The Mask (1961)

User Rating:

5.0/10   

Director:

Julian Roffman

Writers:

Franklin Delessert (writer)
Sandy Haver (writer)

Release Date:

1 November 1961 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

The management is not responsible for nervous breakdowns!

Plot:

A young archaeologist believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and possibly to murder...

Plot Keywords:

Mask | Nightmare | Suicide | Supernatural | Curse

Cast

Paul Stevens	...	Doctor Allan Barnes
Claudette Nevins	...	Pam Albright
Bill Walker	...	Lieutenant Martin
Anne Collings	...	Miss Goodrich
Martin Lavut	...	Michael Radin
Leo Leyden	...	Doctor Soames
Norman Ettlinger	...	Professor Quincey
Bill Bryden	...	Anderson
Jim Moran	...	Jim Moran
Eleanor Beecroft	...	Mrs. Kelly
Ray Lawlor	...	Lab technician
Rudi Linschoten	...	Mime in nightmare
Steven Appleby	...	Museum guide
Alfie Scopp
Paul Elsom

Also Known As:

Eyes from Hell
Eyes of Hell
Face of Fire (USA) (reissue title)
The Spooky Movie Show

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color (3-D sequences)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #20034) | USA:Unrated (video release) | Finland:(Banned) (1962) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Company:

Beaver-Champion Attractions

Trivia:

The first Canadian film to be widely distributed in the United States, and the only Canadian 3-D feature.

Quotes:

Doctor Allan Barnes: I must. I must experience the greatest act of a human mind: to take another life.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Nightmare in Canada: Canadian Horror on Film (2004) (TV)

3-D Schlock

In the normal scheme of things I would have given this bit of schlock-horror one star--and that would have been on a good day. But THE MASK has two things going it for it: it is 3D available to the homemarket and it generally has a cheap purchase price. What more can you ask? A psychiatrist (Allan Barnes) has a homicidal archaeologist patient who swears up and down that he was just fine until he put on an ancient Indian mask the local museum dug up--and now, under the mask's influence, he has fearful fantasies, nasty nightmares, and (dare I say it?) the urge to kill. Our intrepid analyst doesn't believe a word of it, so the archaeologist goes home and kills himself... but not before mailing the mask off to the doctor who failed him. Does the doctor put on the mask? Since we've only gotten about fifteen minutes into the movie he darn well better.

Each time the doctor puts on the mask he has the same fearsome fantasies and nasty nightmares as his deceased patient--only now we see them, and THEY ARE IN 3D! Now, in its homemarket edition, THE MASK comes with all sorts of warnings that everything from visual impairments to bad color settings on your screen will affect the effect, so you're pretty much on your own here. For myself, I found it worked pretty well as long as you were watching the movie in a pitch black room. But the fact that the movie is sometimes in 2D and sometimes in 3D has a peculiar result: its fun to put the glasses on and off, but it takes a few minutes for you to begin to read the film as 3D, and then when you taken the glasses off to see the 2D part you feel slightly askew because you're still sorta seeing red out of one eye and blue out of the other.

Several people have commented that they found parts of the film pretty creepy and the 3D sequences really imaginative. I myself thought the whole thing was about as frightening as a box of dry cereal and the 3D bits--they were fun enough, but let's face it, this ain't no CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Still, the ten-to-fourteen year old crowd will get a kick out of it, and it's all just silly enough for grown ups to find mildly amusing too. So PUT THE MASK ON NOW and have some foolish fun!

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer