Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

bigbaf Great news! Kino plans to release a restored version of this movie in Blu-Ray 3D on November 24 2015 so the fantasy sequences should really be effective. Those scenes were really the only reason to watch an otherwise banal movie but they were released in anaglyph 3D which was never that effective to begin with. Seeing it in f/s Blu-Ray 3D will be a whole new experience and should be a real trip! Basically the story deals with a psychiatrist who is troubled by the suicide of a patient until he receives a package from the man that was sent just before his death. It contains an ancient Aztec mask but when he puts it on the doctor experiences wild hallucinations. This low budget Canadian production is notable only for those sequences and they should be awesome in this newly restored version.

briareus8 Here's a quote from Antonin Artaud: 'Psychology, which works relentlessly to reduce the unknown to the known, to the quotidian and the ordinary, is the cause of the theater's abasement and its fearful loss of energy, which seems to me to have reached its lowest point.' For practicing psychology in this way, Dr. Alan Barnes is punished, in a manner that will be revealed to you when you watch this movie. The opening event of the experience under the mask recalls Freud's quotation from Vergil, found at the beginning of 'The Interpretation of Dreams': 'Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo,' 'If I cannot move the heavenly powers, I will stir up the infernal ones.' Watch the movie & see if Dr. Barnes succeeds in stirring them up.The hallucinatory sequences under the mask contain vivid representations of what may be regarded as fantasies of infantile sexuality, or alternatively as archetypes of the collective unconscious. The images tell the part of the story which is revealed under the mask, the other part is shown in the narrative of action in the real or waking world.

gftbiloxi In the normal scheme of things I would have given this bit of schlock-horror one star--and that would have been on a good day. But THE MASK has two things going it for it: it is 3D available to the homemarket and it generally has a cheap purchase price. What more can you ask? A psychiatrist (Allan Barnes) has a homicidal archaeologist patient who swears up and down that he was just fine until he put on an ancient Indian mask the local museum dug up--and now, under the mask's influence, he has fearful fantasies, nasty nightmares, and (dare I say it?) the urge to kill. Our intrepid analyst doesn't believe a word of it, so the archaeologist goes home and kills himself... but not before mailing the mask off to the doctor who failed him. Does the doctor put on the mask? Since we've only gotten about fifteen minutes into the movie he darn well better.Each time the doctor puts on the mask he has the same fearsome fantasies and nasty nightmares as his deceased patient--only now we see them, and THEY ARE IN 3D! Now, in its homemarket edition, THE MASK comes with all sorts of warnings that everything from visual impairments to bad color settings on your screen will affect the effect, so you're pretty much on your own here. For myself, I found it worked pretty well as long as you were watching the movie in a pitch black room. But the fact that the movie is sometimes in 2D and sometimes in 3D has a peculiar result: its fun to put the glasses on and off, but it takes a few minutes for you to begin to read the film as 3D, and then when you taken the glasses off to see the 2D part you feel slightly askew because you're still sorta seeing red out of one eye and blue out of the other.Several people have commented that they found parts of the film pretty creepy and the 3D sequences really imaginative. I myself thought the whole thing was about as frightening as a box of dry cereal and the 3D bits--they were fun enough, but let's face it, this ain't no CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Still, the ten-to-fourteen year old crowd will get a kick out of it, and it's all just silly enough for grown ups to find mildly amusing too. So PUT THE MASK ON NOW and have some foolish fun!Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

David Starkman Yes, I have to agree that this is really not a great film. However, as the previous reviewer has commented, it is worth watching at least once for the 3-D sequences, which were done by the famous Slavko Vorkapitch. The premise is actually a great use of the 3-D medium. Whenever the main character puts on the haunted mask, that is the cue for the audience to put their 3-D glasses (Which were in the form of a "Mystic Mask" when I saw this in it's original theatrical release in 1961!). He then has these wild 3-D dream sequences, which are definitely the ONLY good part of the film. In order for this to work in ANY movie theater the 3-D sequences are in the anaglyph format, which uses the red and green glasses, and does not require a special projection lens or silver screen. The film is otherwise black and white, except for the 3-D sequences, which use the red and green encoding to create monochromatic 3-D. It should be noted, however, that this process does not translate very well to video. The 3-D effect may be significantly reduced or not work well at all, depending upon the monitor, color settings, etc. Probably the laserdisc version of this will have the best 3-D effects.