Mask of the Devil

Despite looking like Vicky Pollard from Little Britain, Mary (Nicole Katherine Riddell) finds herself hired as a fluffer on a low budget porn shoot. Unfortunately, one of the props being used on a XXX parody of Tarzan is a wooden African mask that transforms the wearer into a vicious demonic killer.

The first half of this film is played as an offbeat comedy with dark humour, but it isn't funny, even though the irritatingly quirky soundtrack does its best to convince the viewer otherwise. A porn-shoot premise offers plenty of scope for lewd gags and general outrageousness, but this film somehow takes the world of low-rent sex flicks, with its many sleazy characters, and makes it boring.

The second half of the movie is more focused on the horror, but with lousy acting, subpar gore, way too many cheap and nasty visual effects, and scene transitions that look like something out of a Powerpoint presentation, the whole thing is too simply too shoddy to be scary.

Given how many producers, co-producers, executive producers and associate producers are listed in the credits on IMDb, I'm guessing that the film was crowd-funded, which is why I'll never stump up cash to help kickstart a film: I don't want to risk having my name forever associated with something this bad.

N. B. An early scene, in which antiques shop assistant Todd sells the mask to the prop hunter against his boss's wishes, seems inspired by the opening scene of Gremlins. Later in the film, porn talent Otto tears flesh off his face, dropping bloody chunks into a sink, in a scene reminiscent of Poltergeist. Sadly, Richard Rowntree, producer/writer/director of Mask of the Devil, is no Spielberg, Dante or Hooper.

Wow. This movie is all over the place. Is it a take off on grindhouse movies? Is it a comedy? Is it a straight horror movie? I dunno. But I DO know that it's HORRIBLE.

Some of the worst directing I've seen in decades. The director has no clue how to move the film forward. It's slower than mollasses.

At first I thought it was a cultural thing and that the English don't know how to make a horror film. But then I remembered all those Hammer films I saw growing up. So guess what? It's the director's fault.

He shouldn't be making movies.

Sad, because there appeared to be money there for production that would bring it above the standard low budget fare.

To me this cheeky comedy is a night of horror fun, is a worthy of your time. If you go in expecting a film worthy of Oscars and Imax, then you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for indie small-time passionate filmmakers with some laughs and gore then this is pretty good and you'll have a good evening. I can't help but wonder what happens after the film and I would have liked a little more build up in the XXX studio but I appreciate the time and money constraints. It could benefit with a Bawdy Man too. When you take this into account then I feel any rating below 5 to be overly harsh. Kudos to the community effort in this production.

I recently met the filmmakers and got to see Mask of the Devil. I really enjoyed it. It's a good script; solid writing with some really witty one liners while maintaining believable characters. Good acting all round with Martin Payne as a standout. Technical stuff was all good. This might be low budget, but definitely doesn't look out of place among the big players. I really love the titles and credits too, so much atmosphere. No real spoilers, but this is a two-for-one in a way. The second half takes a U-turn into another genre. Keep your eyes peeled for the parody porn poster titles in the background too; there are some really creative and fun parodies. Worth your time.

Some of the cinematography is excellent, getting good value out of limited locations. The visual effects, while clearly low budget, were very well executed,

The script and acting, however, are awful.

There are one or two moments when I thought it was meant to be deliberately bad in order to parody some stereotypical situations, but then I realised it was just going to be like that all the way through.

The pacing of the film is also slow and dull, making it hard to stay engaged in what story there was. The plot itself is quite weak, you get no character development or interesting twists and turns. It's exactly what you'd expect from reading the summary.

Overall, this film was a disappointment. The limited locations were the only redeeming factor, but even they were not enough to save the film from its poor script, acting, pacing, and plot.

Unless you are studying low budget filmmaking techniques, avoid this one.