What this version lacks is just about everything else that made the 64 Masque work. Vincent Price’s Prospero was a study in the cruelty of power wielded for its own sake; by contrast this film’s Prospero, played by Adrian Paul (who had yet to develop the smouldering screen sexuality he would as star of tv’s Highlander [1992-7]), is pouty and wooden. He wields occasional moments of cruelty but Paul’s performance is more aloof and bugged-out, while the script drags the character through a series of pathological meditations on the fear of dying.

The production is drab. Nothing ever much happens in the film. The masque is a shabby affair and the sets lack the sumptuousness of the decor in the 64 version. Everybody, especially Paul and Jeff Osterhage, wear really unconvincing wigs. It is even, despite 25 years of loosening of morals, a thoroughly tame affair when it comes to portraying any of the supposed depravities and tortures going on. What is perhaps saddest is that Roger Corman, after having directed the great original, could come so widely far from the mark in attempting to repeat things a second time around.