Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty one horror thriller The Mask, coming straight from Canada
Speaker 3: and our third film in our three Weeks of three
Speaker 3: D series. So this is a three D horror movie,
Speaker 3: smelling like poutine, bringing some pretty good cinematography overall, and
Speaker 3: also I think quite strong three D effect sequences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is a film. I mean, given some
Speaker 2: of the details about it, you know that it's the
Speaker 2: first full length Canadian three D picture and apparently the
Speaker 2: first feature length Canadian horror film, and that this is
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one we're talking about here. I think you
Speaker 2: would be reasonable to expect something a lot more dash
Speaker 2: than what we get with The Mask. I feel like
Speaker 2: there's a lot of effort that went into this one,
Speaker 2: and you can you can see the results of that effort.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be fun to to discuss this one because
Speaker 2: it's still at the heart a gimmick picture. It is
Speaker 2: very much a three D picture that embraces the gimmick
Speaker 2: that even gets a little silly with it at times,
Speaker 2: and has that baked into the overall structure of the film,
Speaker 2: and yet it's it's not dependent on the gimmick for
Speaker 2: your cinematic enjoyment.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say this goes. This fits somewhere in between
Speaker 3: Treasure of the Four Crowns and House of Wax. So
Speaker 3: Treasure of the Four Crowns was the most three D
Speaker 3: movie we have ever seen. At least half of the
Speaker 3: runtime is three D gags, and the three D gags
Speaker 3: don't make any sense at all. In two D. It's
Speaker 3: just pointless, just kind of stuff flying at the camera,
Speaker 3: like people poking a broom handle or extending an antenna
Speaker 3: towards your face. You know, it's three D for three
Speaker 3: d's sake, and it doesn't really work very well without it,
Speaker 3: though it is a very fun, campy ride. House of Wax,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, was a movie that I thought
Speaker 3: worked entirely without the three D effects at all. In fact,
Speaker 3: you could watch it and not even know it was
Speaker 3: a three D film, though we weren't able to watch
Speaker 3: it in three D. I'm sure if you saw it
Speaker 3: in three D that would add another layer of sort
Speaker 3: of gimmicky enjoyment. This one fits somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's quite on the standalone level of
Speaker 3: House of Wax, but it mostly works as a two
Speaker 3: D movie, and this is one where we actually did
Speaker 3: get to watch it with the three D effects via
Speaker 3: some glasses. Maybe Rob, you can explain the circumstances here
Speaker 3: with some glasses, and you know what, once you have
Speaker 3: the glasses on, the dream freak out sequences are even
Speaker 3: more interesting and impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the situation with the mask is that
Speaker 2: it's not like our other two picks for our three
Speaker 2: D tree. Here, it's not a situation where the entire
Speaker 2: picture is in three D. Only certain sequences are in
Speaker 2: three D, and this is of course just I think
Speaker 2: gimmick excellence. Here. There's a magic mask in the movie.
Speaker 2: When people put on the magic mask, they have these
Speaker 2: intense vision quest sequences, these dream sequences, these psychedelic sequences,
Speaker 2: and when the character puts on the mask, you the audience,
Speaker 2: put on your three D mask and then you get
Speaker 2: to experience this sequence in three dimensions, which I think
Speaker 2: is pretty clever, but it also means that, especially on me,
Speaker 2: this was a Chinoclassics Blu Ray that came out of
Speaker 2: the movie. I believe that the Blu ray has a
Speaker 2: three D version of it if you have all the
Speaker 2: three D equipment to run modern three D on your
Speaker 2: three D Blu ray and your three D TV and
Speaker 2: with your three D glasses. But if you're two D
Speaker 2: people like us, you can watch the movie in two D.
Speaker 2: And then one of the extras on the disc is
Speaker 2: you can watch those sequences. It's like something like twenty
Speaker 2: something minutes total. You can watch all those sequences in
Speaker 2: three D with the traditional red and blue three D glasses.
Speaker 2: So we rented this one from Videodrome here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Atlanta's only a video store. Go there if you have
Speaker 2: a chance. It's a great place. It's like a temple
Speaker 2: to cinema. But when we rented it, they rooted around
Speaker 2: in this kind of tub of like paper cardboard three
Speaker 2: D glasses and gave us several. They weren't sure exactly
Speaker 2: which ones will work, so they're like, here, take four
Speaker 2: of them, see what works for you. And it was
Speaker 2: an interesting selection of glasses.
Speaker 3: I used the three D glasses from Saw four. What
Speaker 3: did you use?
Speaker 2: I think I used them as well. Those maybe the
Speaker 2: ones I had to turn inside out to get them
Speaker 2: to work, because you have to have the right color
Speaker 2: over the correct eye in order for things to sink right.
Speaker 2: But it was cool. It was cool getting to watch
Speaker 2: these altered state sequences in three dimensions. I think my
Speaker 2: wife did laugh at me when she walked been and
Speaker 2: saw me setting in the middle of our living room
Speaker 2: floor in the middle of the day with these contraptions
Speaker 2: on watching this sequence, and for me personally, I quickly
Speaker 2: felt it was weird. It was intense, and it started
Speaker 2: giving me a headache, which seems appropriate when you're engaging
Speaker 2: in this experience of a character trying on a cursed
Speaker 2: ancient mask.
Speaker 3: So before we got started, you were saying, Rob that
Speaker 3: really it's the same concept as the Jim Carrey movie
Speaker 3: The Mask. It's not quite, but it's pretty close. One
Speaker 3: thing you'd have to invert is that the hero of
Speaker 3: the movie is the Ben Stein character, the psychiatrist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if in Jim Carrey's The Mask, what if
Speaker 2: it didn't turn him into a fun, loving, over the
Speaker 2: top zoot suit wearing a cartoon character. What if it
Speaker 2: just made him kill people? Then that's what you have
Speaker 2: in the mask.
Speaker 3: Now that's not quite fair. It doesn't just make him
Speaker 3: want to kill people. It also makes him want to
Speaker 3: understand science. He wants to keep putting the mask on
Speaker 3: because he's like, think of the scientific value that will
Speaker 3: come from me putting the mask on. I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like it's never quite clear what exactly discovery is waiting
Speaker 3: for him on the other side of the mask experience,
Speaker 3: but clearly he thinks that this will reveal something about
Speaker 3: nature and human nature.
Speaker 2: And I love that. I think this a great element.
Speaker 2: I think the one thing that's missing from this cocktail
Speaker 2: is sort of that to think to David Cronenberg's The
Speaker 2: Fly is a great example of this. That's a movie
Speaker 2: where you have somebody toying with some sort of technology
Speaker 2: or discovery or revelation, thinking they can control it, thinking
Speaker 2: that they can stay on top of it, thinking that
Speaker 2: they can retrieve something from that experience, but then things
Speaker 2: go too far and they're consumed by it. And it's
Speaker 2: that middle ground that maybe in retrospect could have been
Speaker 2: a little more defined in this picture, that period where
Speaker 2: he thinks he's in control of it, where he thinks
Speaker 2: he's making a breakthrough, but in reality, he's just being
Speaker 2: pulled closer to the void.
Speaker 3: I made a comment in our notes exactly to that effect.
Speaker 3: I was expecting a more gradual ramp up to mask
Speaker 3: madness in this film, but instead it's just like there
Speaker 3: is one taste of the mask and that is all
Speaker 3: it takes before you are a full blown mask maniac
Speaker 3: and there's no returning.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's kind of a Beatnick drug movie. Beatnick
Speaker 2: Junkie Vibe did this where they get one taste of
Speaker 2: the honey and then there's no stopping them. They're just
Speaker 2: completely mad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a reefer madness. One puff and now you're
Speaker 3: playing the piano at ten time speed. Yeah, okay, we
Speaker 3: ready for the elevator pitch.
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: Doctor Alan Barnes has a very troubled patient, a young
Speaker 3: man who says his mind is filled with nightmares created
Speaker 3: by an ancient mask. When the mask comes into the
Speaker 3: possession of doctor Barnes himself, he has to decide whether
Speaker 3: he will shrink away in Cowardice or whether he will.
Speaker 2: Ha ha. All right, I think that sums it up.
Speaker 2: But let's go ahead and hear the wonderful audio to
Speaker 2: the trailer in full. This is a good one. This one. Oh,
Speaker 2: you'll get some taste in this trailer of things we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about here in a minute. Quote Bomb
Speaker 2: mass On now, Quote Bomb mass On now.
Speaker 5: No, ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing wrong with the projection.
Speaker 5: But you can't share the shock until you have the
Speaker 5: miracle movie mask. At showings of this motion picture, each
Speaker 5: patron will receive his own miracle movie mask. Then, but
Speaker 5: let's watch.
Speaker 3: The scene again.
Speaker 5: Then you will lift your mask as he lifts his,
Speaker 5: and you will look through it with him, into the
Speaker 5: weirdest nightmare world that man has ever dreamed, or the
Speaker 5: screen has ever dared show the new realm of horror
Speaker 5: that can only be seen through the mask. You to
Speaker 5: tell you more is the supreme authority and all things weird.
Speaker 5: Initiative is strange and mysterious. The world's greatest colosser and
Speaker 5: collector of masks, mister Jim Moran.
Speaker 4: I have seen wonders. I've traveled to the remotest corners
Speaker 4: of the globe, to dead cities, through savage jungles, to
Speaker 4: the inner sanctums of esoteric cults, the temples of exotic rituals,
Speaker 4: to tombs and caverns and palaces. The result the most
Speaker 4: comprehensive collection of masks in the world summer works of art.
Speaker 4: Some are astounding and horrifying. But nowhere in all my
Speaker 4: travels have I found a mask so absolutely remarkable as
Speaker 4: this mask, the Miracle Movie Fright Mask, the mask that
Speaker 4: you will be invited to put on when you see
Speaker 4: the motion picture called the Mask. This is the mask
Speaker 4: that will open your eyes to such things as man
Speaker 4: has never dared imagine, the mask that will make you
Speaker 4: part of the sensations of the most staggering experience of
Speaker 4: your life.
Speaker 3: But be warned, the.
