Information/Write-up
THE MASK (aka Eyes of Hell) is a cult psychological suspense film from 1961 - both Canada's first "horror" film, and it's first 3D motion picture.
This edition of the soundtrack features Myron Schaeffer's original music for The Mask's hallucinatory 3-D sequences for the very first time on any format, as well as a new live score composed by the group LARVA.
Schaeffer was appointed first director of Toronto's Electronic Music Studio in 1959, and his visceral electroacoustic sound collages for The Mask were billed as having been recorded in ELECTRO MAGIC SOUND. This unique process is still shrouded in mystery. However, the results are highly reminiscent of Louis & Bebe Barron's groundbreaking soundtrack to FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), just four years earlier.
Inspired by the primal screech and skronk of Schaeffer's pioneering music, LARVA set out to re-score film's bizarre 3D nightmares using only basic sound sources and effects - oscillators, treated guitar, analogue synths, theremin, old-skool tape echo/spring reverb and live foley sound effects. The new score was premiered at Flatpack Film Festival in 2013 and toured a number of other festivals before being recorded live onto ½" tape.
Ondes Positives are also thrilled to announce that this first-ever release of The Mask soundtrack coincides with the restoration and re-release of the original cult movie. Produced by the 3-D Film Archive in association with Kino Lorber, it has been restored using the best remaining 35mm elements to create a 2K polarized 3D print which premiered at Toronto Int'l Film Festival in Sept 2015, to be available in selected theatres and on Blu Ray & DVD by the end of the year.
THE MASK - ORIGINAL SCORE (1961)
Composed & Performed by Myron Schaeffer
Recorded in Electro Magic Sound at UTEMS (University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio)
Performed on The Hamograph
Re-Mastered by Michael Valentine West
Licensed by The 3-D Film Archive
Please Note: The Mask's original score has been mastered from multiple available sources, though this did not include the 2015 restoration which was completed after this record was already in production.
THE MASK - LIVE RE-SCORE (2013)
Written & Performed by LARVA
Nick Sales & Scott Johannsson
Recorded Live to Tape at Solatron Studios
09/10/13
Recorded & Mixed by Matt Eaton
When one thinks of a man putting on a strange mask, one that turns him into a dangerous Mr. Hyde like character, most will immediately think of the Jim Carrey movie or the comic it was based on, but Canadian director Julian Roffman was there first with his 1961 movie also called The Mask. Roffman is considered by most as the godfather of genre filmmaking in Canada, and The Mask has the distinction of not only being the first Canadian horror film but also for being the only Canadian 3D feature film as well. Though the film has only three 3D sequences – totaling roughly 14 minutes – they are truly remarkable and are what makes this film the cult classic it is today.
Borrowing from the gimmick master William Castle the film opens with Jim Moran, a popular television personality at the time, informing the audience of the mysterious history and power of The Mask, explaining that when you see someone put on The Mask you would then put on the cardboard mask that was provided to you, “Then you will share in an adventure in the darkest recesses of the human mind.” This is very reminiscent of William Castle’s 13 Ghost which had the audience don “Ghost Viewers” when prompted, and it came out only a year earlier.
“I’m totally not William Castle, now put on those Ghost Viewers…I mean Masks.”
After the films infomercial like prologue, we jump right into the action as we see a poor woman being chased by a deranged man. The man is Michael Radin (Martin Lavut), a professor who works at the local museum, and he isn’t chasing this woman in some strange way to get tenure. He had taken a South American mask home to study (Do museums really allow that?) upon donning the mask it had opened his mind, expanding the evilness deep down in his soul, and turned him into a murderous bastard. After brutally murdering the woman Radin goes to see Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens), a psychiatrist that Radin hopes can free him from this living nightmare. Barnes is the film’s main character and clearly falls into the category of people that are “Really bad at their jobs” for though he chalks up Radin’s ravings about The Mask to stem from some deep-seated psychological issue, and not from some form of mystical possession, but what he doesn’t do is notify the police. Radin tells him of his dreams of committing murder, and he has the defensive wounds on his face from his last victim, but Barnes puts that down to probably self-inflicted.
“And then you felt the need to write Helter Skelter in pig’s blood?”
A mentally distraught Radin leaves Barnes’s office, goes home, and blows his brains out, but not before packing up The Mask and having his landlady mail it to Barnes. This is certainly a nasty way at getting back out your skeptical shrink. It’s here that the film introduces police detective Martin (Bill Walker) who is investigating Radin’s death to ensure that it was, in fact, a suicide and not murder, and after discovering that Radin had a valuable mask on loan from the museum (Again, really? I know us Canadians are known for politeness but letting someone take a valuable artifact home seems rather odd), and now that it’s missing he amps up his investigation. Barnes tells Martin about his patient’s strange obsession with The Mask but has no idea where it is.
“It’s definitely not in that unopened package on my desk.”
When Detective Martin leaves Barnes opens the package and discovers The Mask, he first tries to get his secretary to stop Martin from leaving, but he’s too late, so he then sits down and reads the packages accompanying note from Radin. The note basically goads Barnes into putting on The Mask, and as Radin knows what is most likely going to happen this quite the “Fuck you for not helping” note from beyond the grave. It’s here that we get out first of three nightmare sequences as a booming voiceover orders us to, “PUT ON THE MASK NOW!” This sequence is as if Salvador Dali had dropped acid while watching Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Ghastly figures in hauntingly tortured death masks parade through one visual nightmare after another, and the 3D effects just add to the otherworldliness of the scene.
If I’d seen this as a kid I’d have been under my seat with my eyes covered in record time.
The rest of the film’s running time is divided between Detective Martin trying to find The Mask and Barne’s fiancée Pam Albright (Claudette Nevins) and her desperate attempts to get The Mask away from the man she loves. Barnes tries to explain to her the importance of The Mask, how it can further man’s understanding of the psyche like never before, but she clearly sees that he is being driven insane by the damn thing. That Barnes later seduces his secretary and later tries to kill her, kind of bears out Pam’s worries.
I totally understand the psyche on display here. Barnes is batshit crazy.
Even with just 83 minute run time, some people may find some of the police procedural stuff a bit of a slog, but the acting across the board is fantastic, and those nightmare dreamscapes will most likely haunt long after you’ve turned off your player. With The Mask Julian Roffman brings a visual flair to what could have been just your average thriller, and added to that is the excellent electronic score of “Electro Magic Sound” provided by Myron Schaeffer, which just makes those nightmarish vision even spookier. This is a must-see for fans of the genre and really makes me proud to be a Canadian.
-Mike Brooks, 2016
Director Julian Roffman’s creepy tale about a haunted tribal mask was the first feature-length horror movie and first feature-length 3-D film produced in Canada.
You can call it a "cult classic," and you can tell us it was the first ever Canadian-made horror film, or that the Toronto-shot 3-D creeper has been restored digitally.
But you can't mask the reality that The Mask was low-budget in 1961, and that its kitschy appeal will be limited to genre fetishists and popcorn-chomping ironists in 2015.
The story concerns an ancient piece of tribal headgear that causes hallucinogenic visions and mood-altering effects to the wearer.
"Put the mask on, now!" the audience is commanded, which is a prompt to don the cardboard spectacles to see lurid, surreal scenes of occult gore and rudimentary pyrotechnics in extradimensional form on screen.
Because those who sample the mask become addicted to its spell, we can see the film as an anti-drug allegory. But a psychologist obsessively believes the wild-eyed mosaic mask can be used as a tool to access the darkest parts of the human mind, where evil is harboured, masked and perhaps brought out for special occasions.
Happy Halloween, by the way.
-Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail, Oct 23, 2015
No Comments