Wonderful Movie

Awesome Movie

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Director Arne Mattsson is most famous for his 1958 thriller "Mannequin in Red" which allegedly was a role-model movie for the giallo that emerged from Italy during the sixties. Being a gigantic fan of gialli, I really wanted to watch "Mannequin in Red" but – alas – I only found this "Mask of Murder" instead. The first thing that becomes quite obvious here is that Mattsson was quite a lazy and patriotic Swede… The events are supposed to take place in a winterly Canadian village, but everyone drives around in Volvo cars with Swedish license places and I'm pretty sure I also spotted a couple of Swedish signposts as well. The only thing missing to make it abundantly clear that filming took place in Sweden is an Ikea warehouse in the background or guest appearances from the ABBA band members! Secondly, I presume this movie is supposed to be a whodunit/mystery thriller, yet the identity of the killer as well as his motivations are pretty obvious straight from the first murder, so all that remains is a goofy giallo-lite flick with the almighty Christopher Lee in yet another inferior supportive role. The police are hunting down a misogynist and masked killer who slices the throats of his female victims with a razor. He's a dumb killer, I may add, because he allows himself to get caught rather easily. During the arrest, Lt. Bob McLaine shoots the suspect much against the will of his superior Chief Lt. Jonathan Rich (Lee) who also gets injured during the conflict. By the way, did you know the Canadian police use machine guns?!? A few days later, Lt. McLaine painfully discovers that his wife Maria lies about going on holiday to Bermuda in order to spend time with her lover – and her husband's colleague – Ray Cooper. Poor Bob emotionally cracks and at the same time the misogynous killer with his hideous mask and razor starts murdering again. Oh gee, I wonder who he is! The regretful thing about "Mask of Murder" is that plot and the denouement hold quite a lot of potential, so in case Arne Mattsson and his crew would have bothered to uphold the mystery and create suspense just a little bit more, this honestly could have been a nice 80s horror sleeper. Now "Mask of Murder" mainly comes across as a lazy effort. Even the killer's mask is an uninspired and ugly piece of scenery in spite of its significant role in the plot. Was it that hard to come up with a slightly more creative mask?

Certainly among Swedish director Mattsson's best-known work is the "Giallo" precursor MANNEQUIN IN RED (1958); with this in mind, the film under review can be seen as his contribution to the then-prevalent (albeit much-maligned) "Slasher" subgenre. While he should be commended for not following much of the established trappings (if anything, the teenagers who usually make up the victims' list barely feature here) and for managing to attract a serviceable cast (Rod Taylor, Valerie Perrine and Christopher Lee, who – as with the recently-viewed ALBINO {1976} – plays the ineffectual Police Chief), the results are still far from memorable and even downright inept at times.The main problem with the script is that it tries too hard to lend psychological depth to the narrative when its outcome is fairly obvious and predictable from the start. Cop Taylor discovers wife Perrine is having an affair with his closest colleague at the same time as he is investigating a spate of throat-slashings. But since the murders, following the same modus operandi, resume soon after Taylor's execution of the serial killer and Taylor himself had been the last to handle the latter's 'kit' (razor and featureless mask – at one point, the latter is amusingly stated that it makes the wearer look like Yul Brynner; if anything, it actually reminded me of the assailant of THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN {1976}!), there is little doubt as to the identity of the second murderer, given the lawman's state of mind! This effectively dilutes the proceedings of both tension and interest, especially since our anti-hero goes on about his Police business regardless, i.e. probing locations and witnesses for possible clues to the killings he is himself clearly responsible for, and even adding further red herrings in the unconnected razor assault on a drug-dealing barber committed by a gangland collector! Alas, all the satirical socio- political points brilliantly made by Elio Petri via an exact same scenario in the Oscar-winning INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (1970) are completely bypassed here in favour of the lowest common denominator (read gratuitous softcore nudity). That said, we are still spoon-fed the protagonist's having the cloud of suspicion over himself: he happens to have a similar razor as the murder weapon and one of the people he questions actually says that the current perpetrator has a similar build as his…and, all the while, the bed-ridden Lee (having been shot by the first slasher before being machine-gunned by an already- unbalanced Taylor) contemplates whether the dead man's spirit could have found a new 'vessel' in order to continue his apparently motiveless killing spree (but which Taylor perversely suggests might be brought on by sexual inadequacy)!The snowy backdrop (supposedly Canada but really Uppsala, Sweden – that is to say, Ingmar Bergman's birthplace!) is undeniably attractive and unusual for this type of fare; however, this is continuously undercut by the kitschy 1980s fashions and settings (including obligatory and awfully-scored disco-bar and strip-joint sequences) and some hilariously overstated moments (notably Taylor and Lee's reactions at, respectively, his wife's infidelity – captured from a distance via binoculars – and his friend's guilt – by the symbolic throat-slashing of "Playboy" centrefolds conveniently stashed in a drawer of his work-desk!).The finale, then, emits a false air of cynicism by not only having Taylor frame his duplicitous pal for the murders (he foolishly re-enacts the slaying of a woman witnessed by her young son who, of course, exclaims "That's him!" upon seeing the masked assailant) but by the fact that he is allowed to get away with it (though assured by his superior that he is on to him)! For the record, Lee would re-unite with Mattsson on the director's subsequent effort, i.e. THE GIRL (1986), which also happens to be my next entry in the ongoing tribute I am paying to the recently-deceased Horror icon (incidentally, Rod Taylor also passed away earlier this year – so I got to watch MASK OF MURDER for his sake as well)

I'll be totally honest with you: No, it's not the best film in the World. Yes the music score is really annoying. Yes the whole visual aspect is pretty colorless and dull, not to mention the badly made gore sequences. But for my part, I liked seeing the trio of actors (Taylor/Perrine/Lee) make their best and save it from being a total mess. Which is quite remarkable considering the poor premise of this would-be slasher movie. Sure it's not a great thriller, but it's still a decent time-passing show. I also liked its flaws amazingly enough: it's SO MUCH an 80s film, you could swear going back in time just by viewing it. Watch it for the actors if anything.

Being a big fan of thrillers in general, I actually went into this film with some expectations in spite of all the bad things I'd heard about it; and that was a mistake as Mask of Murder, while perhaps not quite as bad as I'd heard, is definitely a bad film that doesn't make the best of its positive elements. The plot is actually a decent base for a film, in spite of not being very original, and focuses on a serial killer who butchers women. The main bulk of the plot focuses on an investigation into the killings. The film kind of feels something like an inept Giallo as we have several Giallo trademarks without much intrigue to string it all together. The reason why, I would assume, many people tune into this film is almost certainly down to the fact that Christopher Lee is billed as the main star; but this is actually a bit of a rip off as he doesn't have a great deal of screen time and he isn't put to very good use in the time he does have. The killer himself fails to generate a great deal of intrigue and the way that the investigation plays out is largely laughable (and not in good way). Director Arne Mattsson fails to give the film much in the way of atmosphere and overall it's a largely lacklustre affair. Still, at least the film does have a plot and it never becomes completely boring - though that might owe more to the fact that it isn't very long rather than the execution.