THE MASK (1994)

There’s more to comic-books than superheroes. Wikipedia erroneously lists The Mask as a “1994 American superhero comedy film.” The original 1989-1991 run of Dark Horse Comics’ The Mask is even less superheroic. The ancient titular mask may grant a hapless bank clerk powers beyond imagination, but as he says himself, “I could fight crime! Protect the innocent! Work for world peace! But first…”

Batman (1989) proved a wildly successful comic-book film for adults, and Dark Horse Comics took note. That same year, Mike Richardson, creator of The Mask, approached New Line Cinema with his story: beleaguered Stanley Ipkiss becomes an all-powerful green-headed cartoon character thanks to a magical mask. Darker even than Batman Returns (1991), Richardson’s comic followed Stanley venting his frustrations against the world in a bloody fashion. When Richardson pitched the project, “it was around the time of all those Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.” The Mask was very nearly a horror movie.

Adapting it faithfully was never on the cards. One referenced idea was a creep who peeled the faces off corpses and his ‘masks’ would transform teens into his zombie slaves… so, not The Mask. On their fifth Elm Street entry, New Line sensed their Freddy franchise was on the decline and were positive The Mask could be their next hit. Only three Elm Street entries have Fresh statuses on Rotten Tomatoes, and two of them were made by horror legend Wes Craven. They got Chuck Russell, who helmed the fan-favourite third entry The Dream Warriors (1986).

But Richardson “didn’t want this [character] to be the next Freddy Krueger.” Both have unlimited supernatural abilities to conjure fantastical carnage and distinctly weird heads, but he “wanted the main character to be more like Tex Avery.” Luckily, after Dream Warriors and The Blob (1988), Russell was tired of the Grand Guignol. After a spec script for Curious George, Mike Werb wrote his first draft for a moderately family-friendly madcap comedy in under six weeks. With revisions from Mark Verheiden, Russell turned in his take on The Mask… and “New Line thought I was off my rocker.”

In the first few seconds of meeting him, we all know a Stanley Ipkiss type. He works a dead-end job, keeps a Looney Tunes comic in his drawer, buys two concert tickets for his attractive colleague, and is such a doomed pushover she walks all over him and takes both for herself and her friend. A hopeless romantic and the ultimate schmuck. Seconds later, he lets it happen all over again when bombshell Tina (Cameron Diaz) effortlessly charms him while scouting the bank for a robbery.

This first act is an exercise in humiliation and kicks Stanley (Jim Carrey) when he’s down. We’ve all had that night out where our mate begged us and pleaded it’d be good for us. Then we wished we’d just stayed in. Bouncers bounce him, cars splash him, and then Tina sees him at his lowest point… so far that night. When his replacement hunk-of-junk car literally falls apart, “the loaner” for the loner, Stanley swears the whole world is against him.

Unlike in the source material, Stanley’s a good man. Diving into the harbour to save someone, he finds his drowning victim is a floating pile of rubbish. But the man’s ‘face’ turns out to be a strange wooden mask… and putting it on grants Stanley every wish he could make.

Russell pitched this to Bob Shaye, founder of New Line, the one who saw potential in Wes Craven’s vision, who “allowed me to do something very different and original.” Less than two months after that first draft, it was greenlit. That was 1990. Russell “didn’t hear back from them for about a year” and found his film in development hell. “On paper,” Russell admitted, “The Mask was quite difficult for people to understand how it all would work.”

Rick Moranis, Robin Williams, and Martin Short—all established funny leading men—were considered for the lead role. Instead, an unknown comedian was going to head this multi-hyphenate summer blockbuster. “The delays at New Line worked in my favour,” said a relieved Richardson, “If the project had been made then, it wouldn’t have had Jim Carrey.”

A tape circulated the New Line studios featured Carrey in one of his sketches for In Living Color (1990-94) and Russell had already seen him perform stand-up live. Once Bitten (1985) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) were prominent enough roles for Carrey to be on the posters. 1994 would prove to be his breakout year. However, he signed onto The Mask before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) was released, making him still a bit of an unknown quantity.

