MONTH OF THE MASK SPILLS INTO DECEMBER

Well sort of.

This month's issue of Rue Morgue Magazine way over on pg 47 has a feature on The Mask, written by yours truly. It includes a few choice quotes from the film's late director, Julian Roffman's son.

I have to admit I dig the cover. It is an awesome fusion of the poster art for Mario Bava's anthology film Black Sabbath, replacing Boris Karloff's image with Tony Iommi's, lead singer for the original metal band Black Sabbath. Where do you think they got their name from?

It's on the stands now and available at Yudu.com and the Apple App Store, if you want to check it out.

WIM & PINA: a review

As I've noted before PINA, Wim Wenders' newest film, played at The Toronto International Film Festival this September and I couldn't be there. I did have the fortune of seeing a few scenes projected in 3-D and hearing Wenders discuss the film and the 3-D process at the Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference in June.I couldn't be there but that doesn't mean I couldn't get a review. Many thanks to Trevor Ball a long time TIFF attendee and my guest blogger:

Wim Wenders encountered the choreography of Pina Bausch in mid-1980s, and immediately knew he wanted to work with her. She took some time to warm to the idea, but before long the two were discussing a collaboration. Wenders's problem, though, was that he couldn't figure out how to make a film of her Tanztheater Wuppertal company's dancing; he said there seemed to be an "invisible wall" keeping a satisfactory film from being made. The two would cross paths repeatedly over the decades, with her asking him how it was coming, and him answering that he hadn't figured out how yet, until the exchange became so routine that they just exchanged gestures to convey the status quo.

That finally changed in 2007, when Wenders saw U2 3D, the 3D presentation of the band's Vertigo tour. He called up Bausch and told her he had finally figured out how to make the movie. Unfortunately, due in part to the lengthy lead time required to coordinate schedules and mount the four specific programmes they wanted to film, it would still be years before they would be ready to shoot, and in the interim, Bausch died of cancer before shooting could begin. Wenders expected that this meant the project was off, but thankfully the dancers in the company encouraged him to still make it.

The film is therefore structured around individual dancers and their reminiscences of Bausch, with no narration or dialogue aside from the dancers themselves. Wenders presents portraits of individual dancers coupled with signature or favourite solos or duets of theirs, set in the environs of the city of Wuppertal (including its unusual suspended train line) which provide some striking and whimsical juxtapositions. Cut together with the four live dance presentations and old footage of Bausch herself, the overall effect is a tribute to Bausch, but also an intimate experience of the dance itself, and an insight into the company and how it functioned.

Wenders does get playful with the film at times, such as inlaying footage of part of one live dance inside a scale model two dancers are looking at, while recalling how Bausch conceived of the choreography for the piece. For the most part though, he tries to be faithful to the dance, out of reverence for Bausch, who he was always conscious of not wanting to disappoint. The 3D seems only to be used to give a more true-to-life and intimate experience of the dance, with very few gimmicky shots (the scale model shot being the only such exception I can recall). The effect of the 3D is subtle but successful in conveying a more authentic theatre-like experience.

Ultimately the (albeit understandably) melancholic tone undermines and distracts from the impressive and imaginative choreography that should be the focus, and in particular I found the old footage of Bausch somewhat jarring, while adding very little value. However, overall the film serves as a fantastic introduction to modern dance and an entertaining and inspiring experience in its own right. I would recommend it for anyone with the slightest interest in dance or performance art, or really even for anyone who can keep an open mind to such artforms.

Incidentally, Tanztheater Wuppertal will be performing at the NAC in Ottawa in late November, in case you would like to see them in person. Wenders also announced at the screening that Pina has been selected as the German entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and it has recently been short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I'll go on record as predicting it won't win either award, but it does deserve that degree of consideration.

Dimensions of The Mask

This is where previous posts on this blog and the world of The Mask conjoin in an analytical look into the use 3-D in cinema. I am of the belief that stereoscopic cinema (3-D) is like a circus coming to town. It’s a novelty. If the circus is always in town the excitement it generates goes away. So I’m always looking to find films that utilize 3-D, not just as an ad-on but as something integral to their being.

Today Hollywood treats 3-D (as they have in the previous 3-D eras of the 50‘s and 80‘s) as a value added effect. In an attempt to combat illegal downloading and VOD (in the 50’s it was television and by the 80’s home video and cable were the threat), Hollywood is hoping that digital 3-D will bring people back to the theatre and their old model of doing business will continue as it did before. But things change, as they did in the previous eras.

It’s the art-house masters that are turning to 3-D as an artistic extension of their work. It’s not an accident that these once great film makers have almost abandoned narrative film for documentary. Directors like Warner Herzog and Wim Wenders have used 3-D to simulate the real world in place of the reel world. In The Cave of Forgotten Dreams Hetzog used the stereoscopic technique to add volume to the curvature of the rocks on which the oldest know human artwork exists. Wenders, in turn in Pina, uses 3-D to simulate the experience of Pina Bausch’s unique dance choreography in a way that no other form of visual documentation can.

But these cinema artists are turning to 3-D to simulate reality while director Julian Roffman does something quite different in The Mask. Sure, his movie uses 3-D as a gimmick to get audiences out to the theatre, but within the context of the film the 3-D serves a different purpose. The effect is not used to represent reality but to represent the subconscious, the protagonist’s, Dr.Barnes, darkest nightmares. Roffman understood that 3-D is an illusion, that while it cannot truly represent reality, it can pull the viewer into something immersive that both represents reality but is very much removed from the real world. Much like dreams and hallucinations, the fodder of the 3-D sequences used in The Mask.

I’m just scratching the surface here. But these thoughts do lead me to the hope that this 3-D era continues so that artists and filmmakers can begin to explore the artistic potential of stereo cinema and that it can evolve. The previous eras have been to short for real exploration of 3-D’s potential to be realized beyond the “circus effect”.

NOTES: I’d like to credit Dan Symmes for the circus analogy. He was the first I’d heard to use it and it rings true to me.

EYES OF HELL- POST MORTUM

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.

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.

How cool is this?

Psychology & The Mask

We have another guest blogger on the site today. James Burrell is a Toronto-based writer who has written about Canadian genre cinema for such publications and online sites as Rue Morgue and Canuxploitation! He is currently working on a book detailing the history of Canadian horror films. Thanks for contributing James.

When The Mask was released in October of 1961, few moviegoers could have anticipated the nightmarish and surreal netherworld they'd be plunged into by obeying a command within the film to “Put the mask on now! Put the mask on now!” With the use of red and green anaglyph placard “magic mystic mask”, audiences were treated to several 3-D sequences that combined Dalí-esque imagery like bizarre figures and landscapes with funhouse-styled gag effects of floating eyeballs, giant snakes and fireballs hurtling off the screen at them in the third-dimension. Both weird and inventive, The Mask was quite unlike anything audiences had seen up to that point.

Naturally marketed as a gimmicky exploitation horror flick, The Mask wasn't expected to deliver anything to cinema-goers beyond the promised phantasmagorical visuals and 3-D effects. However, along with the bizarre imagery, the film managed to go a bit further than other B-movies of the era by providing some interesting social commentary. Exploring such issues as addiction and mental illness, the film was both an allegorical look at the dangers of drug use as well as a thinly-veiled criticism of the psychiatric industry.

Like Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Mask also deals with the duality of human nature, and the terrible consequences that can result when man's repressed side is unleashed. The trigger is of course, the titular object, an ancient Aztec ceremonial mask that alters the behaviour of anyone who wears it. A none-too-subtle allegory for drug use, specifically that of LSD, the hallucinogenic reaction that psychiatrist Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens) has each time he puts on the mask could be considered akin to a “bad trip.” Transported into a surrealistic environment populated with shrouded figures with flayed skin, a skull-faced being who shoots fireballs from its hands and a mysterious young woman who bears a resemblance to his fiancee Pam Albright (Claudette Nevins) and is slated to become a human sacrifice, Barnes' visions are deeply paranoid and anxiety-ridden.

Eventually, he is transformed from a respected, buttoned-down professional into a sweaty, wide-eyed psychotic whose violent impulses include trying to kill his secretary, Miss Goodrich (Anne Collings).

Offering up a pretty blatant anti-drug message, the film's producer/director, a veteran National Film Board (NFB) documentary filmmaker, Julian Roffman may have been inspired by the real-life use of LSD and other psychotropic drugs on patients by the medical establishment of the day. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, LSD was sometimes prescribed to patients by their psychiatrists; as part of a psychotherapeutic regimen, it was believed the drug assisted individuals in unblocking repressed memories, which could then be confronted and presumably treated.