Speaker 4: Things that you will see when you put on this
Speaker 4: mask will surely take you to the very limits of
Speaker 4: your nerves and to the very boundary line of sanity.
Speaker 2: All right again, Keinoclassics put out an excellent blu ray
Speaker 2: of the film several years ago. It features both three
Speaker 2: D for three D players and a two D cut
Speaker 2: which is also just beautifully restored. This is a great
Speaker 2: looking black and white picture. The disc again also features
Speaker 2: red blue, three D and a glyph cuts of the
Speaker 2: three D sequences that you can check out with glasses
Speaker 2: classes sold separately, so you'll have to, you know, find
Speaker 2: your own bucket of old cardboard three D glasses to
Speaker 2: root around in. Maybe that's a bucket or tub you
Speaker 2: have in your house. And I could be mistaken on this,
Speaker 2: but it looks like, according to the letterbox, looks like
Speaker 2: you can stream this movie at metrograph dot com. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure what metrograph dot com is, some sort of
Speaker 2: a theater company or something, but those seem to be
Speaker 2: the main two ways to watch the film these days.
Speaker 2: Though I was reading I was reading in one of
Speaker 2: the Psychotronic Guides from Michael Weldon, and he'd pointed out that,
Speaker 2: you know, it came out, maybe it wasn't that big
Speaker 2: of a hit at the time, but he said that
Speaker 2: they kept bringing it back to theaters. So it sounds
Speaker 2: like for a while at least, it was regularly brought
Speaker 2: back just because it was so gimmicky, you know, with
Speaker 2: the three D it was kind of you know, maybe
Speaker 2: a certain level of income was guaranteed from this film
Speaker 2: when you showed it. So anyway, it'd be interesting to
Speaker 2: hear from anyone out there, especially some of our more
Speaker 2: experienced theater going crowd, if you've ever seen a three
Speaker 2: D viewing of The Mask in the theater. All right, well,
Speaker 2: let's jump into the connections here the people who brought
Speaker 2: The Mask to life. We're going to start at the
Speaker 2: top with the director and producer Julian Roffman, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen through the year two thousand. Roffman was a
Speaker 2: Canadian film producer and director who came up through the
Speaker 2: National Film Board of Canada. If you look him up
Speaker 2: on NFB dot ca A, you can see a couple
Speaker 2: of his earlier short films that he did, and apparently
Speaker 2: he's somewhat of an underappreciated figure in the birth of
Speaker 2: the Canadian film industry. Again. This film was Canada's first
Speaker 2: three D full length feature and its first full length
Speaker 2: horror film and one that was released internationally through Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: It was his second attempt at creating a film that
Speaker 2: could enjoy this kind of breakout success potentially internationally, the
Speaker 2: first being The Bloody Brood from nineteen fifty nine. No
Speaker 2: connection to Cronenberg's The Brew. This was a bet Nick
Speaker 2: crime movie with Peter Falk in it. You can really
Speaker 2: see how much effort went into the mass though some
Speaker 2: of the names and talents that were about to discuss
Speaker 2: that he brought in to help realize this vision. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think it was really I don't get the
Speaker 2: impression that it was as much of a treasure of
Speaker 2: the four Crown situation where they're like, let's three D up,
Speaker 2: we got, we gotta get in there, we got we
Speaker 2: gotta give them all the three D before they know
Speaker 2: it hit them, you know, just keep keep it coming
Speaker 2: at the audience, before they realized that the rest of
Speaker 2: the picture is not really all that wealth. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of thought went into the mask. According to
Speaker 2: Rothman's son, he even his father even contacted Timothy Leary
Speaker 2: for a little inside into sort of like psychedelic experience,
Speaker 2: though it is notable that this would have been pretty
Speaker 2: early in Leary's days as a psychedelic researcher. This would
Speaker 2: have been before the Concord prison experiment if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 2: But still, I mean, no reason to doubt this. Rothman
Speaker 2: didn't direct again after this, but he went on to
Speaker 2: produce a handful of films, including a nineteen sixty five
Speaker 2: techno spy movie called Spy in Your Eye that I
Speaker 2: believe involves like somebody's eye being replaced with a camera
Speaker 2: and without them realizing it, or or some sort of implant,
Speaker 2: So sounds kind of interesting. Also in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: a cult movie titled The Pie, The Peaks, I'm not
Speaker 2: Sure the Pyx starring Karen Black and Christopher Plummer, and
Speaker 2: an exciting, at least to me sounding techno thriller called
Speaker 2: The Glow starring John Saxon, Rosie Greer, and Joanna Cassidy. Basically,
Speaker 2: there's some sort of like power glove that lets you
Speaker 2: like super punch people, and John Saxon has one, Rosy
Speaker 2: Greer gets one, and they're on a collision course with
Speaker 2: their power gloves.
Speaker 3: Look at this poster. It's like it's got spikes on
Speaker 3: the knuckles. It's kind of a rollerball glove situation. And
Speaker 3: the person wearing it is dressed like the Black Knight
Speaker 3: from Monty Python.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, there's a really long trailer for this, one
Speaker 2: of those trailers that I think shows you pretty much everything,
Speaker 2: Like they get you right up there to the final fight.
Speaker 2: But that's ultimately what you're selling here, glove versus glove.
Speaker 2: So I may have left to look into that one
Speaker 2: in the future. Next time I need a John Saxon Head.
Speaker 2: When it comes to the script here, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: to understand the Roffman had a at a hand in
Speaker 2: almost every aspect of the film. But when it comes
Speaker 2: to credited writers on this, it's basically a trio of
Speaker 2: individuals who only worked on this film. Two of them
Speaker 2: were associate producers Frank Tobbs who lived nineteen twenty four
Speaker 2: through two thousand and three, Sandy Haver who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty five through nineteen eighty four, and Franklin Dellasert, who
Speaker 2: live well, we don't know. I don't have dates for him.
Speaker 2: This was his only film. But there's also a credit
Speaker 2: for Dream Sequences to Slavko Vorkopitch, who lived eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: four through nineteen seventy six. Now there are a couple
Speaker 2: of caveats in his credit here, but essentially though he's
Speaker 2: a very interesting guy. Basically, he was a Serbian born montagist.
Speaker 2: His specialty was montages, at times kind of surreal montages
Speaker 2: in films, particularly in the nineteen thirties, in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: and I think certainly a time when there was a
Speaker 2: lot more skill required and maybe a little a lot
Speaker 2: more vision to create something outside of cinematic norms. He
Speaker 2: worked in some pretty big pictures like Mister Smith Goes
Speaker 2: to Washington has one of his sequences, and he was
Speaker 2: brought in on the Mask to help bring these surreal
Speaker 2: sequences to life and to also bring ideas for what
Speaker 2: they might be. But apparently his ideas were both too involved.
Speaker 2: I think one of them reportedly called for hundreds of frogs,
Speaker 2: and also Roffman didn't think they felt visionary enough at
Speaker 2: the end of the day. So his credit remains on
Speaker 2: the picture though, But the Dream Sequences are said to
Speaker 2: be primarily the work of Roffman, apparently according to his son. Anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, put a lot of effort into to storyboarding
Speaker 2: these out, trying to figure out how to then do
Speaker 2: the things that they storyboarded, Like there are some snake
Speaker 2: sequences in this that they really had. He really had
Speaker 2: to sort of rack his brain to figure out how
Speaker 2: they were going to make them work on screen. So,
Speaker 2: at any rate, an interesting story.
Speaker 3: These would be the snakes jabbing in and out of
Speaker 3: the eye sockets of the skull. Yeah, yeah, that's funny,
Speaker 3: because I would say those are definitely not the highlight
Speaker 3: of the Dream sequences.
Speaker 2: No, those are the points where you can tell, you
Speaker 2: can see the struggle that was taking place. You know,
Speaker 2: they're not the worst fake snakes I've seen in a movie,
Speaker 2: but you know, in retrospect, they might have been better
Speaker 2: without those snakes, especially since there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things that work really well in these sequences, as we'll discuss. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, the cast doctor Alan Barnes, who already mentioned
Speaker 2: this is our main character. This is our mask researcher,
Speaker 2: played by Paul Stevens, who lived nineteen twenty one through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, American actor, perhaps more recognizable for supporting
Speaker 2: roles in nineteen seventies patent in nineteen seventy three's Battle
Speaker 2: for the Planet of the Apes, in which he plays
Speaker 2: one of the sort of humanoid mutant characters. I believe.
Speaker 2: He did a lot of TV, appearing on such shows
Speaker 2: as Gun Smoke and Mission Impossible. He also had second
Speaker 2: billing is Diogenes in the nineteen sixty five film Hercules
Speaker 2: and the Princess of Troy, starring Gordon Scott as Hirk
Speaker 2: and directed by the Band family patriarch Albert Band. Mmmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe we got to check that out. In the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm always up for a Hercules movie.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Paul Stevens I really dug him in this,
Speaker 2: so I that he does a fine job, and just
Speaker 2: visually he reminded me a lot of Martin Landau. He
Speaker 2: has that kind of like that kind of bill, that
Speaker 2: kind of expressive face and that kind of energy.
Speaker 3: I agree. I thought he was very good and he
Speaker 3: to me is sort of a cross between Martin Landau
Speaker 3: and Scott Bacula.
Speaker 2: All Right, we also have Claudette Nevins playing Pam Albright.
Speaker 2: She lived nineteen thirty seven through twenty twenty. Redheaded American actor.
Speaker 2: Now that you can tell that she has red hair
Speaker 2: in this, because it's black and white, it comes off
Speaker 2: more as brunette, I guess, just by virtue of the
Speaker 2: lack of color. But anyway, she had a long career
Speaker 2: on t screen, appearing in supporting roles in such big
Speaker 2: films as nineteen ninety one Sleeping with the Enemy, nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight star Trek Insurrection, and she also appeared in
Speaker 2: such genre films as the female wrestling movie starring Peter
Speaker 2: Falk All The Marbles from nineteen eighty one, and a
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven occult movie. This may have been a
Speaker 2: TV film, I'm not sure, titled The Possessed, which had
Speaker 2: a young Harrison Ford in it. On TV, she was
Speaker 2: also a Croft Super Show regular player and appeared on
Speaker 2: such shows as jag Melrose Plays Police Squad and Returned
Speaker 2: to the Planet of the Apes. This, however, was her
Speaker 2: first screen role. I thought she's pretty good though. I
Speaker 2: thought it was a pretty good performance.
Speaker 3: Agree again, you know, I thought Paul Stevens and Claudette
Speaker 3: Nevins both did rather well with a script that asks
Speaker 3: them to have stronger feelings in lines about a mask
Speaker 3: than would seem to make sense given their level of
Speaker 3: experience with the masks so far in the story. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, But ultimately, you know, this is kind
Speaker 2: of this is to go back to Cronenberg's The Fly.
Speaker 2: This is essentially the Geena Davis role. The person who
Speaker 2: has feelings for the main character who's being pulled into
Speaker 2: the madness of this obsession, and then ultimately is having
Speaker 2: to try and resist being pulled in as well into
Speaker 2: that obsession.
Speaker 3: Right. The voice of reason, the person who tells the
Speaker 3: mad scientist, like, you've got to stop this is taking
Speaker 3: control of you, except it takes control of him immediately
Speaker 3: in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. We also have Ann Collings playing Miss
Speaker 2: Goodrich slash woman in Nightmare. This would be one of
Speaker 2: the dream Vision sequence characters. She was born in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine. British born actor of TV and screen. She
Speaker 2: had a small part in The Bloody Brood, but also
Speaker 2: appeared in the nineteen seventy Rod Serling pen TV movie
Speaker 2: A Storm in Summer, starring Peter Eustonoff. Now this is
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one. It's a Canadian film, but we've still
Speaker 2: got to have a strong police presence and that. But
Speaker 2: we have in Lieutenant Dan Martin played by Bill Walker
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety five, a
Speaker 2: Canadian actor who did various CBC TV variety shows in
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties, along with some other credits.
Speaker 3: And your John Agar of today's film will be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy is the square jaw of justice. Ooh,
Speaker 2: Now we have a very interesting, short lived character in
Speaker 2: the film. The character's name is Michael Rayden R A
Speaker 2: D I N. Which I realize is an actual last name,
Speaker 2: but I also like it because in this film especially
Speaker 2: it has a certain cronenburgery of energy to it, Michael Raid.
Speaker 3: And yes, like many Cronenberg character names, it has a
Speaker 3: quality of it is a human's name, but it sounds
Speaker 3: sort of like a dangerous chemical product. You know, It's
Speaker 3: like Darryl Reviick or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is a certain danger to this character,
Speaker 2: for sure. Michael Rayden is played by Martin Levoute, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty four through twenty sixteen, a Canadian actor, writer,
Speaker 2: and director. Outside of this, his more noticeable acting roles
Speaker 2: are actually voiceover roles for such films as nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one's Heavy Metal and nineteen eighty three's Rock and Rule,
Speaker 2: both notable, especially heavy Metal, both notable eighties animated films
Speaker 2: aimed at a at a grown up audience for the
Speaker 2: most part, or like I guess, like teen and above should.
Speaker 3: We say over eighteen as opposed to grown up maturity
Speaker 3: level pending?
Speaker 2: Yeah, maturity level in question when we're talking about heavy metal.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love heavy metal, but you know.
Speaker 3: It applies to us also, Yes.
Speaker 2: So. Lavoot also appeared on the Canadian psychic TV show
Speaker 2: Seeing Things with Louis del Grand. We've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before. He's the guy who's head blows up
Speaker 2: in Scanners, and as a director, his credits are pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: He directed episodes of Fraggle Rock, the Eighties, Twilight Zone Revival,
Speaker 2: and Friday the Thirteenth, the series, which of course Cronenberg
Speaker 2: was also involved in. He wrote and directed the two
Speaker 2: thousand and six documentary Remembering Arthur, a biography of Canadian
Speaker 2: filmmaker Arthur lips It.
Speaker 3: You know, actually, I thought that Martin Levout was probably
Speaker 3: my favorite performance in the movie. And it's a smaller
Speaker 3: one because he dies early in the film, but he's
Speaker 3: got a few scenes and in them his presence is remarkable,
Speaker 3: very striking and unsettling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's strong and creepy, and it hits you
Speaker 2: rather early in the film. Like a lesser three D
Speaker 2: picture would be very quick to just bombard you with
Speaker 2: three D imagery. This film instead, like throws you into
Speaker 2: a terrifying scene that will relate in a bit with
Speaker 2: a very unsettling performance from this actor.
Speaker 3: He has a kind of Anthony Perkins quality. He's able
Speaker 3: to combine a look of innocence and helplessness and even
Speaker 3: placidity with nevertheless a strong but ambiguous aura of menace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's easy to imagine that Psycho may have
Speaker 2: had some influence on the ultimate form of this picture.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think the Anthony Perkins comparison is apt.
Speaker 2: All right. One more actor, sort of an actor of
Speaker 2: note in this picture, because he's not really a character
Speaker 2: in the film. He is there. You heard him in
Speaker 2: the trailer. He is the mask expert playing himself. Apparently
Speaker 2: Jim Moran, who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about this guy, but apparently he
Speaker 2: was considered for a time the master of the publicity stunt.
Speaker 2: He apparently made a career out of doing things like
Speaker 2: finding a needle in a haystack and other things, you know,
Speaker 2: making a big deal about some sort of a performance
Speaker 2: based stunt, especially in the thirties, forties, and fifties, and
Speaker 2: on more than one occasion he did one of these
Speaker 2: stunts as part of a movie promotion. Apparently this sort
Speaker 2: of thing was out of fashion by sixty one, but
Speaker 2: they brought him in for whatever reason. I don't know
Speaker 2: if this was through the filmmakers or if this is
Speaker 2: something where Warner Brothers was like, we want to we
Speaker 2: want to really push this. So we've got this guy.
Speaker 2: He's great, he was great back in the day. He
Speaker 2: can you know, he's a great promoter. Let's get him.
Speaker 2: Let's film him with the mask, introducing audiences to the mask,
Speaker 2: and then we can also shoot an additional sequence for
Speaker 2: the trailer.
Speaker 3: I thought this was the funniest and hammiest part of
Speaker 3: the movie, and it's right at the beginning. It's the
Speaker 3: first thing you see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is weird watching this film because it's like,
Speaker 2: you're here for the three D. You come in, here's
Speaker 2: this gimmicky introduction, and then you're gonna be thrown into
Speaker 2: a horrifying chase sequence. So yeah, it's it's a It
Speaker 2: really twists you around, all right. Finally, the music is
Speaker 2: very interesting in this film. At times it's it's more
Speaker 2: traditional late fifties early sixties thriller, but when it really
Speaker 2: wants to lay on the menace of the titular Mask
Speaker 2: or certainly immerse Us into these lengthy vision sequences, the
Speaker 2: score goes into experimental electronic territory in a major way.
Speaker 2: Highly effective and I think ahead of its time in
Speaker 2: some regards. Really worth checking out, and you'll know when
Speaker 2: it starts going into that electronic territory because it feels
Speaker 2: more thoroughly modern. So there are two individuals credited here,
Speaker 2: which again is not surprising when you sort of hear
Speaker 2: this difference between the music. I wouldn't say that it
Speaker 2: feels jarring, though I don't know it feels it feels
Speaker 2: appropriate given the shifts in reality that are taking place
Speaker 2: in the film. But apparently we have the electronic music
Speaker 2: is brought to us by doctor Myra and Schaeffer, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen oh eight through nineteen sixty five, an electronic
Speaker 2: music pioneer and one time head of the University of
Speaker 2: Toronto Electronic Music Studio. He apparently worked with a lot
Speaker 2: of some sort of like tape real based musical creation,
Speaker 2: and he also studied folk music pretty extensively, so you
Speaker 2: can certainly hear some of that. It seems like that
Speaker 2: seems like this all went into choosing this guy to
Speaker 2: create the audio for these sequences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like that kind of tape based early
Speaker 3: electronic music that you would hear in like the original
Speaker 3: Doctor Who theme, Delia Derbyshire and things like that. So
Speaker 3: it's very good for the scenes it's used in the movie.
Speaker 3: He creates this kind of deep pulsing rhythmic theme for
Speaker 3: the mask. It's in any scene where the mask is
Speaker 3: calling out to someone to put it on, we hear
Speaker 3: this kind of like throbbing, almost kind of like a
Speaker 3: metal tape playback loop from below. It's very creepy and
Speaker 3: it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the other music in the picture is brought
Speaker 2: to us by Lewis Applebaum, who lived nineteen eighteen through
Speaker 2: two thousand, Canadian composer who worked a lot in radio, film,
Speaker 2: and TV in addition to concert work. He was at
Speaker 2: one point the music director for the National Film Board
Speaker 2: of Canada. He apparently worked in Hollywood in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: but then returned to Canada and worked there for the
Speaker 2: rest of his career, where he was a pretty big
Speaker 2: name in the Canadian composing scene, and ultimately was a
Speaker 2: recipient of the Order of Canada, which, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 2: is like the second highest civilian honor. All right, before
Speaker 2: we get into the plot here, let's just have a
Speaker 2: quick sample though, of that Myron Schaeffer audio from the film.
Speaker 2: This is really good. All right, Shall we get into
Speaker 2: the plot?
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's time. So one thing I was
Speaker 3: wondering about the opening credits. I watched the whole film
Speaker 3: in two D, and then I went back and I
Speaker 3: watched the dream sequences as the extras in three D
Speaker 3: with the glasses, But I wonder were there other was
Speaker 3: I guess I don't really know. Was the whole film
Speaker 3: shown in three D and they just pulled those out
Speaker 3: as extras on the disc? Or were those the only
Speaker 3: scenes in three D? Because I'm wondering, like the opening credits,
Speaker 3: you know, they don't have anybody saying put the mask
Speaker 3: on now, but they have like those oscillating plasma effects
Speaker 3: and things flying toward the screen. So I kind of
Speaker 3: wonder if those were meant to be in three D
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: I'm not for certain, but I would venture to guess
Speaker 2: if the credits are in three D. But I don't
Speaker 2: think anything outside of possibly the credits and definitely the
Speaker 2: vision sequence as we're shot in three D, and I
Speaker 2: think part of that, I mean, we know from our
Speaker 2: discussions regarding House Wax, just how much effort had to
Speaker 2: go into shooting three D. And if people aren't gonna
Speaker 2: have their mask on for those sequences, why would you bother?
Speaker 3: Maybe they figured people would be trying out the masks anyway,
Speaker 3: and during the credits, because it's the first thing that happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is someone who's whose head feels weird watching
Speaker 2: three D? I applaud a film that says, let's let's
Speaker 2: keep the three D limited to certain sequences. Agree, Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's let's let's limit that.
Speaker 3: And actually it works very well with the conceit of
Speaker 3: the movie because those are dream sequences, so it almost
Speaker 3: it feels more acceptable that you would have to put
Speaker 3: on a piece of equipment and see them differently because
Speaker 3: they are showing you a different reality as opposed to
Speaker 3: just scenes of the same contiguous, real three D space
Speaker 3: in the narrative of the film suddenly coming out of
Speaker 3: the screen when they didn't before.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also I was thinking about this when you
Speaker 2: put the mask on in the theater. I wonder if
Speaker 2: it sort of also heightens the feeling of cutting yourself
Speaker 2: off from other people, the idea that these vision sequences
Speaker 2: are supposed to be inner journeys. You know, by engaging
Speaker 2: in three D, by strapping something else to your face,
Speaker 2: you're kind of perhaps cutting yourself off a little more
Speaker 2: from the actual world surrounding him.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well. The movie begins with a statement by a
Speaker 3: distinguished mascologist. This is Jim Moran. He is a man
Speaker 3: in a suit and a tie, leaning against a wall
Speaker 3: in a study that is covered in masks. He has
Speaker 3: a wide, thick goatee, and he's holding a tobacco pipe
Speaker 3: in his hands. And he says, my name is Jim Moran.
Speaker 2: I have just.
Speaker 3: Returned from a journey around the world collecting strange and
Speaker 3: unusual masks. Is this true? I don't know about this.
Speaker 2: I have my doubts. Given what we know about Jim Moran.
Speaker 3: Well, he says, I think it's safe to say I'm
Speaker 3: something of an authority on rare masks, festival masks, drama
Speaker 3: and religious masks, dance masks, and death masks from ancient tombs.
Speaker 3: Man's desire to change his face, to assume a strange
Speaker 3: or frightening disguise, to impersonate his gods or to frighten
Speaker 3: devils is a desire older than the history of language.
Speaker 3: I've seen masks unearthed from the ruins of crumbling tombs,
Speaker 3: and masks hanging in exotic temples to ward off evil spirits.
Speaker 3: But nowhere in all my travels have I seen anything
Speaker 3: to compare to the power of this mask, and he
Speaker 3: reaches out. He lays his hand upon the central prop
Speaker 3: of the movie, the mask, the one in the title.
Speaker 3: It's kind it's like a human skull with a freak
Speaker 3: out expression. It has sort of chameleon eyes that are
Speaker 3: convex eyes with little tiny holes in the middle of them,
Speaker 3: bulging out of the sockets, and then there is a
Speaker 3: sort of mosaic tile skin all over it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks really good in black and white. It
Speaker 2: has definite meso American influences, I think on the design, though,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of all over the place about where this
Speaker 2: mask is supposed to actually be from. In the picture,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's described as being both from India
Speaker 2: and South America, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 3: I think they do clarify in the end they say
Speaker 3: that it supposedly came from a place near the ancient
Speaker 3: city of Tikal, which would be in Guatemala.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah, but yeah, there are other times where
Speaker 2: they're describing it in terms where I'm a little confused.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, it looks pretty cool. It does
Speaker 2: look it has those crazy looking eyes, and it's hard
Speaker 2: to really judge the mask on its own merits in
Speaker 2: this scene where we have this kind of dry introduction
Speaker 2: by this guy who's definitely not Rod Serling, but also
Speaker 2: whose description does kind of like at first, like this
Speaker 2: guy's kind of dry, but the more he talks, the
Speaker 2: more he kind of draws me in. But later on
Speaker 2: in the movie, it's definitely creepy in the actual scenes
Speaker 2: where people were tempted by it, scenes where people were
Speaker 2: putting it on their face and like clutching it, all
Speaker 2: while that intense electronic music is playing.
Speaker 3: And the lower jaw is only it's not rigidly attached
Speaker 3: it like the lower jaw can jiggle when the person
Speaker 3: wearing it moves. I don't know if that makes it
Speaker 3: scarier or funnier. Maybe both.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not ready to put this on yet. There's
Speaker 2: still more introduction, so Jim Moran keeps talking. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to transcribe his whole speech, not least because the
Speaker 2: sound in this movie is not fully normalized, And no
Speaker 2: matter how much I turned it up, there were little
Speaker 2: parts where his voice became quiet and I couldn't tell
Speaker 2: what he was saying. This was also especially true of
Speaker 2: a character we meet later named Professor Solmes. There were
Speaker 2: parts where I could not hear what he was saying,
Speaker 2: but I got the gist. Here are the bullet points.
Speaker 2: So this mask in particular is the most diabolical of artifacts.
Speaker 2: It's used in rituals so unspeakable that they have been
Speaker 2: wiped out of the memory of humankind. Jim Moran says,
Speaker 2: he is not a superstitious man, but no matter what,
Speaker 2: he will not put on this mask, not for all
Speaker 2: the gold and the indies. Isn't that what he says?
Speaker 3: Okay, you and the theater have been given a special privilege.
Speaker 3: You've been given a mask too, referring to your three
Speaker 3: D glasses. When somebody in the movie puts on the mask,
Speaker 3: you put yours on too, and you will get to
Speaker 3: see what they see, he promises, quote you will see
Speaker 3: things never before seen on any screen. And then he again,
Speaker 3: in very brod serling fashion, he introduces the character he's
Speaker 3: like doctor Alan Barnes, you know, caught in the wheels
Speaker 3: of progress. He says, you will meet doctor Alan Barnes.
Speaker 3: He will put on the mask. Okay, thank you for
Speaker 3: telling us. And again, when he puts on the mask,
Speaker 3: you put on yours too.
Speaker 2: Now I want to describe the mask real quick. We
Speaker 2: did not have to have access to an original, of course,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't really look like the skull mask. The
Speaker 2: version I've seen is green. It has like a red
Speaker 2: and green panel on each eye.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the glasses people were given them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the glasses people were wearing in the theater.
Speaker 3: It looked.
Speaker 2: It brings to mind more the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Actually,
Speaker 2: and it has the label on it Magic Mystic Mask.
Speaker 3: I wonder if this mask had to be, like if
Speaker 3: the specifications for printing it had to be sent out
Speaker 3: before the film was actually made, and so they didn't
Speaker 3: know what the final mask prop in the movie was
Speaker 3: going to look like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or I mean thinking back to the creature.
Speaker 2: Creature was a three D picture, so maybe this was
Speaker 2: a mask originally designed for some showing of Creature from
Speaker 2: the Black Lagoon and then they just like repurposed it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but the printing on this as Magic
Speaker 2: Mystic Mask for the Miracle Movie the mask, so there's
Speaker 2: no doubting.
Speaker 3: That the Miracle Movie it's a miracle anyway, we've got
Speaker 3: this Hammi gimmick. Introduction by Jim Moran, the world's foremost
Speaker 3: expert on masks, and then we smash cut to something horrifying.
Speaker 3: It's a woman in a dark forest, desperate, drenched with rain,
Speaker 3: screaming in terror, and then we see across from her
Speaker 3: a reverse shot the thing she is afraid of. It's
Speaker 3: a man. It's a young man who doesn't look inherently
Speaker 3: very frightening. He's not large or monstrous or wielding a weapon.
Speaker 3: He looks kind of calm, expressionless, almost docile. But like
Speaker 3: I said earlier about this actor, he brings a kind
Speaker 3: of an unsettling Anthony Perkins quality with his expressionless face.
Speaker 3: So the woman turns and runs. She's terrified. She's dashing
Speaker 3: through the trees and the undergrowth in the rain, and
Speaker 3: the man meanwhile is walking very slowly and calmly in
Speaker 3: pursuit while she runs and flails around. And I wonder
Speaker 3: if this scene inspired later slasher movie killers who do
Speaker 3: the same thing. You know, the killer walks slowly and calmly,
Speaker 3: refuses to pick up the pace, but somehow later they
Speaker 3: appear in front of their victim to intercept them. So
Speaker 3: some carnations of Jason Vorheez are like this.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another comparison to this guy's performance, he reminds me a
Speaker 3: bit of the later performance by Robert Patrick is the
Speaker 3: T one thousand and Terminator too. There's a way that
Speaker 3: he in this chase scene, like he moves his body
Speaker 3: at a steady pace toward the woman, but his head
Speaker 3: is moving very little and his gaze is sort of
Speaker 3: locked right on target the whole time, no blinking or
Speaker 3: turning the head or looking away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this sort of great, relentless, inexorable approach. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it. I was looking around a
Speaker 2: little bit. I wonder how far this goes back, Like
Speaker 2: what are some earlier examples this, And I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it goes all the way back to Frankenstein, But
Speaker 2: I don't remember specifically any scenes in Frankenstein that are
Speaker 2: like technically composed in the same way, But I could
Speaker 2: be wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, I thought this chase scene was very frightening.
Speaker 3: It's stark, it's raw. I was immediately sort of at
Speaker 3: full voltage from the cinematography. So it takes place in
Speaker 3: a forest at night, but there are lights, bright ones,
Speaker 3: with the sources obscured by brush, and the lighting is
Speaker 3: not even throughout the forest set, there were sort of
Speaker 3: beams that cut in particular passages through the trees with
Speaker 3: black shadow in the spaces beyond, and I really liked
Speaker 3: this effect. The film already has a distinctive and original
Speaker 3: look and I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again looks especially good in this beautifully restored
Speaker 2: print that we were watching.
