Would The Mask Have Worked as a Straight Horror Film?
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Some interesting news hit the Net today as The Mask director Chuck Russell has revealed he had to battle bosses at New Line to let him make the film a comedy as opposed to the horror movie they had originally envisioned. Oh, what might have been!
According to Celebretainment, while speaking to Xfinity about the 30th anniversary of his A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Russell, who also directed 1988’s The Blob remake, Bless the Child, and The Scorpion King, said: “It’s a great example of really fighting for your vision in a film. We changed it from a horror film into a comedy. It was originally conceived as being a horror film. That was a real battle. New Line wanted a new kind of Freddy [Krueger] movie.”
Interestingly, the Dark Horse comic book series the film is based on presents a far more gruesome individual than the one portrayed by Jim Carrey in Russell’s film. He explains, “By coincidence, I had seen the same original Mask comic they ended up buying, and I thought, ‘That’s really cool, but it’s too derivative of Freddy Krueger.’ It really was. He would put on the mask and kill people. And have one-liners. It was a really cool, splatterpunk, black and white comic. They’ve redone the comics to be more like my movie, but the original comics were really cool, dark, and scary. But I knew, as a film, it would be very reminiscent of Freddy Krueger.”
Speaking of Carrey, Russell says of his casting choice for the 1994 film, “He wasn’t really desired as a leading man at that time. [When I saw] him, he looked like a hallucination live on stage. Jim read [the script] and said, ‘I’ll be doing this role at grocery store openings when I’m 70.'”
Synopsis:
Hyperactive mayhem results when a mild-manned banker discovers an ancient mask that transforms him into a zany prankster with superhuman powers in this special-effects-intensive comedy. The wildly improvisational Jim Carrey plays Stanley Ipkiss, a decent-hearted but socially awkward guy who one night finds a strange mask. Carrey’s trademark energy reveals itself after Stanley puts on the mask and the banker transforms into The Mask, a green-skinned, zoot-suited fireball. The rubber-faced Mask possesses the courage to do the wild, fun things that Stanley fears, including romancing Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz).
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