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The Mask:
THRILLS without violence, SHOCK without BRUTALITY.
a.
Shot partially in 3-D, The Mask is a thinly veiled drug parable about Dr. Barnes (Paul Stevens), a psychiatrist who finds himself in an eerie Freudian dreamworld whenever he puts on an ancient Indian ritual mask. As he continues to experiment with the mask to explore his own subconscious desires, the doctor’s grip on sanity is tested until he finds himself inexplicably attacking his receptionist. A marked improvement on The Bloody Brood, The Mask easily succeeds with a unique mix of adult themes and fairground spookhouse effects. In an interactive twist, movie patrons were given a cardboard “Magic Mystic Mask” with built-in 3—D glasses they could put on whenever they heard a character tell Barnes to “Put the mask on— now!” Each of the three 3—D “trip” sequences, written and designed by veteran editor and montage designer Slavko Vorkapich (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), aren’t shy about hurling all manner of fireballs, snakes and sacrificial knives at the audience.
Even though the 3—D trend had died out in Hollywood five or six years earlier, The Mask was picked up by Warner Bros. and became the first Canadian feature film to be distributed across North America by a major studio. It opened to generally positive reviews and average box office just in time for Halloween, 1961. Today, The Mask has achieved a minor cult film status and is considered “one of the great gimmick films” by leading B-film resource The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.
Insanity—inducing masks and lethal burgers may not have made much of an initial impression with Canadian audiences or critics, but they didn’t go completely unnoticed. A few years after The Mask hit New York City theatres, an NFB-produced English feature made a big impression at the city’s 1964 film festival. Initially written off as a failure by Canadian critics, Nobody Waved Good-Bye was later reclaimed and hailed as not only the birth of English-Canadian cinema but also a predecessor to the “loser” cinema of Goin’ down the Road and Paperback Hero. Although it appeared that Nobody was fresh and original, to Roffman and Furie the theme of a young man trying to run away from the frustrations of his middle-class life might have seemed oddly familiar.
While there is no doubt that the sensationalistic thrills of films like The Ivy League Killers and The Mask challenge contemporary views of our national cinema— even in the late 1950s they had to contend with accusations of selling out, since it was believed they only sought to emulate Hollywood films—it was the early success and failures of Sidney J. Furie, Julian Roffman and William Davidson that proved feature filmmaking was a viable cultural industry. They were the first of a new generation of filmmakers who helped English—Canada reclaim its future by trading the snowy pass and the Mountie’s redcoat for a basement coffee house and a beat-up leather jacket.
Paul Corupe is a Toronto-based writer and editor as well the creator of the Canadian film Web site: www.canuxploitation.com.
TAKE ONE
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