Speaker 3: Another thing that would be similarly done in later slasher movies,
Speaker 3: where Jason Vorhees is running through the woods after some
Speaker 3: camp counselor, is the cutting back and forth between the
Speaker 3: feet or legs of the two people, so you see
Speaker 3: her feet running in his feet walking. But eventually he
Speaker 3: catches her and she is murdered in some way, obscured
Speaker 3: by a tree. But while he kills her, she scratches
Speaker 3: his face, leaving bloody claw marks in his cheek. And
Speaker 3: then suddenly we cut to the next day in a
Speaker 3: therapist's office and the receptionist is telling a man named
Speaker 3: mister Raydon that he can't see the doctor yet, only
Speaker 3: to pull back and revealed that it is the killer
Speaker 3: from the woods who is here for his therapy session.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is mister Raydon.
Speaker 3: So finally the therapist emerges and this is Paul Stevens as
Speaker 3: doctor Alan Barnes. He invites Raydon in for his session,
Speaker 3: and wow, I did not expect this movie to be
Speaker 3: hitting such peaks of like weird sensation with mere dialog scenes.
Speaker 3: I thought this therapy scene where nothing psychedelic happens, it's
Speaker 3: just Raydon giving a disturbed performance. I thought it was
Speaker 3: very unsettling and very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no three D effects right in your face here,
Speaker 2: It's just a solid sequence with some creepy dialogue and
Speaker 2: great performance.
Speaker 3: So Michael Raydon says that he has had horrible, unshakable
Speaker 3: visions of his hand on a woman's throat. He thinks
Speaker 3: he may have killed her, and doctor Barnes suggests this
Speaker 3: was just a dream. Then Raydon points to the scratches
Speaker 3: on his face and he says, did I get this
Speaker 3: in a dream? Doctor Barnes says, well, that could have
Speaker 3: been self inflicted, and Raydon resists. He says, it's not
Speaker 3: a dream, it's a living nightmare. Then there's this really
Speaker 3: striking moment where he says I'm cursed. I am cursed.
Speaker 3: Now Barnes scoffs at this. He says, Michael, you're a scientist,
Speaker 3: is it very scientific to believe your nightmares or the
Speaker 3: result of a curse. Isn't it more logical to believe
Speaker 3: they're the result of unresolved emotional turmoil? And Raydon sits
Speaker 3: down and he looks directly in Barnes's eyes. He has
Speaker 3: this posture with his hand sort of outstretched, hovering above
Speaker 3: the couch, quivering, and he says, doctor, I need help.
Speaker 3: I'm like an addict. It's like I've been hypnotized. Barnes says,
Speaker 3: who would be hypnotizing you? And Raydon says the mask.
Speaker 3: Barnes says, what mask? How could a mask hypnotize you?
Speaker 3: Raydon says the mask is to blame. So they negotiate
Speaker 3: on this idea. Barnes expresses doubt that the mask could
Speaker 3: really be the cause of Rayden's problems, but he's willing
Speaker 3: to explore the issue further, so he asks Rayden to
Speaker 3: show the mask to him. Raydon says, why do you
Speaker 3: want me to show it to you. Barnes says, why
Speaker 3: not if it's causing you all this anguish? Raydon says,
Speaker 3: you want me to give it to you. Barnes says,
Speaker 3: if you like. Raydon says, you want it for yourself,
Speaker 3: and all the while there is this mounting sound, this
Speaker 3: kind of low pounding, echoing rhythm in the soundtrack. Very
Speaker 3: and then finally Barnes says, what would I do with
Speaker 3: the mask? And Raydon says, you'd put it on, you'd
Speaker 3: find out again, I think actually a very very good scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely sucked me in.
Speaker 3: But Barnes again, he tries to sort of talk Raydon down.
Speaker 3: He says that if he showed him the mask, they
Speaker 3: could discover that the nightmares don't come from the mask
Speaker 3: at all, but from him, and Raydon won't accept this.
Speaker 3: He says, you're a fool, and he runs out of
Speaker 3: the office. So after this, there's a scene with Barnes
Speaker 3: and his office assistant. This is Jill Goodrich, and she asks,
Speaker 3: you know, should we notify somebody, maybe mister Raydon's parents,
Speaker 3: that he is so disturbed, And Barnes says, no, I
Speaker 3: think he'll be all right. He just needs to cool down, Yeah,
Speaker 3: walk it off. Yeah, So Barnes sends miss Goodrich home
Speaker 3: and I guess they have kind of a flirty interaction here,
Speaker 3: something that'll pay off later in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I didn't didn't really register with me. Upon
Speaker 2: first viewing, But there we come back this later on.
Speaker 3: Now, Unfortunately, the next thing that happens with Raydon is
Speaker 3: he goes back to his apartment and he ties up
Speaker 3: a package. He gives it to his landlady and asks
Speaker 3: her to mail it mail it off to someone. Probably
Speaker 3: not a big surprise that he's mailing the mask to
Speaker 3: doctor Barnes. And then Raydon kills himself in his apartment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a dark scene. I can only imagine it
Speaker 2: had even more punch than sixty one I'm assuming anyway.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, Yeah, it's a disserving sequence, especially
Speaker 2: if you're sensitive two sequences like this already though in
Speaker 2: this picture though, it's like I could imagine some viewers wondering,
Speaker 2: It's like, well, we promised three D, wasn't there going
Speaker 2: to be three D? This film's gotten really real at
Speaker 2: this point. But at any rate, Raydon did not walk
Speaker 2: it off. Raydon is now dead and the mask is
Speaker 2: in the mail.
Speaker 3: Here we begin. I think the least interesting subplot of
Speaker 3: the film, which will eat up a lot of the runtime,
Speaker 3: is the police investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would have liked more scientific inquiry of the
Speaker 2: mask and less police randomly questioning anyone who knew Rayden
Speaker 2: or involved in his treatment and care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the police detectives they arrive on scene, they
Speaker 3: figure out that he works for a local museum of
Speaker 3: ancient history. They go to the museum to interview Rayden's colleague,
Speaker 3: Professor Solmes. This is the other guy whose audio was
Speaker 3: really tough to hear sometimes. Solmes confirms that Raydon was
Speaker 3: a brilliant archaeologist and that he had possession of several
Speaker 3: artifacts from the museum in his belongings at home. This
Speaker 3: was so that he could work on them during his
Speaker 3: hours away from the office. But one of those artifacts
Speaker 3: is now missing, a rare and beautiful ceremonial mask. And
Speaker 3: then Solmes says, there's a legend connected with this mask.
Speaker 3: The detective says, yes, I can imagine, but surely, doctor Solmes,
Speaker 3: you don't believe in these legends, not in this day
Speaker 3: and age, okay, And Someme's protests, He's like, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying I believe in the legend. I'm merely giving you
Speaker 3: information about the legend of the mask. And it's funny
Speaker 3: that the detective reacts this way, because pretty soon he's like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: we need to warn people about the magical power of
Speaker 3: this mask. Yeah, but anyway, so what Somelme says is
Speaker 3: that it's not much of a legend, but he explains
Speaker 3: it like this. The legend states that in the wrong hands,
Speaker 3: the mask can do a great deal of harm. It
Speaker 3: can put the wearer in a hypnotic trance, make him
Speaker 3: do cruel and unnatural things. Then the cop says, that's
Speaker 3: quite a legend, doctor, is it. There's not really a story,
Speaker 3: there is there.
Speaker 2: No no, And you know, I guess in retrospect, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of glad there's not a like culture specific story
Speaker 2: that they bust out for the mask. And there are
Speaker 2: plenty of examples of movies where you get into some
Speaker 2: get into some trouble doing that. You know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily up to certainly modern viewing. But the obscurity of
Speaker 2: the mass, the idea that the mass real history is
Speaker 2: so terrible that like our collective memories have erased it.
Speaker 2: I like that, you know, it adds this element of
Speaker 2: the weird and you know, a cosmic horror to the
Speaker 2: whole surrounding lore.
Speaker 3: Sure. So yeah, so the detective says, that's quite a legend.
Speaker 3: He says, if I believed it, it would solve a
Speaker 3: lot of things. However, I'm a policeman, not an archaeologist. Okay.
Speaker 3: Some's goes on to say the legend tells of rights
Speaker 3: connected with the mask, which are filled with human sacrifice,
Speaker 3: and then he says, now, suppose someone knew about this
Speaker 3: legend and believed it. So next the cops go to
Speaker 3: interview doctor Barnes. Of course, Barnes feels guilty now because
Speaker 3: he failed to alert anyone about Raydon's agitated state. He
Speaker 3: underestimated how us Raiden's condition was, and he wishes he
Speaker 3: had brought it to someone's attention that could have intervened.
Speaker 3: They discuss Rayden's obsession with the mask, but unfortunately Barnes
Speaker 3: does not know where it is. And then there's a twist,
Speaker 3: which is that this whole time they're having the conversation,
Speaker 3: the mask is in camera. It's sitting in an unopened
Speaker 3: parcel on the desk. So after the detective leaves, Barnes
Speaker 3: opens up the package and he finds the horrifying mask
Speaker 3: staring up at him. Oh and then we briefly here
Speaker 3: get an introduction to Claudette Nevins as Pam Pam is
Speaker 3: Pam Albright is Barnes's fiance. They're engaged.
Speaker 2: That's right, yes, different hair color. This is the individual
Speaker 2: he's actually engaged to, not the individual works in the
Speaker 2: office that he has a flirty relationship with.
Speaker 3: I think she says she's going to go out and
Speaker 3: get something and come back. I don't remember what She's
Speaker 3: going to run an errand and Barnes opens up the
Speaker 3: letter enclosed in the package with the mask. So I'm
Speaker 3: not going to read the whole letter, but it says,
Speaker 3: among other things, once I was a scholar. Now I
Speaker 3: am like an animal fleeing from my own nightmares, sleeping
Speaker 3: by day, prowling by night. And how about you, doctor Barnes,
Speaker 3: are you certain that just underneath the surface of your
Speaker 3: own mind there does not lurk a storm and fury
Speaker 3: waiting waiting to be released. So he sort of invites
Speaker 3: Barnes to quote make the experiment. He says, you hold
Speaker 3: the key in your own hand. If you are not afraid,
Speaker 3: put the mask on now. Put the mask on now.
