Your obsession with death is to my ears like a sweet love song.
Considering Roger Corman directed feature-length versions of four of the Edgar Allan Poe stories included in the 2013 animated anthology Extraordinary Tales, it's only right that writer/director Raul Garcia tapped him to voice Prince Prospero in "The Masque of the Red Death" -- the film's closing segment. That's also the only one that lacks a narrator, conveying by purely visual means how the plague sweeps through a castle full of debauched nobles in masks who mistakenly believe they're under Prospero's protection. There's no way to stave off death, though -- red or otherwise -- as its stony personification (voiced by Cornelia Funke) tells the talking crow standing in for Poe (voiced by Stephen Hughes) in the film's wraparounds, which appropriately enough are set in a cemetery.
The other stories those segments wrap around are "The Fall of the House of Usher" (narrated by Christopher Lee, who also voices Roderick Usher and his concerned visitor, Frederick), "The Tell Tale Heart" (narrated by a scratchy recording of Bela Lugosi), "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (narrated by Julian Sands), and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (narrated by Guillermo del Toro). These are animated in a variety of art styles and methods -- "Tell Tale" is entirely monochromatic, taking inspiration from Argentine comics artist Alberto Breccia, "M. Valdemar" has the look of a moving newspaper comic, the painted backgrounds and characters in "Masque" have visible brush strokes -- but they all have one thing in common and that is Poe's knack for the perfect, chilling turn of phrase. With his authoritative baritone, Lee does them the most justice, but even Corman knocks his single line of dialogue ("Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?") out of the park.