Would The Mask Have Worked as a Straight Horror Film?
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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