Speaker 3: Put the mask on now. And so I think, if
Speaker 3: you can't tell this is the queue to the audience
Speaker 3: sitting in the theater like Oh, I need to get
Speaker 3: the mask out of my purse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're up with that mask. Dig it up
Speaker 2: and find it on the floor, dig it out from
Speaker 2: underneath your seat, put it on your face. It's now
Speaker 2: three D time.
Speaker 3: So doctor Barnes is overwhelmed with temptation. His hands quiver
Speaker 3: as he slips the mask over his face. He starts
Speaker 3: to tremble all over that. There's that pulsing rhythmic score
Speaker 3: growing louder, and then begin the visions. So I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to describe this first vision scene in as
Speaker 3: much detail as I can, and maybe I'll do less
Speaker 3: detail in the later scenes, but just to try to
Speaker 3: give you a flavor, because a big part of the
Speaker 3: appeal of this movie is the surreal imagery in these scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're wonderful. The main place my mind went was,
Speaker 2: of course, the ring video like that it's not one
Speaker 2: to one, but like that level of sort of like
Speaker 2: cryptic surrealistic content that doesn't necessarily tell a story but
Speaker 2: takes you to some sort of other realm.
Speaker 3: Yes, So in his office, first, doctor Barnes, he's in
Speaker 3: his office with the mask on, and he sees a
Speaker 3: kind of negative inversion of all color and light, and
Speaker 3: we see ripples of plasma fluttering through the air like
Speaker 3: in the gift store. Plasma ball smoke billows out from
Speaker 3: underneath his patient couch, and then the mask, now enormous,
Speaker 3: flies out of the wall to confront him, mask to mask,
Speaker 3: and then the setting of the doctor's office fades away.
Speaker 3: Now it is only emptiness and the mask. But the
Speaker 3: mask does not remain a mask. It becomes a human skull,
Speaker 3: real bone and crooked teeth, and then it is gradually
Speaker 3: incarnated with eyeballs, but eyeballs without lids, so they stare
Speaker 3: with the ultimate shock in surprise, there is a lidless
Speaker 3: infinite gaze. Then the skull disappears, leaving only the eyes,
Speaker 3: and the eyes rush toward us. Then more eyes emerge
Speaker 3: from the darkness and they fly out of the screen
Speaker 3: in your face. Then here we see a character someone.
Speaker 3: Originally I did not know who this was, but I
Speaker 3: think this is I think this is the same actor
Speaker 3: as doctor Barnes. He looks much younger in this version
Speaker 3: of himself.
Speaker 2: I thought that it first, but I think according to
Speaker 2: the credits, this is actually a different actor. But he
Speaker 2: is wearing the face of doctor Barnes. Huh. So all
Speaker 2: the humans that we seem to encounter in these dream visions,
Speaker 2: their faces have kind of like a waxen face over
Speaker 2: their face that it's very reminiscent of, of course, the
Speaker 2: highly influential French horror film Eyes without a Face. It
Speaker 2: has that kind of strange impression and wide staring eyes there.
Speaker 2: So you're supposed to think that this is like the
Speaker 2: vision world version of Barnes. But he's like, he's what,
Speaker 2: he's dressed in rags, kind of like tattered garments, and
Speaker 2: he has almost kind of a Frankensteiny quality to the
Speaker 2: way he's interacting with the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I did take this in the end
Speaker 3: to be Paul Stevens, but I guess that could be wrong.
Speaker 3: I did not pick that up at first, so I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's a young man. I was calling him
Speaker 3: the wax man or the waxy boy. He's a young
Speaker 3: man in a tattered shirt and jacket with the waxy
Speaker 3: looking flash dark, sunken eyes, and he stands there in
Speaker 3: an empty place filled with cyclones of fog. And then
Speaker 3: we see doctor Barnes still in his office, still wearing
Speaker 3: the mask, and he sort of walks out to meet
Speaker 3: the young man in the empty place, and then once
Speaker 3: again color and lighter inverted. We see a sort of
Speaker 3: negative image of everything, and then the young man in
Speaker 3: tattered clothes, the waxy man, is somewhere else. He is
Speaker 3: in a cave with stalactites hanging and leafless branches of
Speaker 3: dead trees. These really pop out of the screen in
Speaker 3: the three D cobwebs woven all around. There is something
Speaker 3: wrapped in cloth, a giant sort of grub sh shaped
Speaker 3: mass that seems to breathe as it hangs from a branch.
Speaker 2: Well, that moment is so good and and it also
Speaker 2: really pops in the three day, because that pulsating mass
Speaker 2: is in your living or work in the theater with you.
Speaker 3: So the young man feels his way through the cave
Speaker 3: with his hands as if he couldn't see, as if
Speaker 3: he were blind, or as if the cave were pitch black.
Speaker 3: Except for us, the cave is full of light. Then
Speaker 3: the young man comes out into an open space which
Speaker 3: seems to be beneath large twisting masses which I interpreted
Speaker 3: to be giant like tree roots. Then a figure warps
Speaker 3: into view from the mist. It's a woman with long hair,
Speaker 3: her head hanging down, draped in a black veil. She
Speaker 3: removes the veil, and her skin is also crusted with
Speaker 3: the waxy substance, just like the young man's. Her eyes
Speaker 3: are kind of sunken deep within. The young man comes
Speaker 3: toward her in a space which is now surrounded by torches,
Speaker 3: and there are pillars that are covered in skulls and glyphs.
Speaker 3: Behind the row of pillars and torches, there is an altar,
Speaker 3: and over the altar all seeing is a giant version
Speaker 3: of the mask, so this is kind of the mask
Speaker 3: as a god. And then the woman beckons the young man,
Speaker 3: but before he can reach her, she is captured by
Speaker 3: a man in a hooded cloak wearing another mask, a
Speaker 3: kind of different one, like a smooth, handsome, devious mask,
Speaker 3: and the woman reaches back toward the young man as
Speaker 3: if for help. There is high pitched screeching that's on
Speaker 3: the soundtrack, though she doesn't open her mouth. It's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, rats are screaming somewhere. The young man
Speaker 3: tries to follow, but he is intercepted by a different
Speaker 3: cloaked figure, a man with his face hidden in shadow,
Speaker 3: but a spot of light falling on one piercing eye,
Speaker 3: and then, as if by some magic power, he makes
Speaker 3: the young man relent and fall to the ground. Evil
Speaker 3: men in cloaks stand abreast the altar. A disembodied reptilian
Speaker 3: hand with massive claws strikes out at something I think
Speaker 3: It slashes the arm of the woman and draws back,
Speaker 3: dripping blood. The waxy faced young man again tries to
Speaker 3: go for the woman, but he is repelled by some
Speaker 3: kind of magic that transforms I think the one eyed
Speaker 3: Wizard's arms into fire and then into slime beast arms.
Speaker 2: Yep, you can see the beads in the Three Day especially,
Speaker 2: you see those beads of slime dripping. It's so good.
Speaker 3: Then the cultists here place the woman on the altar.
Speaker 3: They slash her with some kind of metal claws, while
Speaker 3: the evil wizard spits fire at the waxy young man. Eventually,
Speaker 3: the woman dies, and her face on the altar transforms
Speaker 3: into the skull from earlier with the lidless eyes. Then
Speaker 3: the eyes become pools of boiling, bubbling liquid. Then the
Speaker 3: skull shoots toward the screen, and then twin serpents dart
Speaker 3: out of the eye sockets, and then they just kind
Speaker 3: of jab in and out a few times and go blah.
Speaker 3: It's not the most tremendous way to end the dream sequence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the snakes again are the weak point of these visions,
Speaker 2: but oh man, what a sequence though. It has this
Speaker 2: feeling of surrealistic drama like on the stage. You know,
Speaker 2: there's that kind of element to it, but very well
Speaker 2: presented for the most part, strong tool music video vibes.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, like we have we get the
Speaker 2: feeling of having dived deep into the collective unconscious or
Speaker 2: something here, you know, archetypes upon archetypes and strange prime
Speaker 2: evil rituals. Yeah, it's wonderful.
Speaker 3: So that Yeah, that's the end of the dream. And
Speaker 3: doctor Barnes wakes up on the floor of his office
Speaker 3: clutching the mask and Pam comes back. She comes in
Speaker 3: to find him like this, and she springs to his aid,
Speaker 3: and I thought this was funny. She's asking him what's wrong,
Speaker 3: but he's saying, like the mask revealed something hidden deep
Speaker 3: inside my mind. And he's like, if what happened to
Speaker 3: me is true, it is of unbelievable importance to the
Speaker 3: world of psychiatry, something known three thousand years ago and
Speaker 3: lost to modern science. But Pam is saying, isn't this
Speaker 3: the thing your patient was saying that drove him mad?
Speaker 3: And Barnes is like, well, he had no medical training.
Speaker 3: He was a fool. I on the other hand, I
Speaker 3: can handle the mask. It's mine now. So Pam, again
Speaker 3: being the voice of reason, She's trying to convince him
Speaker 3: to return the mask to the museum, but Barnes is like, no,
Speaker 3: too important. I can learn so much from it about
Speaker 3: a world deeper than the subconscious. I must hide it
Speaker 3: from the police. And Pam wants him to go get
Speaker 3: some help, to go see an old friend of his,
Speaker 3: and not an old friend, an old teacher of his,
Speaker 3: professor Quincy, who was his mentor. She's like, going to
Speaker 3: He'll be able to steer you right. But at this
Speaker 3: point Barnes he's too deep. He refuses. He gets angry
Speaker 3: and rough with Pam. He says, I don't need anyone
Speaker 3: look at it. Don't you feel it's power? And this
Speaker 3: is the part where as we were saying earlier, I
Speaker 3: was really expecting a more gradual descent into mask madness,
Speaker 3: but this is just instant. He is now a committed
Speaker 3: mask maniac. And will not be coming back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like I'm wearing it for the kicks.
