1311-The Mask

Film Year:  1961

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Julian Roffman

Starring:  Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker

MST Season:  13

Host:  Jonah

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Psychiatrist Dr. Allan Barnes receives news that one of his patients has committed suicide, who had been claiming to be having nightmares about death, blaming these nightmares on a mysterious tribal mask.  Dr. Barnes then finds that his patient has sent him a package containing the mask.  Barnes finds himself drawn to this mask and eventually puts it on...

Oh wait, wrong movie.

So, it turns out that this mask brings the evil in one's soul to the surface and Barnes begins seeing psychedelic imagery of death whenever he wears the mask.  Eventually he finds he is unable to stop putting on the mask, becoming addicted to it like a drug.  But the more he wears it, the more he begins to crave taking another person's life.  Eventually he is all...

According to the notes on the Kino 3D Blu-ray of this movie, The Mask is said to be the first horror movie filmed in Canada (I have no clue if this is true or not).  Wikipedia notes it as one of Canada's biggest marketing pushes in the US at the time, leaning heavily on the film's 3D novelty.  The entire film wasn't in 3D, mind you, but rather all of the scenes in which Dr. Barnes puts on the titular mask and sees a bunch of images of people with melted faces and skulls in sequences that are like Mario Bava meets Carnival of Souls.  People were signaled to "PUT THE MASK ON" by hearing that repeated line of dialogue in the film and were supposed to put these cute things on their faces:

These sequences are the movie's highlights, as they are pretty effectively spooky and will effectively burn their psychedelic imagery into a viewer's brain.  There are three sequences in total and each is as memorable as the last.  If the rest of the movie were as memorable, this movie would have it made.

I'd hesitate to call The Mask a bad movie, because when it's hitting, the movie is on fire.  The issue that becomes problematic with it is its stilted script.  Barnes is a dull character to center the film around, and while the addictive nature of the film is interesting, the corruption of his soul isn't.  He turns from okay guy to psychopath fairly quickly in the narrative which causes the movie to peak early with few places to go.  It tries to create some tension between him and his fiancé, and there is an interesting note in the climax where he tries to put the mask on her face and it doesn't work on her, implying he's either insane or she has no evil in her soul.

Other tension is at work with Barnes relationship with supporting characters, including a secretary who is attracted to him and a detective who is investigating his patient's death.  The former has a pretty poor story arc in the film, as she's almost a non-entity in it then suddenly is in love with him as if the audience should have known all along.  He then nearly chokes her to death and she still decides to be alone with him in that aftermath, where he again tries to kill her and she's like "WHAT?"  As for the latter, I get why his character is necessary in the narrative, but his motivation is often all over the map.  Most of the time he's butting in for practically no reason at all and the movie writes it off as "a hunch."  He's a very assumptive detective that seems to care little for evidence.

The Mask is half of a great movie and half a dull one.  If it worked on its own humanity element, then maybe the element of man's "evil nature" would be more powerful.  Instead, it just feels a bit like an engine that can't stop sputtering that roars to life in five-minute intervals.  It's a cool movie nonetheless, it just doesn't hit the high it aims for.

The Episode

To hell with Avatar:  The Way of Whatever, this is the 3D event of the year!

The Mask was selected to be the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 Halloween Special, which might be stretching it a bit as we've done horror movies like this in the past, but they're correct in saying we've never had an episode that is strictly Halloween centric.  We've had several Christmas specials and we've had a Thanksgiving special, but nothing directly Halloween themed.  It's also the first MST episode released in 3D*, with a movie that was made with 3D sequences to suit the format.  It's not MST's first 3D movie though, as both Robot Monster and Revenge of the Creature were originally released in the format.  Also, the next movie featured, The Bubble, was released in 3D as well.

*Of note, the episode isn't entirely in 3D.  The Mask was originally released as a partially 3D movie and the episode reflects that, presenting only those sequences in 3D and the rest in plain ol' 2D.  The host segments of the episode are also mostly 2D, but they give us a treat by presenting the entire closing segment in 3D, including a fun 3D door sequence out of the theater.

So, let's unpack this 3D gimmick.  Is it worth the effort?  Well, it could have been worse.  Here's the deal, 3D can easily be a hit and miss experience (often due to how much effort is put into it, as post-Avatar 3D post-conversions in 2010 proved).  Anaglyph 3D, like this episode was released as, is easy to get angry at, because even if it's good it will kill your retinas.  This makes the selection of The Mask for this episode seem pretty smart, because it allows you a break from the 3D to let your eyes rest.  As for the 3D quality, some shots are better than others.  The 3D is at its best when there are large sets to show off, giving scale for the format.  If it's just a face onscreen, it looks flat.  Things jutting out at the screen do successfully pop out, so that's a success.  I was the most impressed with the 3D during the final host segment, which is much smoother than the 3D in the movie and is very consistent looking.  It kind of made me think not filming the entire episode for 3D is a missed opportunity.  But hey, let's be optimistic and say one day maybe they'll make another 3D episode.

The episode is also available in a 2D option.  So, if you just don't care, you can just skip all of this and are pissed at me for not talking about the episode itself.