Dr. Ewen Cameron

More nefarious in nature though were a series of mind-control experiments beginning in the late-1950s that were funded by the CIA but undertaken at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute. Dubbed “Project MKULTRA”, the studies were conducted on dozens of unwitting subjects by Dr. Ewen Cameron. The Scottish born-American psychiatrist believed that by administering numerous drugs like LSD and electroshock therapy, individuals could be reprogrammed and any existing mental illness could be cured through the erasure of their memories. As Cameron's experiments were not well-publicised at the time, it's difficult to say whether Roffman would have had much, if any knowledge of them at all while masking The Mask, but it is nevertheless interesting to note how drugs like LSD were employed by medical professionals for purportedly atruistic intentions.

In addition to being Canada's first full-length horror production, The Mask was the country's first (and still only one of two) 3-D films and the first Canadian effort to be released by a major American studio (in this case, Warner Bros.). A box-office success, the film would continue to find success when it was re-released in 1971 under the new title Eyes of Hell and would even find itself (courtesy of a then-new company called New Line Cinema) distributed to college campuses across the U.S., where audiences were no doubt more than cognizant of the film's many drugs references.

James Burrell

Electroacoustic Dreams

We've got a guest blogger here at depthsploitation.  Paul Corupe operates the website canuxploitation and is a fellow fan of the film. He has written a number of articles about The Mask and is something of an expert on the film. I'm very honored to welcome him as a contributor to this blog.


In the history of Canadian film--especially Canadian genre film--Julian Roffman's surreal spook show THE MASK holds a vitally important and esteemed place. Aimed squarely at the American market, THE MASK was the first of its kind in many ways--it became the first Canadian film to be distributed by a major Hollywood studio, the first 3-D film made here and, arguably, Canada's first feature horror film. But what doesn't get mentioned often is the film's entirely unique score, a sometimes chilling mix of straight orchestration and "musique concrète" by prolific composer Louis Applebaum and American-born electronic music pioneer Myron Schaeffer.

Louis Applebaum in 1945

The staff composer at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Applebaum may not be as recognizable today as he once was, but he remains one of the true legends of Canadian music. Applebaum produced some 250 scores for the NFB between 1942 and 1960 before he left to compose pieces for the Stratford Festival and, later, work on arts advocacy boards. An extremely versatile composer, Applebaum was comfortable with a range of styles, from full symphonic works to choral pieces and even modern classical and jazz, and even garnered an Academy Award nomination for his music for THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (1945). Collaborating with Schaeffer, a serious avant-garde musician who had recently become the director of the University of Toronto's newly established Electronic Music Studio, the pair created one of the eeriest scores of any Canadian horror film--a swirling, sometimes violent collage of electronically manipulated sounds that draws the terror out of THE MASK's insistently hallucinogenic imagery.


Applebaum almost certainly met Roffman at the NFB, where the young director cut his filmmaking teeth shooting military training documentaries. Roffman subsequently left the NFB in the late 1950s to pursue independent feature production, with the hope that he could make a film that would be picked up by a major U.S. studio--a goal that many felt would help kick start the national film industry. For his debut feature, 1959's THE BLOODY BROOD, Roffman decided to bring in Applebaum to write the wild, bongo-laced jazz score that plays as degenerate beatniks get their kicks as they kill an innocent delivery boy. But when Hollywood didn't come calling, Roffman started an even more commercial feature to be shot using the 3-D process--THE MASK. Applebaum, who had just left the NFB himself, was on board again and likely convinced Roffman and producer Nat Taylor to give Schaeffer a chance. At the time, Schaeffer had just helped develop the Hamograph, a new electronic music "instrument" that, along with some additional equipment, pulled sounds from up to 12 tape loop inputs and then allowed the composer to shift tone and pitch and add echo.

The Hamograph

As with Roffman's direction, Applebaum and Schaeffer take significantly different approaches to depicting the "real" world and the mask's inner world of the psyche. In the scenes set in psychiatrist Dr. Barnes' office, Applebaum's small but capable orchestra provides the incidental music, often employing a minimalist approach as solo woodwinds brass and thundering drums taking turns pulling out of the pack to weave creepy solo themes that sometimes build to intense brass stings. Electronic touches are often added in these moments too, especially when the mask is mentioned or is actually present in the scene. There's an otherworldly flavour that keeps resurfacing--for example, a tape delay effect is often added to the drums, creating a distinct rumbling that certainly underscores the artifact's bizarre powers and hints at the musical cues to come.

