The Masque of the Red Death (1964) review

Number seven of producer-director Corman's attempts to bring legendary writer Edgar Allan Poe's stories to the screen ... and it's not bad: Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) visits a small village in his kingdom, discovers one of the residents has the plague and then takes God-fearing peasant girl Francesca (Jane Asher), her boyfriend Gino (David Weston) and her father Ludovico (Nigel Green) back to his castle where he rants about how much he adores Satan and later hosts a masquerade party, except a mysterious figure known as Red Death shows up.  Price is, of course, expertly cast as the eloquent masochist and the sets, costumes and lighting are far better than what you'd expect from a low budget production - future director Nicolas Roeg's the cinematographer - although the characters are still cartoonish and the script (credited to Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell) can be a little redundant (it also tries to incorporate another Poe story to pad the length).  The disease in the title could refer to consumption, cholera, rabies or anthrax - it depends on what interpretation you read - but any infection that makes blood seep out of your pores sounds scary.