Maskerade

A witty script and an appealing cast almost save this otherwise rote slasher movie. A college business student gets a suspiciously good deal on a spooky empty old house in the country and buys it for his less-than-impressed girlfriend. The place is filled with valuable antiques (a plot angle that goes nowhere). The local general store, called "Pluto's", is run by Michael Berryman, an inside joke for THE HILLS HAVE EYES fans. The boyfriend notices a graveyard in back of the house and immediately elects to start wrecking it. He pulls a large ornamental pole out of a grave for no reason, inadvertantly resurrecting a mad slasher named Leonard who killed everybody in sight some 25 years before. One of the house's previous occupants was a woman who spoke French, which is sufficient to qualify her as a cliche' evil foreigner with magic powers. The typical gang of friends arrives to help renovate the place and to give the killer some people to bump off. The murderer is an unoriginal blend of Leatherface (a mentally ill victim of a childhood disease that caused his face to fall off, he peels the faces off his victims and wears them as masks), Jason Voorhees (he's a reanimated corpse with a mama fixation and can be fooled and temporarily calmed down by the sight of a girl wearing his mother's old clothes) and even the killer from TERROR TRAIN (each time he kills, he's wearing the "mask" taken from his previous victim). They might as well have called him Leonardface. Disappointingly, his 'real' face is never shown even though there's a lot of talk about how ugly he is. Guess they couldn't come up with an adequate makeup design. He clomps around stabbing and decapitating everyone until the telegraphed, by-the-numbers "evil triumphs" ending, which is more out of place than usual in a movie with such lighthearted dialogue. The acting is good and the snappy patter makes this a highly entertaining movie for most of its running time, and even the gore effects, lighting and cinematography are well above average for an entry in the teenkill genre. It's a shame that depressing ending is tacked on there, making the entire film feel like a waste of time. If you liked HATCHET's blend of funny scripting and FRIDAY THE 13TH style murders, you might enjoy this too. It was shot under the title MASKERADE.

Not quite the slasher film I was expecting but I still enjoyed it. A young couple and their friends start renovating an old house they have just bought, but not before unleashing the dead face stealing killer buried in the garden cemetery. Through use of flashbacks from the killers perspective and our heroin reading exerts from the killers mothers diary we get an insight into the happenings leading up to the creation of the stalking brute.

Not the most original plot as it's a cross between Halloween and the Texas chainsaw massacre but with less gore than those two movies. What really saved this film for me was the dialogue between all of the friends and the acting from such a young mostly unheard of cast. It made the characters relationships more believable than I'm used to seeing in this sort of movie and I actually liked all of them. Usually there's a couple of characters I hate and can't wait to see them get murdered, but I found myself quite disappointed to see some of them go. It was also great to see Michael Berryman again as well as Treat Williams even if they only had small roles.

The movie doesn't go all out on the gore front. A couple of the kills are almost off camera. The few kills you do see are done quite well but some quick cuts hamper you seeing exactly what you're looking at. What the film really relies on is the atmosphere created by the creepy house and the dank surrounding woodland. This really works as the setting is very remote and only adds to the feeling of dread. We have the killer Looming around the side of buildings in the background of some shots just like Michael Myers an often over used trick but done very well in this instance.

The only thing I didn't like was the ending a couple of things didn't quite work for me at the end but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the movie overall. All in all this was a good little horror which I would recommend to fans of the genre.

I had never actually heard of this movie before I watched it,so I had pretty low expectations....maybe that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did....Not that it's a masterpiece by any means, but it's worth checking out....The acting is fine, the special effects aren't bad, plus I always enjoy when they bring in a horror movie icon like Michael Berryman....If you're not overly critical,you might actually enjoy it......

I went into Maskerade otherwise known as Mask Maker with low expectations, the cover looks highly generic and the premise sounds like a lot was taken from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.

Immediatly you are introduced to your usual group of 20 somethings, 3 girls and 3 guys including our obligatory "Final girl" It's all very standard stuff.

It tells the story of a young couple who buy a house in the middle of nowhere (More cliches) It has a dark history involving murder and witchcraft, one which they accidentally find themselves digging up.

We have an antagonist, we have the fresh meat and thus we have our standard slasher style death scenes. The whole thing is very play by numbers, but I'd consider it above par thanks to being not only well made but having a surprisingly good back story.

Don't expect any shocks but if you like the genre you can do considerably worse than this, in fact I wouldn't mind seeing this become a franchise.

The Good:

Nikki Deloach

Couple of great characters

Great finale

Decent plot

The Bad:

Jason London is wasted

Lot is taken from other films

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

People in their 30's are still cast to play college kids

While not overly great, the movie "Maskerade" wasn't overly bad either. It had enough material to prove entertaining enough for a single watching.

The story in "Maskerade" is fairly horror / slasher movie cliché. Roughly summarized; a group of young people go to an old house (in this case, they buy it) with a vile, dark history. They awaken something wicked from its slumber, unintentionally. And now they are being killed, one by one. End of story. And it is pretty much straight from the 'how to make a slasher movie' handbook. Nothing new here in those terms.

The acting in the movie was good, and there were some interesting names on the cast list. Those including Michael Barryman (playing Fred), Terry Kiser (playing Mr. Peck), Treat Williams (playing Mr. Tucker) and a very short appearance by Jason London (playing Arthur Bronw). These people were the most impressive, but the young cast did a good job as well. Most memorable was Nikki Deloach (playing Jennifer), though.

As for the gore and guts in the movie, well it isn't a splatter-fest. The movie has just enough gore and gruesomeness to keep you interested, without being too much.

The biggest turn-off in the movie, if you will, was how it too much like other classic horror / slasher movies such as "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween". How you ask? Well, the "Halloween" part would be with the mask. Sure, Meyers used a firm-set rubber mask, while the killer in "Maskerade" wears a mask from people's faces. Oh wait, back it up here, can you say "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" anyone? And as for the "Friday the 13th" part, well when Jason Voorhees saw what he believed to was his mother, he froze up and stopped, as did the killer in this movie when Jennifer was wearing his mother's old dress. No, no, no! You do not "borrow" these things from classic movies, you make up your own stuff. This really brought the movie down in value and worth.

One thing that the movie should get praise for, though, was the ending. Now, I am not spoiling it in anyway by revealing stuff, but I will say that it is a typical Hollywood horror movie ending, but with a really great 'twist'. I liked that ending, and it almost, just almost, brought justice to all the other stuff that went wrong in the movie.

Overall, then "Maskerade" is good for a single watching, so if you have nothing better to do one evening, and if you like horror / slasher movies, then give "Maskerade" a chance. Despite its faults, it still is a decent enough addition to the genre.