I arrived at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Wednesday to quite the spectacle. Floodlights, news vans, red carpet and people lined up around the block. Could
The Mask really be gathering this attention. It's certainly a significant Canadian film and this print hasn't screened for twenty years, but I wasn't expecting this.
Well it turns out all this hubbabaloo was for a Bollywood Toronto premiere of
RA.ONE, just in time for Diwali no less.
The Mask screening was a much more intimate affair, screening in a small theatre on the fourth floor to over a hundred people. It was great to see Julian Roffman's son Peter and his family in the audience, as well as the die hard Can-horror fans.
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| A few of the faithful. |
As for my personal reaction to the screening, it was a bit disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it was great to see this classic on a theatre screen, with an audience. The quality of the cinematography and the detail missing from the home video versions out there was certainly apparent, but there were no revelations. No missing Jim Moran footage introduced the film and the anaglyph 3-D sequences were identical to the video counterparts (a number of us had "mystic magic viewers" and they didn't work nearly as well as the 3-D glasses handed out upon entrance).
The print did display the re-release title,
The Eyes of Hell, so perhaps when a print of the original 1961 version of
The Mask surfaces to the public, the Jim Moran opening will be there.
Still it was a monumental moment for the film, marking its 50th Anniversary and I have to admit it pleased me to no end.
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| How cool is this? |
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