Death Mask (1998)

A low budget straight-to-video horror movie featuring the once in a lifetime pairing of James Best and Linnea Quigley, Death Mask (1998) is, surprisingly, quite entertaining.  Best, nowadays primarily remembered for playing Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard, had, prior to that, enjoyed a number of appearances in B-movies, most notably as the lead in The Killer Shrews.  With Death Mask, which he also wrote, he goes back to his origins in a cheap and cheerful production that works in a number of popular backwoods horror tropes: carnivals, freaks, sadistic clowns and swamp witches.  The story, by the standards of the genre, is reasonably original.  Best plays a carnival side show player who carves masks from wood.  Disfigured as a child by his father, a cruel carnival clown, by pushing his face into a fire, Best's character doesn't just carve masks, he also wears a latex mask to cover his burns.  Unfortunately, his masks are no longer selling and he comes into conflict with his asshole of a boss, who threatens to drop him from the carnival.  A despondent Best strikes up a friendship with Quigley's dancer (who is involved with his boss, but unaware that the latter is cheating on her), who takes him to see a swamp witch.  The witch gives him a piece of wood from a 'hanging tree'.  Best carves a mask from it which, when he puts it on, drives anyone who looks into its eyes to kill themselves and others.  The first victim being a female carnival worker who, having inadvertently looked into the mask's eyes, runs in terror, headlong into a carnival ride, which decapitates her.  Despite Quigley's urgings to destroy the mask and the witch explaining that the mask's 'evil' wood is channelling all of his sublimated hate and resentment into a destructive psychic aura, Best succumbs to temptation and goes on a mini-rampage with the mask, destroying those he believes have wronged him.  These include a local prostitute who rejected him because of scars, the carnival owner and some other randoms who insult him.  Needless to say, it doesn't end well.

For what it is, Death Mask is reasonably well produced and director Steve Latshaw - a veteran of this sort of movie - moves it all along at a decent pace.  A large part of the action takes place after dark and this, combined with the cramped trailers and booths of the carnival, give it the sort of claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere appropriate to the subject matter.  The mask itself is reasonably well realised, although the video effects used for when it possesses Best and projects its evil are pretty cheesy, (although back in 1998 they probably seemed quite sophisticated for a cheap direct-to-video production).  Best's script is actually pretty good, recognising the ludicrousness of its subject matter with some black humour and provides the main players with some decent dialogue.  Best himself gives a good performance as the downbeat carnival mask carver, never falling over in self pity whilst still eliciting audience sympathy and even when on a rampage, remaining likeable.  Linnea Quigley also gets to a do lot more than simply take her clothes off - her usual function in low budget horror movies - actually getting to play a sympathetic character integral to the plot.  (Don't worry, though, she still takes her clothes off for a number of entirely gratuitous shower scenes).  At the end of the day, Death Mask is simply a cheap horror film, but has a number of aspects which lift it above average, featuring some decent acting performances, dialogue that actually sounds like normal speech and a half-way decent central concept.  I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by Death Mask when I stumbled across it, with no expectations, on an obscure streaming channel.  Worth looking up, particularly if you are a fan of Best ot Quigley.