It's Difficult NOT To Enjoy This Movie

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Historically important as the first official Canadian made horror film, and in 3-D no less, "The Mask" offers up a pretty damn creepy head trip. It's never as compelling outside of its nightmare / 3-D sequences, but it's nicely atmospheric and definitely very well acted. The visuals by Slavko Vorkapich (who scripted and designed the major set pieces) are most compelling, and could easily freak some people out.Allan Barnes (handsome Paul Stevens) is a psychiatrist with a crazed patient named Michael Radin (Martin Lavut). Michael had been messing around with a mask which he "borrowed" from a museum, and putting it on has been driving Michael mad...and homicidal. Michael commits suicide, but before doing so, mails the mask to his shrink, and the good doctor finds himself just as fascinated by and obsessed with the thing when HE starts trying it on. Allans' concerned fiancée Pam (lovely Claudette Nevins) and his associate, Professor Quincey (Norman Ettlinger) worry about his sanity and potential for violence.This is good fun, even if the story is pretty familiar overall. At least, this story does its job of setting up those set pieces, which just aren't the same when viewed in 2-D. That mask itself is pretty cool, whether or not somebody is wearing it. The film is produced & directed by Julian Roffman (who also produced "The Pyx", which is worth seeing), who only made a handful of films during his life and career, and is solidly acted by a cast that also includes Bill Walker as a dedicated detective, and Anne Collings as Allans' secretary.The movie does put forth that idea that masks like this merely channel a persons' own actual thoughts and personality, much the same way that the same named Jim Carrey fantasy of 1994 did.Seven out of 10.

I saw this once as a kid on television. They usually showed like a 3-d movie once a year and it was usually this one with a killer monkey this particular year they put this movie on about a mask and its super freak out nightmare visions. This one was the better of the two as far as the 3-d effects as the monkey one had only a couple of scenes where one would even notice the effects. This one though had lots of them in the nightmare world when the mask was put on. However, the non nightmare sequences were rather boring and seemed to go on forever. Granted, that really made the build up when he was about to put on the mask even better! The story has some sort of doctor, a psychiatrist I think, treating a guy who has gone killer. The guy blames the mask so the doctor tries it on and he is taken to a strange place full of very big elaborate scenes, scenes that really showcase the 3-d effect. In the regular world though there was virtually nothing going on and it was very slow, made you want to scream at the doctor to put on that mask!

I cant help but think perhaps if i was a bit older, I would have appreciated this movie more..but as it goes, I was only six. My brothers went to the movies earlier that year you see to watch the wonderful and enlightening Born Free..I wanted to see that. But no..by the time I got to go to the movies it wasn't playing in our neighborhood any longer and this was. The Mask..yikes. This is the very first movie i ever saw in the theater and well lets just say it was pretty confusing and scary. I do remember some parts of it being very colorful..:). Anyway, this memory has haunted me for all these years so I was bound and determined to find it and watch it again. Thanks to ebay and the US postal service, I should have this lovely film within a couple of weeks maybe even sooner, so that i can pop open a soda and grab a bowl of popcorn and reminisce..now if I can only find some 3D glasses I will be all set....

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.