The Mask

Restricted somewhat by it's low budget, this Canadian made horror film is interesting, and I would imagine be even better, if seen in it's original 3D form. The effects in the "flat version"look like they could be effective. Film starts off well, but nothing really is explained and film's climax is disappointing, but overall not a bad little "B" movie.

This early 60's horror film is one of the slowest moving ones ever. The film begins with an awesome title sequence...some flickering abstract lines, mixed with some deliciously eerie music. Following that (and before the story actually starts), we have one of the most dreadfully boring narrators ever in the history of film, explaining to us what a mask is, and that when the characters in the film put on the mask of the title, we are to do the same with our 3-D specs.

The story itself is a bore, painfully written and with some ludicrous, laughable acting (my favorite was the grumpy landlady). The 3-D sequences are something else entirely from the rest of this film. You'd think they came from a different movie. They are moody, eerie, well thought out and put together. Some of the in-your-face effects still don't work well (even in a theatre) but they are hokey good fun. However, once the non-stereo scenes come back on...they are redundant and increasingly annoying. Still, this is a cult classic by any standards, and you can't help but love it. Understandably, it has quite a following.

This silly, stagy, slow moving horror film is probably still the best 3D movie ever made. Once you wait through the bland story, and the call comes to "Put On The Mask"; it becomes another film. These 3D sequences are the best, freakest ever put on film, and they transfer to TV remarkably well in the Elvira edition. If you have any taste for oddities at all, this is a must.

This movie really grows on you. Yes, it's true, the non-3D parts are boring, but I find them functional. Like any good freak-out movie, if it was all a freak out, you'd get worn out fast. This is like a freak-out musical in a way, where the freaky scenes are the equal of big musical numbers.

A doctor is turned on to a creepy mask by one of his patients who has turned into a homicidal maniac. Next thing you know, the doctor is trying on the mask and going insane, and oh what a mess, and his girlfriend and everyone, and blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, in the hallucinogenic mask sequences, you get to experience what it must have been like to be on LSD in the 60's. There's a whole "alternate world," where a strange, mutated man is milling around, looking for the woman (?) he is in love with in a fever dream landscape where there are skulls and burning hands and satanists and gore and other neato stuff. And it's all in bizarro 3-D! Even if it doesn't work well all the time, it's still mighty disturbing, especially for a movie from 1961! The images, and the incredible, collage-like soundtrack to the freak sequences will linger on your brain long afterwards, in the same way that wearing those horrible glasses leave an impression on your eyes after you take them off for the "normal" scenes. You're exhausted, and confused, and weirded out.

Yay

The 1961 THE MASK is about a psychiatrist who is given an ancient Aztec or Mayan mask by a patient who has just died. The doctor feels compelled to put the mask on, and has horrific visions of the walking dead, sacrificial altars and weird chambers with plenty of fire to boot. Sort of like Orpheus in the underworld. It was shot in 3D, and I can tell you from first-hand knowledge how absolutely terrifying this movie was when I saw it on its initial release. I was 11 at the time. Loud, electronic music made it even harder to sit through. It was Canada's first shot at a horror film and is almost, dare I say, a work of art for the set pieces the doctor experiences each time he wears the mask. The movie, which could just as easily have been a stage play, holds up very well, at least in the 3D segments. The rest is simply filler. Remade many years later with Jim Carrey, but with a decidedly different approach.