contraptions in an attempt to safeguard himself from the dreadful fate. Almost having overcome this irrational phobia due to the love of his beautiful young wife, he is then taunted by an 'unknown' force.

This horror movie is unique, in that the story has an unlikely heroine, and the climax to the movie is exceptionally ghastly, but at the same time, manages to bring tears to the eyes when it is revealed just who was the only person who tried their best to protect him from the dreadful end...

Great vintage stuff!

Double Corman
This is MGM at their best. A double-feature DVD with two Roger Corman classics, both in glorius widescreen, both in luscious technicolor. The first gem, "Masque of the Red Death", has never looked better. A tale of decadence set during the black plague, here represented as the "red plague", thus Edgar Allen Poe. But where Poes wonderful poem ends, is, so-to-speak, at the end of this film. Corman took Poes frightening vignette on the black death and spun a tale of Satanism versus Christain belief, all set in a richly atmospheric castle in the middle of a hellish landscape -- For those of you squemish about anything to do with Christianity, think of it as a morality play of Good against Evil; afterall, Corman is rather ambiguous as to who the hooded "death characters" really are -- And our host to the party to end all parties, none other than Vincent Price himself.

The second film, Premature Burial, I'd never seen until this DVD. It is not as hypnotic at "Masque", but it is a fun, macabre journey into madness with a superb actor, Ray Milland, at the helm. Also starring the very sexy, very voluptious Hazel Court, which some Hammer Horror fans may remember from the up and coming dvd "Curse of Frankenstein", due out in October. The film is presented in widescreen. Both films, one on each side of the DVD, include very nicely produced extras with Roger Corman, giving some nice information on the creation and production of both films. If your a fan of Vincent Price, buy it for "Masque". If your a fan of Roger Corman, you will not be disapointed in either film.

A double dose of Roger Corman's Poe films for A.I.
This double-sided DVD brings together two of the seven Edgar Allen Poe adaptations that Roger Corman made in the early 1960s for American International (1963's "The Haunted Palace" uses the title of a poem by Poe for the title but is really based on a H.P. Lovecraft story, so it does not count as one of the series as far as I am concerned). The result is a decent enough double-bill of only American movies that were giving the Hammer gothic revival any real competition.

For "The Masque of the Red Death," Corman had the advantage of Charles Beaumont, one of the scripters from "The Twilight Zone" who also wrote "The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao," and science fiction author R. Wright Campbell, doing the adaptation for this 1964 film. What you have to keep in mind is that Poe's originally tale is barely long enough to be considered a short story in the first place, but it is a neat title and it did have a pretty good twist. Beaumont and Campbell come up with an elaborate story to set up how it is that the Red Death attends Prospero's masque. One of the things they did was incorporate "Hop-Frog," another Poe story, but another is to turn Prospero and his sister in worshippers of Satan (reformed, apparently, compared to what we would see from other Hollywood films such as "Rosemary's Baby" in the next decade).

When young Francesca (Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's muse in the early 1960s when he was writing songs for her older brother Peter of Peter & Gordon) begs for the lives of her father (Nigel Green) and Gino (David Weston), the young man she loves, Count Prospero (Vincent Price) tells her she can choose who will live and who must die. However, that is just a prelude to the main part of the film where Prospero and his court and holed up in his castle. The Red Death is spreading around the countryside and Prospero needs to find ways to keep himself amused. The result is a series of sadistic games and actions at Prospero's order. Meanwhile, a hooded figure in red comes to pay a visit.

Corman remade "The Masque of Red Death" in 1989, but he should not have bothered, because this is the better version. This is arguably the best looking of the Corman films and when you see some of these interior sets you can only marvel at how far Corman has come from the days of making movies quick and dirty for no money (the fact Corman was shooting in Britain for the first time had a lot to do with it as did the fact that they simply used the sets from "Becket"). Price gets to be relatively restrained, even when he is ordering people garroted or tossing a woman a dagger so she can kill herself, and this one ends with an appropriate whimper. But I think the best performance comes from Skip Martin as Hop Toad, who does a lot with the similarly sadistic subplot of this one.

"The Premature Burial" was made in 1962 and stars Ray Milland instead of Vincent Price. Emily Gault (Hazel Court) demands to know why Guy Carrell (Miland) has called off their engagement. Guy explains that ever since their discovered his father had been buried alive, he has been terrified the same thing will happen to him because he might also suffer from catalepsy. Emily and Miles Archer (Richard Ney), convince Guy to go along with the marriage, but he becomes so worried about premature burial that he even builds a special tomb that will allow him to escape. If you do not know that Guy's worst dreams are going to come true, then you are just not paying attention.

That is because the screenplay by Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell (who would script "X - The Man with X-Ray Eyes" for Corman and Milland) works in the idea that Guy's fear can be taken advantage of by someone who is after his money or his wife (or both). So Guy's fate has to do with more than the Fates really sticking it to him. This is a relatively short film (81 minutes), but it seems to drag a bit because it takes its time getting to what we all know is going to happen. The best scene comes when Emily tells Guy that he is so obsessed with his fears that for all intents and purposes he is dead already. But the ending is devoted way too much to telling the audience rather than showing us and ends the film on a down note.

The special features are limited to the trailers for the two films and a pair of featurettes in which Corman talks about each film, "Roger Corman Unearths 'The Premature Burial'" and "'Masque of the Red Death': Roger Corman Behind the Masque." There are some interesting insights into the films and you learn how it was that Milland ended up in the only Poe film Corman did for A.I. without Price. The first movie is a solid four and the second is at least a star below that, but the interviews with Corman are enough to justify rounding up.