On a $18–23M budget, Jim Carrey is the best special effect they could have bought. Other actors might have been too resigned to the reality of the misery, or not understood how to play a cartoon. With his puppy-dog eyes and beaming smile, Carrey shines with a pitch-perfect performative style.

The introverted man-child who lives alone and watches children’s shows is an all-too-common schtick, but there’s a compassionate earnestness to Carrey. Stanley tries, he tries hard. He’s charming and attractive to boot, but his overwhelming flaw is that he lets the world roll over him. The Mask may bring out the ego, but honestly, it kicks Stanley up the ass and forces him to make changes in his life.

And what a change! After the VFX whirlwind flourish of a Tasmanian Devil transformation, what Russell leaves the audience with is Jim Carrey… only green. This was make or break. Everything depended on what he did next.

“How do you take a new comedian with the most expressive face in the business and cover him in silicone and latex and still keep his expressiveness? I didn’t want to replace Jim.” And Russell didn’t. With the expert help of Academy Award makeup FX artist Greg Cannom, Carrey underwent daily four-hour sessions to apply a series of unobtrusive applications that left the “bony structures on Jim’s face” free to work their magic. The performance is entirely Carrey accentuated by The Mask, not buried under it. They gave him giant pearly whites to complete the look, purely for non-dialogue scenes. Carrey just learned how to speak with them.

Stanley’s warped persona, The Mask, is a grinning zoot-suited maniac who loves being the centre of attention. The tricky balancing act for Russell was how people in this world reacted to The Mask character. Dazzled, enamoured, bewildered, but crucially they buy into it, which encourages the audience to follow suit.

The film never grinds to a halt with people trying to comprehend the spectacular change in their reality. The fact that they react to it sincerely makes it all the funnier.

Det. Kelloway (Peter Riegert) is incensed to find a framed photo of his wife with her number in The Mask’s trousers. Dorian (Peter Greene) shoots The Mask and then sheepishly checks his hair, noticing the silhouetted audience cheering The Mask for his award-winning ‘death’ scene.

Street hooligans act like overgrown children, eagerly accepting balloon animals from a carnival barker version of The Mask. One punk nearly wells up when his balloon poodle is “put down” and popped. Then, after fumbling with a condom, his final balloon creation becomes a terrifyingly realistic Tommy gun! The very next scene sees The Mask getting revenge on his dodgy local mechanics. In the comics, he murders them with an exhaust pipe; in the family-friendly film, he… well, he shoves it up their ass.

Bullets pepper the alleyway when The Mask fires, but crucially, he never crosses the line and kills anyone. That isn’t to say there aren’t any deaths. The old-school mobsters happily mow each other down, complete with bloody squibs. It’s refreshingly dark for a film beloved by children to contain genuine menace; the villains are adult criminals who behave accordingly. Dorian’s boss shoving a golf tee into his mouth and striking a ball off his face is a scene that has always stuck with me. Dorian putting on The Mask was certainly scary, but then so was Stanley ripping it off, with his skin sticking and stretching, further contorting Carrey’s features. Check out the 1993 The Mask pressbook concept art for a glimpse at how close we came to those original horror ideas.

Carrey wasn’t the only fresh face leading a major motion picture. The curvaceous femme fatale, Tina, who entrances both Stanley and the Mask, was played by a then-21-year-old model who’d never acted before. Cameron Diaz was recommended by a costume director and had the best chemistry with Carrey during the auditions. When Russell’s camera pulls in to that first shot of Diaz, she truly is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Not only beautiful, but her charms were so effective that Tina was rewritten from a genuine villainess to a bad girl who turns good. Diaz brings an underrated talent, matching the pinball velocity of tone and humour. Her understated falling for Stanley, the joie de vivre when dancing with The Mask, and her fierce independence is evident when she knees The Mask in the balls when his lovestruck Pepé Le Pew act gets too much. Diaz even gets a brief moment to match Carrey’s silliness when she enthusiastically licks his face… which turns out to be his dog as he wakes up.

We have to mention the third star, Max McCarter, the Jack Russell terrier who played Milo. Not only Stanley’s high-spirited companion, this pup saves the day numerous times in the third act. Plus, Milo gets one of the biggest cheer moments when he puts The Mask on himself. “I’m just happy that Milo wasn’t cut—that character was not in the comic-book” Werb praises, “the folks at ILM were fighting over who got to animate the dog. That’s about the highest compliment a writer can get.”