When Dr. Barnes dons on the mask and the film switches to its 3-D renderings of his subconscious, the accompanying soundtrack turns sharply into musique concrète--a post-World War II music movement in which electronically manipulated sounds are pieced together and generally presented as an abstract, sonic montage. Advertised as "Electro Magic Sound" in the film's publicity materials, we can assume these sequences are at least partially Schaeffer's performance at his Hamograph--it's impossible to tell exactly where Applebaum's work ends and Schaeffer's begins, as Schaeffer apparently suffered a heart attack and had to leave the film, leaving Applebaum to quickly fill in with his rudimentary understanding of the Hamograph. Once the fog parts and Barnes fully enters the mask's dream world, a bed of stormy, echoing percussion erupts on top of which layers of mechanical roars, grating screeches, human screams and electronic whirs are added, creating a dissonant and even unnerving collection of artfully overlapped sounds. It's the perfectly compliment to the 3-D visuals of the mask's nightmare world, as Barnes witnesses a strange ritual sacrifice, floating coffins and surreal serpent attacks. Even though it may not sound like any nightmare you've ever had, it still provokes the same panic-fueled emotions that can accompany bad dreams, making it far more effective than a traditional score might have been.

The decision to use the Hamograph for these scenes was a daring one--this multi-layered attack of electronic noise was virtually unheard of in commercial films at the time, even in sometimes boundary-pushing genre works. Compared to the soundtracks of other 1960s horror efforts, such the moody orchestral leanings of Les Baxter's work on THE PIT AND THE PENDELUM and Bernard Herrmann's homicidal strings in PSYCHO, THE MASK's atmospheric audio patterns are much closer to serious avant-garde electronic music of the period or even Louis and Bebe Barron's pulsating score for the sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET, which had premiered just five years earlier. And while the Barrons' "electronic tonalities" were shiver-inducing in some of the film's scarier scenes involving similar "monsters from the Id," they don't approach the brute force of spiraling madness that Applebaum and Schaeffer capture here.

Myron Schaeffer

Burdened with heart troubles in the last years of his life, Schaeffer passed away in 1965 without achieving much notability beyond academic circles, although Folkways Records did release some of his recordings and it's said that the Moog synthesizer was inspired by the Hamograph. Instead it was Applebaum who carried the mantle for electronic music throughout the rest of his career, later conducting fellow Canadian composer Eldon Rathburn's abstract pieces for the NFB's Labyrinthe pavilion at Expo 1967. Applebaum was awarded the Order of Canada in 1976 and was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 1995, just five years before his death. And while their work for THE MASK remains a minor footnote on Applebaum and Schaeffer's impressive resumes, 50 years later their music for this psychological horror classic remains one of the most effective of any Canadian horror film, using what was then considered cutting edge technology to create a true symphony of our deepest psychological fears.

Paul Corupe

If you'd like to acquaint yourself with the score, why not track back to this post.

THE MASK OF THE SMOKING MIRROR

The original Mask prop.

The first time a fan of The Mask discovers the prop mask used in the film they are in for a shock. While the film is in Black and White, the mask can only be described as made in Technicolor. Brilliant green and blue mosaics cover the skull shaped design and I’ve been told that its teeth are real human teeth.

The design of the mask used in the film was based on an actual South American mask. Julian Roffman explained the inspiration behind the design;

“In South America and in Africa, the witch doctors rub peyote inside the mask and the heat from their face releases the drug. They go into a tantrum, they have their own visions. So we knew the mask could do this. I researched masks and I found a South American Indian Mask that the tribes had used.”

Hamilton, Filmfax #25 p.87

Perhaps the mask Roffman had used was this one (pictured below) from the British Museum, a mosaic tiled mask from Mexico. “The skull of the Smoking Mirror” is a mosaic mask created to represent the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, whose name translates into English as “the Smoking Mirror”.

The Mosaic mask of Tezcatlipoca

The mask uses a human skull as its base, with the back cut away and lined with leather so it can be worn. The leather also creates a hinge for the jawbone.

The alternating bands of the mosaic are made of blue turquoise and black while the eyes are made of orbs of iron pyrite, encircled by a ring of white conch shell.

This mask dates back to the 15th-16th century AD.