It was an odd movie to be sure. Unsettling without being over-the-top scary for a wimp like myself. There were some strange things and some places where they kind of left me scratching my head.
The biggest offender in this realm is near the end. So the doctor goes to his mentor to talk about what’s going on and the use of the mask is repeatedly referred to as an addiction, not only by the mentor but also by the doctor’s fiance. So they decide they’re going to help him with whatever it is that he thinks he’s going to do with the mask…and yet, they leave it with him in the bedroom? Did they expect this guy who is apparently addicted to the power of the mask to stop himself like that? Why not keep the mask somewhere else except when they’re doing whatever studies they think they can do on it.
I’m not sure if this was a cut for time thing, but there were some major leaps between scenes. One moment, he’s frantically searching for the mask and the next he has it and is back home. Also, where in the world did that taxi driver put the mask when he took it into the museum? He was in the building for all of 30 seconds and when the doctor went in there, there was no one in sight.
All that being said, this was my first time watching a MST3K episode in its first airing EVER. I literally have never seen an episode of MST3K when it was originally being aired before. So that was cool.
And I agree that the use of 3D was well done. Its use actually made sense.
The mentor gave him a heavy sedative, which was expected to knock him out for 12 hours. It’s still utterly bewildering why they left the mask in the room with him. One can guess that maybe what happened either between scenes or in a scene cut for time is that he refused to take the sedative unless he had the mask nearby? Or taking the mask away caused him to be agitated enough to risk overcoming the sedative? Maybe? Or maybe the writer just needed the mask to be there, so it was.
Yes. This was very obviously cut for time. I think there was mention of him showing up in someone’s window wearing the mask or something? He retrieved it and was at large with it and the police were involved, and we skipped over that whole bit.
That got me, too. Why did they even do it that way in the first place? She’s got the mask. She gets in the cab. The cab takes her to the museum (not the police station??). Then the cab driver gets out with the mask and she’s left in the back seat and Allan drives up, so she steals the cab and drives off, and he runs in and can’t find it, and then… Cut for time? I don’t know. Why the heck did she send the cabbie to return the mask? Why didn’t she take it directly to Lt. Martin, since she knows it’s evidence in a homicide case, and that he has motivation to keep it secure? Where did the cabbie go? What about the stolen cab? Where did Allan find the mask?
Oooo, that is exciting! Congrats! Did you participate in the live chat at all? I’m sad I missed that, but I had a rough day and couldn’t watch live this time.
Honestly, if the scenes cut didn’t add much then it’s another case of a neat movie being let down by the writing. Everything else seems to go smoother. The actors are giving it their all and the effects are actually kinda neat in spots.
I’ll echo the comments on the aftershow. These are always fun, but the Halloweenyness of this one made it special. The crew’s costumes were fantastic. I had to watch an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog when it was done because of Emily’s. And good job everyone who was in the costume contest. There was some real imagination on show there.
The mask puppet was ultra-cool, so it was good to see the behind the scenes stuff with it.
I really enjoyed this one, and I’m one of the six people in the world who like 3D, so I loved getting to use my Kingavision glasses.
I wasn’t sure where the appropriate place to report this was, but I did see some other people mention it on this thread so I’ll add my two cents: I could barely hear the movie in this one. I had to use my audio receiver’s auto volume, dynamic range compression, and ‘night time’ modes all to try to normalize volume (usually all of this is turned off and I rely on the audio mix from the media being played), and even then the movie was still really quiet compared to the riffs. It’s been an issue for me with most of the episodes this season. Is audio mixing being done on a system that’s running some kind of dynamic range compression on playback, so it sounds fine to the mixer but the actual mixed track is super low?
I have a weekly bad movie night with friends via Discord, and what’s really nice about it is that there are independent volume controls for everyone in a voice channel and for the stream that someone’s playing out (normally one person streams the movie and we all just watch along). It’d be neat if the Gizmoplex virtual theater let you independently adjust movie and riffer volumes. That’d probably be a technical nightmare to implement, since the player would have to stream a video and separate audio tracks and you’d need to hope they were all synced, and it all wouldn’t be helpful whatsoever for downloaded episodes, but it was just kind of a shower thought I had.
I’m so glad we got the 3D print of this one.
My local rep theater once did a William Castle series where they re-created the gimmicks that went along with each of the movies to the best of their abilities, and while that was a lot of fun, it also highlights that a lot of William Castle movies are built around one idea (what if The Tingler got into your movie theater and the seat vibrated?) and the rest of the movie is just padding between the one or two set pieces. There’s no reason to watch The Tingler if your theater seat doesn’t have the possibility of buzzing.
This felt like they had the kooky 3D scenes fully visualized and then needed to figure out a reason for them, and thus is perfect MST3k fodder.
I haven’t seen it noted here yet, but this film contains the absolute best “policemen eating doughnuts” scene in cinematic history. They did appear to be cake doughnuts, so a few points off for that, but otherwise, the scene lingers so long on every sumptuous bite that one can almost begin to taste their yummy goodness.
And not one mention by the riffers?
But kudos to the two actors in that delicious scene. It’s not easy to actually take a bite out of something and still act. They both did excellent jobs in that aspect.
Rewatching it, I suspect the actor playing the lieutenant never took a bite out of his doughnut at all during the scene. The doughnut he is seen “eating” had been pre-bitten! When he takes it out of the box, the part with a bite taken out of it is hidden by his hand. We don’t get a good shot of it as he brings it up to his mouth. He mimics taking a bite out of it and then we seen the previously chomped doughnut being brought back down from his mouth.
At the end of that shot, when he goes over to see what the lab guy wants to show him, he is seen taking a bite out of this doughnut, but then they cut to the next shot where he is again just pretend eating.
He does a fine job of pretend eating and drinking. Since he had the larger role and a lot of dialog to get through in this scene, I guess he felt his lines had to be perfectly clear. The other actor does a fine job of still enunciating his lines well even with a mouthful of yummy goodness.
