‘The Mask’ Was Almost a Horror Film With Jim Carrey as a Freddy KruegerType Killer – fuse.tv

Director Chuck Russell (The Scorpion King, Eraser, last year's I Am Wrath) recentlyspoke to Xfinity (viaBloody Disgusting) about the 30th anniversary of his first film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

At the end of the convo, they touched on 1994's The Mask, a screwball comedy that arrived the same year Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective made Jim Carrey a superstar. "Its a great example of really fighting for your vision in a film. We changed it from a horror film into a comedy," Russell said. "It was original conceived as being a horror film. That was a real battle. New Line wanted a new kind of Freddy [Krueger] movie."

Here's more of the background:

"By coincidence, I had seen the same original Mask comic they ended up buying, and I thought, 'Thats really cool, but its 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. Theyve 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."

He said The Mask's script was essentially made for Carrey, who was 32 when the movie premiered and "wasnt really desired as a leading man at that time." Russell had seen him do stand-up in L.A. and thought he "looked like a hallucination live on stage." Carrey loved the material and sensed its long shelf life. "He read it and he said, 'Ill be doing this role at grocery store openings when Im 70.'"

And if you still have trouble wondering how Carrey managed the demented physicality of the role, there's a reason for it. "While I was working with him, I used to sort of play challenge games with him to do physical comedy that he couldnt imagine and I couldnt imagine," Russell said.

For more nostalgia mania, listen to Fuse's nostalgia podcastBesterday celebrate the 15th anniversary ofThe Eminem Show:

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'The Mask' Was Almost a Horror Film With Jim Carrey as a Freddy KruegerType Killer - fuse.tv