I don't know who to blame: filmmaker Paul Thomas or his writer Rick Marx (disclosure: I knew Rick back in the day and admired his work), but their Vivid feature "Mask" is awful.
It doesn't resemble the hit film starring Cher by this title, but instead aspires to be an exploitation movie that deals with the stigma of disfigurement and people's callousness. Boy, does it fail!
Its short running time is supported by a lack of connective tissue between scenes, one of porn's most frequent failings. This Cliff Notes approach ruins the movie.
Plot is simple: lab scientist Mark Davis's face is horribly disfigured by an accident caused by his ineptitude; when doc Paul Thomas removes his bandages, his fiancee Lene is repulsed and calls off his marriage.
Our hero becomes a voyeur, hiring prostitutes to watch them hump studs, then his fellow scientist fits him with a special mask and he looks normal again, with Jon Dough the guy in the role. Just to be confusing, he was named Dave before when Mark played the role but is now named Mark played by Jon.
With the new face, an uncredited bum is friendly rather than hateful to him and a couple of hookers (Brittany O'Connell and Sierra) don't mind having a threesome with him. Final reels of the film consist of a dumb romance (in pantomime) in which Lene accidentally meets him and of course doesn't recognize him, so she's nice and humps him too.
Ending is atrocious and mean-spirited, meant to make a point about how cruel and self-centered people can be. It pounds home how terrible a person Lene's character is, and I was amused by it immediately being followed by a screen card advertising Lene's fan club!
Perhaps the worst element here is how absence of proper makeup effects have Jon Dough just walking around with his normal face and we're supposed to believe it's some experimental mask. This gimmick apparently worked in the old "Mission: Impossible" TV series with Martin Landau, but here it's ridiculous. Another in-joke has the scientist who gives him the "realistic" mask played by the show's makeup artist Alan Bosshardt.