Speaker 3: So he looks at it, he gets this crazed look
Speaker 3: in his eye. He says, it's ordering me to pick
Speaker 3: it up. It's demanding I use it now, now, now.
Speaker 3: But Pam screams no, I won't let you, and she
Speaker 3: grabs the mask, runs outside and hails a taxi. Barnes chases,
Speaker 3: and he gets in his own car and pursues them.
Speaker 3: So the taxi they both end up going to the
Speaker 3: Museum of Ancient History, and then I don't know why
Speaker 3: I thought this was so funny, but instead of going
Speaker 3: in herself, she hands the mask off to her taxi
Speaker 3: and sends him into the museum with it, and then
Speaker 3: the taxi driver comes back out and they drive off.
Speaker 2: I would have thought they'd have like a drop off
Speaker 2: bin for ancient cursed artifacts, you know.
Speaker 3: Ye had deposit after six pm?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or like you know when you're at the
Speaker 2: airport and they have like the amnesty bin for marijuana products.
Speaker 2: It's like, hey, you got a curse mask, you know,
Speaker 2: no questions asked, just drop it off in here.
Speaker 3: The illicit product that I was once forced to dump
Speaker 3: at an airport security checkpoint was a bottle of hot
Speaker 3: sauce because I was trying to bring it home and
Speaker 3: they were like, sorry, it is above the volume limit
Speaker 3: for liquid products. And I felt like a real like
Speaker 3: a real criminal, but one who had been caught.
Speaker 2: Did they let you drink it all right there?
Speaker 3: Just to well? They might have, but yeah, I didn't
Speaker 3: try That was a bummer, though it was good hot sauce.
Speaker 3: I tried it.
Speaker 2: Okay, but the mask has been returned at this point,
Speaker 2: so the mask is safe. Problem solved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems fine except Barnes. So she leaves after
Speaker 3: dropping off the mask because the taxi takes her on
Speaker 3: to somewhere else. And then Barnes arrives and he's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm done with her. I got to go in the
Speaker 3: museum and get the mask. I put the mask on.
Speaker 3: Now now, now, now now. And he's walking around in
Speaker 3: the museum looking at fossils, and I was like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute. Didn't they say this was a museum of
Speaker 3: ancient history. This looks like a museum of natural history.
Speaker 2: He's like looking at mammoth bones.
Speaker 3: They've got a whole wing of fossils that anyway. Whatever,
Speaker 3: So we're in Solms's office eventually, and Barnes starts ransacking.
Speaker 3: There's something calling to him from another room. The pulsing
Speaker 3: mask music grows louder, so we think, you know it's
Speaker 3: the One Ring. It wants to be found. Wait when
Speaker 3: did Tolkien publish Lord of the Rings? Was it after
Speaker 3: this movie came out? Do you think he was inspired?
Speaker 2: I mean it was out, so yeah, could be there
Speaker 2: are strong one ring elements to it.
Speaker 3: He published nineteen fifty four. Okay, for some reason, I
Speaker 3: thought it came out in the early sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we cut to pamback at home. She seems to
Speaker 3: be now she's just back home after having this harrowing
Speaker 3: experience with her fiance, who became violent when she tried
Speaker 3: to convince him not to put the mask on. But
Speaker 3: now she's just calmly sitting on the couch drawing in
Speaker 3: a sketchbook. Who is she sketching a portrait of? Is
Speaker 3: that Barnes?
Speaker 2: Maybe? So that's their way of working through it.
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess so, But let's see. Oh, anyway,
Speaker 3: the police arrive. It's our detective, detective Martin I think
Speaker 3: is his name. And he interrogates her about Barnes regarding Rayden,
Speaker 3: and she's trying to cover for Barnes. She's like, mask,
Speaker 3: what's a mask? I've never heard that, And the detective
Speaker 3: is suspicious. I don't know why. The detective is picked
Speaker 3: up on the legends so much. Now he's like, we
Speaker 3: think that maybe this guy has the mask and he's
Speaker 3: killing people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess if we're being generous. He
Speaker 2: sees the legend as like a legend obsession, as motive,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he explains the legend of the mask to her.
Speaker 3: He's like, supposedly it brings out the evil in people.
Speaker 3: Mag defies it, but again she pretends not to know anything,
Speaker 3: and he's very disappointed and he leaves.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, he does ask if she asks. She says, well,
Speaker 2: what if you don't have evil in you? And he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever met anybody like that.
Speaker 2: So he's a hard and detective, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So meanwhile we go back to Barnes and he's
Speaker 3: found the mask. So I don't remember where he finds it.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's in a drawer or something, but he finds
Speaker 3: the mask and it starts talking to him. I think
Speaker 3: maybe he takes it back to his office and it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, saying the lines put the mask on now,
Speaker 3: repeating many times. And then there is another psychedelic dream sequence.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna explain this one in less detail, but there's
Speaker 3: a one eyed wizard again. There's the boy with the
Speaker 3: wax face. We're back in the temple. The altar is
Speaker 3: kind of has become the same as the psychiatrist's couch.
Speaker 3: Barnes in a suit and tie, appears on the couch
Speaker 3: slash altar as himself. Then he becomes only his hands disembodied,
Speaker 3: floating in the air, and they're kind of like rolling
Speaker 3: around in spellcasting motions. The wax boy is threatened by
Speaker 3: the cult. There's a fireball from heaven. The undead sorcerer
Speaker 3: with a mask for a face comes out, and he's
Speaker 3: like the big bad guy. He's throwing fireballs everywhere. The
Speaker 3: mask face sorcerer embraces the wax Boy and then he disappears.
Speaker 3: He reappears to find the wax faced woman standing under
Speaker 3: a giant statue of a hand. She beckons him there
Speaker 3: are snakes. The wax face comes off. The woman is
Speaker 3: I apologize here. It was somebody familiar, but I couldn't tell.
Speaker 3: Is this Pam or is this supposed to be miss
Speaker 3: Goodrich from the office.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I'd have to go back and look. It could
Speaker 2: be either of them. A case could be made for
Speaker 2: either of them.
Speaker 3: Then a skull flies at the screen, and then Barnes
Speaker 3: wakes up.
Speaker 2: Now the undead sorcerer with like the oh, not the
Speaker 2: undead Sorcerer, the individual with like half the face, the
Speaker 2: one eyed Sorcerer, the one eyed Sorcerer. This is Raydon right, Yes,
Speaker 2: I think so, it's the same act. Yeah, another great
Speaker 2: psychedelic vision sequence. Though, like all of this stuff is
Speaker 2: just it overwhelms you. But it also doesn't feel it
Speaker 2: doesn't have that like kind of ring video quality of
Speaker 2: also feeling completely random. It does feel like there's some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, connective tissue. There's there's some sort
Speaker 2: of cryptic message or story here that we just can't
Speaker 2: understand with our modern minds. So I like it a lot.
Speaker 3: So Barnes wakes up, he takes the mask off. He's
Speaker 3: drenched in sweat, exhausted from the hallucinatory journey, and he
Speaker 3: finds his assistant coming into the office to work late.
Speaker 3: This is Jill Goodrich and at this point I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I smell a murder coming on. So he insists on
Speaker 3: driving her home and then he just goes straight to
Speaker 3: like you're beautiful, I'm in love with you and there
Speaker 3: and so then there's a fade till later. At first,
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like, wait, are we going into a
Speaker 3: dream where they're in the car later, But I think
Speaker 3: it's just a cut till later that evening. But they
Speaker 3: use the blurry dissolve like it doolu doolu kind of
Speaker 3: fades out, and I don't know why they did that
Speaker 3: if this is just later that night in reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean nobody told me to put on a mask,
Speaker 2: so I assume it's just reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, But they're in a car. They're like kissing
Speaker 3: and whispering sweet nothings, and then he starts strangling her.
Speaker 3: Obviously he's obsessed with mask murder now. But her life
Speaker 3: is saved when he accidentally honks the car horn with
Speaker 3: his elbow and this snaps him out of it, and
Speaker 3: she gets up and runs away and escapes. So next scene,
Speaker 3: he's visiting a friend. It's like a nerdy looking guy
Speaker 3: with a model ship under construction on the desk in
Speaker 3: front of him and this friend. Oh, Barnes is essentially saying,
Speaker 3: it's gone too far. I must understand the mask. You
Speaker 3: must help me and his friend here we figure is
Speaker 3: Professor Quincy, the guy who Pam tried to send him
Speaker 3: to earlier.
Speaker 2: Old man Quincy.
Speaker 3: You know, does Quincy seem any older than Barnes to you?
Speaker 3: It looks to me like they could be the same age,
Speaker 3: or he could be even younger. They do give him
Speaker 3: kind of frosty looking hair, looks maybe like sprayed on gray,
Speaker 3: but he does not seem old enough to have been
Speaker 3: Barnes's mentor no.
Speaker 2: No, maybe he just has tenure or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3: But Quincy says, you were my most brilliant student. Now
Speaker 3: you're in the same position Raygen was. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: they're talking in Quincy is a real wet blanket. He's like, look,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't put the mask on again, you shouldn't give
Speaker 3: into its malevolent power, and you should return it to
Speaker 3: the police since it's stolen anyway. Blah blah blah. Barnes
Speaker 3: hates this. He bucks against all of it. He's like
Speaker 3: actually I will put the mask on again and you
Speaker 3: can't stop me. I must understand how it works.
Speaker 2: And again, it would have been nice to have more
Speaker 2: of this, like what is the plan? What are you
Speaker 2: hoping to get out of this? But it's just straight
Speaker 2: beatnick junkie madness. At this point, Quincy finally agrees. He says, Okay,
Speaker 2: you can put the mask on, but only under control
Speaker 2: old conditions here at my house. And when I say stop,
Speaker 2: it has to stop now. In my notes on the plot,
Speaker 2: I did say we cut back to the police, and
Speaker 2: then I was just like, nothing to report in this
Speaker 2: scene is more doodling about at the police.