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Dream Quest Images took over wherever Carrey physically couldn’t go. His eyes shoot out, he bounces like a pogo stick, and he peels himself off the pavement after a high-rise fall. The visual effects hold up remarkably well given their cartoonish nature. The details are there, but modern advancements like skin pores and hairs would only diminish the striking effect of the animated Mask. Russell boasts, “The guys at ILM said they figured I saved about a million bucks once I got Jim.”

“Jim did things that, when he became a superstar, he never would do,” producer Bob Engelman recalled when Carrey came down with the flu. “He was sick as a dog,” Engelman remembers, “and I said, ‘They won’t let us shut down [production]. If we don’t get this, we don’t get this.’ He was a trooper and was fantastic.” And the scene he persevered through? The Cuban Pete ensemble musical dance number!

“One of the big inspirations was a visual of Cab Calloway in a zoot suit. You add what Jim Carrey could do physically with this cool story, and it’s kind of dangerous insanity. Then you add in that retro ‘40s music and cartoons I grew up with, and it all came together for me. My excuse was it was a comic book movie, but my reasoning was that I actually didn’t want it to age. It’s one of my only films, if I see it on cable, I end up watching the whole thing.“

Chuck Russell, director.

Russell has good reason to be proud. Jim Carrey had three major breakout films all released in 1994. Out of Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber, The Mask was his most critical and financial success. It raked in $351M and held the record for the most profitable film based on a comic-book until Joker (2019) nearly 30 years later. Critically, the film fared well, with The Mask nominated for ‘Best Visual Effects’ at the Academy Awards, Carrey winning a Golden Globe Award, and Max receiving a Kid’s Choice Award.

The adventures of Stanley and The Mask would continue in two forms. The Mask: Animated Series ran from 1995-97 and even crossed over with the animated Ace Ventura show. A fully-fledged Mask II was planned, and Nintendo Power magazine even ran an official sweepstakes for one lucky reader to cameo in it!

Carrey and Russell never settled on the right idea, and the poor magazine winner, Nathan Ryan Runk, eventually received a consolation prize package of an official crew jacket, a bunch of video games, and a cool $5000. “I would have likely been okay with doing a walk-on in Son of the Mask,” Runk relented. “[Although] at the time, I didn’t know how bad it was going to be. I’m glad I went with the money.”

“They didn’t put anything in Jim’s contract about a sequel. We tried for years to get him to do it, He became probably the hottest movie star in the world. He was semi-interested, but he was just always on different projects. One of the great things about The Mask is that anybody can get [it]. We went to every top comedian and nobody wanted to follow Jim in that role.”

Mike Richardson, ‘The Mask’ creator

One ‘comedian’ eventually took the plunge: Jamie Kennedy. To paraphrase The Mask, somebody should’ve stopped him. Son of The Mask (2005) was unleashed without Carrey, Diaz, Russell, or any talent bar Alan Cumming. This belated sequel was critically mauled. Scott Von Doviak of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quipped, “If he keeps working hard and honing his craft, Jamie Kennedy may one day achieve his goal of becoming a second-rate Jim Carrey.” Costing four times more than The Mask and making six times less, Son of The Mask effectively killed any real chance of continuing the franchise.

With successes like Hellboy (2004), Sin City (2005), and 300 (2007), Dark Horse Comics are still in the game. Now that comic-book movies dominate the box office landscape, people have expressed an interest in a more faithful Mask adaptation. But while some crave Itchy & Scratchy’s gory antics, many yearn for the nostalgia of the wholly original 1994 film.

Like Stanley, we’ve enjoyed the ride, but we should learn to appreciate life without relying on the same escapist fantasy time and again. Let The Mask remain a misfit gem, standing proudly unique in a sea of superheroes.

USA | 1994 | 101 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Chuck Russell.
writer: Mike Werb (story by Michael Fallon & Mark Verheiden; based on the comic-book by Mike Richardson).
starring: Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Richard Jeni & Amy Yasbeck.