The Mask is a pretty solid episode, though I'm going to have pause about it because of another technical detail about it:  The sound mix.  Overall, I found the mixing of the season to be excellent.  Several of the films shown have benefited from the series tinkering with the volume; Demon Squad had a barely intelligible mix that made the film hard to listen to that was raised up for the MST episode, while Batwoman had an aggressively bad dub that was softened in its episode.  There has also been some mostly good (but still noticeable) work on dubbing Kelsey Ann Brady as Crow into episodes in post.  The Mask is probably the first bungle, as the volume on the film is so low that following the episode becomes a chore.  I definitely needed a second viewing on this film to work an opinion on the riffing.

*Note:  The aftershow livestream notes that I wasn't the only person complaining about this.  Matt McGinnis and Joel Hodgson say they're going to tinker with the sound mix and put up a better version of the episode by the time the downloadable version is released next week.  Stay tuned, I might update this review when that happens.

But while that threatens to make The Mask feel worse than it is, the comedy does bring joy, especially if you're in a Halloween mood.  There are a lot of references to horror movies littered about, including Halloween III ("Seven more days till Halloween, Silver Shamrock!") and Return of the Living Dead ("If you want to party, it's party time!").  Working in this movie's favor is that there are long stretches of pantomime and sequences without dialogue, which means there is a lot of room for jokes.  Creativity is abundant during the mask scenes, which are so unique in MST3K history that it genuinely feels like uncharted territory.  Underneath that, the episode can fall a bit mixed.  Riffs tended to be a bit goofy and playful, but sometimes the joke feels a bit unearned.  Crow wording out the title "The Mask" to the tune of the Pink Panther theme is cute, but it doesn't really hit.  The detective character has a lot of references to Frasier thrown in his direction and I don't really understand why (do they think he looks like Kelsey Grammer?  Because he really doesn't).  The zingers of the episode aren't really of the "Throw your head back and laugh" variety, as I find myself thinking back to cute little punchlines like the lady lead opening the door for the homicide detective and Tom Servo asking for her "Wait, was I murdered?"  I had a good time watching this episode, but the biggest laugh I had came early on, as a woman is killed in the opening scene, causing Servo to comment "Avenge me, True Crime podcast."

But hey, at least they kept restrained on the Jim Carrey movie references.  And they kept the Son of the Mask references to a respectable zero.

The episode also keeps the horror movie vibes in the host segments, including a rather fun song called Monster RSVP, where Jonah and the Bots have sent out Halloween Party invitations to various movie monsters and read out all of their reasons for not attending.  The final 3D segment is a lot of fun, as Jonah tries to pay off the 3D gimmick of the episode but finds his plans usurped by the giant mask head from the movie, who uses 3D better than he does.  Jonah and the Bots also show off their Halloween costumes, as Jonah is dressed as Tom Adkins, Servo as Pinhead, Crow as Crow, and Max as "Mad Max Headroom," and Rebecca Hanson has a fun role as the movie's landlady in the same segment.  The Invention Exchange sees Jonah showing off roundtable of Halloween masks while Kinga and Max have specialized Ouija boards.

I liked The Mask but didn't love it.  The 3D gimmick was a fun little experiment, though I'm not certain it amounted to anything worth hyping up the way they did.  I might just stick to 2D viewings for this one and keep the Kingavision glasses as a memorabilia item.  I had a good time watching it and that's exactly what I hope for, and I for one welcome black and white films back to the series with open arms.

⭐⭐⭐

Good

The Livestream

In one of our longest aftershows, our livestream event is a full-blown costume party with a bunch of hosts and a couple of GPCs.  Matt McGinnis is back as the Master of Ceremonies, and he is dressed as Perico, the beloved comic relief from Santo in The Treasure of Dracula.  From there he introduces Jonah Ray (who is dressed as Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters), Joel Hodgson (Jimmy Buffet Fan), Rebecca Hansen ("Subaru Forrester"), Yvonne Freese (Beaker from the Muppets), and Emily Marsh (Muriel from Courage the Cowardly Dog).  Everyone looks great, with special props to Jonah's helmet, Emily's glasses, and Yvonne for just going the full nine yards.

They get into a bit of discussion about their Halloween traditions, of which Emily and Matt relate their sad tales of when people told them they were too old to be Trick or Treating in high school (nuts to that, I say, because you're never too old for candy).  They also unveil a lot of behind the scenes photos from filming the episode, the final segment in particular, showing off Yvonne with the skull puppet and her incredible screaming take.

The bulk of this livestream is devoted to showing off the winners of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Costume Contest, as they throw up a bunch of cool photos of fans in their wild cosplay and read off which ones they've chosen as the best and which ones were voted by the fans to be the best.  There is a little disappointment in that often the crew-chosen and fan-chosen costumes would be the exact same one which robs us of diverse winners, but sometimes the costumes are just that good.  While I'm not going to read off every single winner, some of my favorites included a Steampunk Joel Robinson, a young lady's awesome Tom Servo costume, a little girl's adorable Kinga Forrester coat, and a really creative recreation of the opening title host segment in Cave Dwellers.  I definitely agree with the top prize highlight, which went to a woman named "Turbo" who turned herself into the Gizmoplex itself!  She formed the Kingadome into a skirt, while coming up with some wildly creative ways to MST up the upper half of her body, including turning her arm into a functional GPC.  Really awesome work, and a great job to everyone who put the effort into submitting into this.  All of this is much more than I could have done.  I can barely type words on a computer screen and call it a "review."

That's about all to be said about this livestream, which was girthy but because of the amount of time needed to cover each subject.  There is no Q&A or the like because they just don't have time for one.  But it's hard to complain about something so trivial when we get to see photos of MSTies celebrating the show they love.