Jane Asher is as well-known for acting as she is for dating an ex-Beatle, and in 1964 she brought Swinging London to the canteen of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death.

Based on the gothic short story “The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy,” the film remains the most ambitious installment in Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe cycle of movies, contrasting the bleak landscape of a dying village with the psychological torment of six rooms of color, and one with no color at all, just a deep black with a blood red crimson glow cast on it. Vincent Price stars as the sadistic and satanic Prince Prospero, whose darkness reigns over his dominions.

Price wouldn’t be this malignant again until 1968’s Witchfinder General, which was retitled The Conqueror Worm, even though it had nothing to do with the Poe story. In Masque, he throws decadent orgies...