In honor of the 210th birthday of one of the giants of American literature -- Edgar Allan Poe -- tonight we wall ourselves off from the travails of the peasants outside our castle and hold a wild revel with music, wine... and this Roger Corman/Vincent Price classic from 1964.

Vincent Price is terrific as the menacing Prince Prospero in this entertaining classic of the horror genre. And although Corman takes several liberties with the original story and blends in the plot of another, lesser-known Poe tale (“Hop-Frog”) to stretch this classic short story into a feature-length film, Corman remains true to the theme of "The Masque of the Red Death" which, if you never read it, well shame on you.

Enjoy! (Open thread below...)