Speaker 3: I think they do some forensics or something. They're like,
Speaker 3: look at our machine that can analyze fingerprints. But later
Speaker 3: Barnes is alone with the mask in his darkened office,
Speaker 3: like stroking the mask and gazing at it lovingly, and
Speaker 3: Pam comes in and interrupts him, and she asks him
Speaker 3: what's going on. He says, it's not just a mask,
Speaker 3: it's a dream. It's a hope, the hope of man
Speaker 3: to understand his own mind, to know what he really thinks.
Speaker 3: It can show us places in the human brain that
Speaker 3: man has never reached before, and Pam doesn't quite understand.
Speaker 3: He sort of patronizes her and then commands her to leave.
Speaker 3: He basically gives an I can quit the mask anytime
Speaker 3: I want speech, but she rebukes him, and she has
Speaker 3: a good scene where she she like again, this is
Speaker 3: a very voice of reason scene. She rebukes him for
Speaker 3: how he has let the mask take over his soul,
Speaker 3: and eventually she talks him into going straight to Quincy's house.
Speaker 3: From there and Quincy gives him a strong sedative. I
Speaker 3: guess he just has these lying around. But then Barnes
Speaker 3: wakes up in the bedroom at Quincy's house and we
Speaker 3: hear the rhythmic mask music again and the chant put
Speaker 3: the mask on now, and we get a final dream
Speaker 3: sequence he puts the mask on, and I'm not going
Speaker 3: to go into as much detail about this one either,
Speaker 3: but there's sort of a coffin gondola ride on the
Speaker 3: river sticks solid choice, Yep, yep. There's a giant version
Speaker 3: of the mask again, this time it vomits snow at him.
Speaker 3: And then there's the woman in the dream lying on
Speaker 3: the altar and we see like X rays of her
Speaker 3: legs and see the bones and then.
Speaker 2: There's that, by the way, looks better than you might imagine.
Speaker 2: Like I actually thought this looked pretty good, even though
Speaker 2: just describing it it might sound hokey.
Speaker 3: Agree. Agree, there's a skeleton, hug.
Speaker 2: Let's sell on that one.
Speaker 3: Yes, the altar crumbles, they sort of fall through the floor.
Speaker 3: There's fire everywhere, and then the mask comes off, and
Speaker 3: then we get sort of a final confrontation. Barnes confronts
Speaker 3: Pam and Quincy. He wants to he wants to escape
Speaker 3: the house. They tell him he can't, and he says
Speaker 3: they're both rotten. He says, I open up the knowledge
Speaker 3: of the universe to you, and you spit at it.
Speaker 3: And they sort of fight. He overpowers Quincy. I think,
Speaker 3: does he kill Quincy or does he just sort of
Speaker 3: knock him out? I don't think he just kind of
Speaker 3: knocks him out. Yeah, But he goes out the door.
Speaker 3: He gets into his car. The Pam calls the police
Speaker 3: to bring them, and then Barnes goes to Jill Goodrich's house.
Speaker 3: The office assistant, Uh, oh, this seems like trouble, I
Speaker 3: guess she Oh wait, did I misremember earlier her escaping?
Speaker 3: Maybe he just honks the horn and stops choking her,
Speaker 3: and then she stays in the car because she gets
Speaker 3: in the car with him again and they drive out
Speaker 3: to I don't know, to Lover's Point, and they're like
Speaker 3: lying there in the car and Barnes is looking up
Speaker 3: at the night sky, beholding the horror of the cosmos,
Speaker 3: and he tells her to look at the stars. He says,
Speaker 3: for you will never see them again because I am
Speaker 3: going to kill you. And she's like, ah, stop telling jokes.
Speaker 3: And then he said this, I wrote this quote down.
Speaker 3: He says, I must, I must experience the greatest act
Speaker 3: of a human mind to take another life. But she
Speaker 3: runs away. So he fortunately does not kill Jill.
Speaker 2: But clearly and he is fully whacked out on mask
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 3: Yes, And then he goes back to Quincy's house. I
Speaker 3: guess they had to have the showdown here. So he
Speaker 3: goes back there and he argues with Pam about the mask.
Speaker 3: He tries to force Pam to put the mask on,
Speaker 3: but then I thought this was a good twist. He
Speaker 3: finally does force the mask onto her head, but she
Speaker 3: doesn't see anything. She doesn't see like she doesn't have
Speaker 3: a vision. She just sees him through the holes in
Speaker 3: the eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this choice as well. I'm not exactly
Speaker 2: sure what to make of it, and I'm still sort
Speaker 2: of pondering over what it means, what it could mean,
Speaker 2: but the effect is nice.
Speaker 3: Well. I think one interpretation of it is that what
Speaker 3: Barnes said to Raydin way back in the therapy scene
Speaker 3: at the beginning was true. Maybe the mask actually has
Speaker 3: no magic power. It is just bringing out something latent
Speaker 3: in yourself, And so what was really going on with
Speaker 3: Raydin was his unresolved emotional turmoil, and what's really going
Speaker 3: on with Barnes is the same. That it's just sort
Speaker 3: of like giving you permission to have these experiences and
Speaker 3: unleash the evil in yourself, but it's not actually magic.
Speaker 3: I guess Another interpretation is what Pam said, which is
Speaker 3: she's like, so it magnifies the evil in you. Remember
Speaker 3: she says, what if you don't have any evil in you?
Speaker 3: And the detective is like, I've never met anybody like that.
Speaker 3: Maybe the deal is Pam has no evil in her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do like the idea of it being, you know,
Speaker 2: you're treating it like a telescope or a microscope, you know,
Speaker 2: very much in line with the psychedelic experience, and very
Speaker 2: much in mind with the sort of conversations that were
Speaker 2: already taking place at this point regarding psychedelic substances like
Speaker 2: psilocybin and LSD. You know that it would provide some
Speaker 2: sort of insight, but who knows what you might see,
Speaker 2: who knows what it might reveal.
Speaker 3: Well, in the contrary to what a lot of people
Speaker 3: sort of end up believing after they take these substances,
Speaker 3: that like, it has put me in contact with external
Speaker 3: sources of information that have revealed things to me. I
Speaker 3: don't see any reason to actually believe that's true. Probably
Speaker 3: what it does is it causes you to have experience
Speaker 3: based on things that you already think and already believe
Speaker 3: and feel.
Speaker 2: Or it opens up recesses of the human mind that
Speaker 2: have not been explored in three thousand years. Where there
Speaker 2: are snakes.
Speaker 3: That's true, there's snake. They jab in and out they come. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, uh oh yeah, yeah. So Barnes does not
Speaker 3: like the fact that Pam doesn't see anything in the mask.
Speaker 3: He is clearly flustered and and this is not what
Speaker 3: he expected, and he's upset by it. So he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I guess I have to kill Pam now. But before
Speaker 3: he can kill Pam, Detective Martin arrives and he does
Speaker 3: a he does a chop on Barnes's neck to subdue him.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, a nice, nice tight karate chop right to
Speaker 2: the back of the neck. You know, we never see
Speaker 2: good karate chops like this in films anymore.
Speaker 3: James Bond used to do it in the early James
Speaker 3: Bond movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a be interesting to see a breakdown of
Speaker 2: karate chops in films, you know, because yeah, there was.
Speaker 2: There was certainly a heyday of the karate chop. Nowadays
Speaker 2: it's all like arm bars and in and a takedowns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the that's the final confrontation. And then
Speaker 3: the mask is returned to the museum. Wait, so I
Speaker 3: don't know did Barnes survive or was he killed by
Speaker 3: the karate chop?
Speaker 2: No, he couldn't have been killed by the karate chop.
Speaker 3: Do they show him again?
Speaker 2: They don't show him again, but I guess, which seems
Speaker 2: like a mistake. You know, we should have gotten that
Speaker 2: sort of psycho esque scene of Barnes put away somewhere
Speaker 2: right that would have been nice and creepy, but for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, we don't have that. But this feels too much,
Speaker 2: like this feels like a tight Spock esque strike here
Speaker 2: from our detective, like this is this incapacitates, it does
Speaker 2: not kill.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the epilogue, we don't really see what
Speaker 3: happens to Barnes. Instead, we go to the museum. The
Speaker 3: mask has been returned. It's on display. We see a
Speaker 3: tour being led through the mask wing of the museum,
Speaker 3: and then there's kind of a loan dude from the
Speaker 3: tour who's drawn to the mask. He hears the pulsing
Speaker 3: and he walks up to it entranced, and there is
Speaker 3: fire that fills the screen. So I think it is suggesting, oh,
Speaker 3: the Mask has a new someone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think solid creepy ending, even if this dude
Speaker 2: is a complete stranger, new character introduced. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: feeling that the cycle will continue. The will of the
Speaker 2: Mask cannot be undone.
Speaker 3: And that's the end of The Mask nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 3: And I guess of our three weeks of three D
Speaker 3: this has been a fun journey.
Speaker 2: It has. Yeah, we got to look at three different
Speaker 2: decades worth the films we went to the sixties, the fifties,
Speaker 2: and the eighties. You know, we discussed possibly hitting other decades,
Speaker 2: but some of the other decades are harder to early
Speaker 2: pin down for what you would cover from say like
Speaker 2: the seventies or certainly you know, recent decades. But I
Speaker 2: feel like each one had its own vibe, its own
Speaker 2: take on three D. It represented different things about about
Speaker 2: the various three D booms and the sort of things
Speaker 2: that filmmakers would do to embrace three D to different
Speaker 2: levels and use it to tell a story. All Right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and close it up there. We're
Speaker 2: gonna throw the three D glasses back into the bin.
Speaker 2: But we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We're
Speaker 2: already hearing from some folks regarding some of the three
Speaker 2: D films that we discussed here, some folks talking about
Speaker 2: their experiences seeing them m three D in the theater.
Speaker 2: So keep it coming. We'll be back next week with
Speaker 2: a new edition of Weird House Cinema. Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: publishes on Fridays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: podcast feed. We're primarily a science podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see other
Speaker 2: films that we've covered, if you want to see a
Speaker 2: nice list of them, go to letterbox dot com. It's
Speaker 2: L E T T E R B O x D
Speaker 2: dot com. Our user profile there is weird House. You'll
Speaker 2: find a list and you'll see all those movies.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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