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"A monument to the corruption of the soul," the medieval maquette glimpsed through fog at the onset. The dying King (Justice Watson) hopes for "peace, not torment" for his young heir, a burst of fratricide dashes his dream as the scheming Duke (Vincent Price) toasts the chosen Protector (Charles Macaulay) with embrace and dagger. "Already the vultures strike." Crooked back and withered arm, the delectation of the limping usurper as he drinks in the shrieks of the maiden on the rack (Sandra Knight), then his horror as the ghost's cackling face is superimposed over his own wife (Joan Camden). A spiraling madness, a view from the battlement: "Is it what men do that darkens the sky? Or do the skies blacken the souls of men?" Shakespeare is as much a morbid determinst as Poe, according to Roger Corman, his Richard III is a dry run for Masque of the Red Death and no mistake. Corpses along the road to the coronation, a Möbius strip of candle-lit chambers with a grinning skull inside the suit of armor. A close-up of an oracular pyre ascends to a mobile long shot as flames shoot up and the magus skulks amid looming shadows with raven on shoulder. The child prince and his brothers are simple prey to the villain, who fondles a puppet in the afterglow of their slaughter. "Strange that they died so easily... With their struggles no more than sparrows in the teeth of a fox." Polanski in Macbeth remembers the mocking mirror, the last stop in Bosworth is built from footage from Lee's original and closes on the image of the sinking crown. With Michael Pate, Joan Freeman, Robert Gordon, Richard Hale, Sarah Selby, Donald Losby, and Morris Ankrum. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |