The 3-D process used by the producers of this odd flick was called Nature Vision. Like most 3-D efforts such as "Comin' At Ya" and "The Man Who Wasn't There", the whole point of the exercise was the 3-D. In this, also known as 'Eyes of Hell", the 3-D sequences are pretty effective and trippy and quite bizarre. They also feel like they were shot for another film. The bridging story about a man receiving an Aztec mask is rather slow and ponderous and stylistically inert. But when the hallucinations occur, triggered by the mask, the imagery becomes psychedelic and surreal. There isn't much violence or bloodshed, but the use of the process is respectable. I saw this originally at a drive-in and I well remember the original, colored ad mat (red) that promoted the film's gimmick.

Over a decade before he became a contract player on the long running soap opera, Paul Stevens played a psychiatrist who found many alternate worlds by placing on his face an ancient mask which took him into a place of many horrific visions. The mask itself is pretty creepy to look at, resembling a skeletal face covered in jewels. With that mask on, he confronts demons of many different natures that could provoke months of nightmares. These create disturbing reactions from him which begin to have eerie consequences when he puts the moves on his devoted secretary Claudette Nevins.

This is the type of horror film that was probably considered too scary for television, something that would have had to have been much more subtle for either "The Twilight Zone" or "Thriller". The nightmares that Stevens has are of such a devilish vision that the audience certainly had to be forewarned of what they would be getting themselves into. The makeup, sets, music and photography literally become a part of the story within the nightmares, and a lot of imagination has this comparable to the European new wave with a bit of Val Lewton's classic horror thrown in. If you're looking for a good spooky perfect Halloween style film, then this is it!

No, it's not the Jim Carrey comedy but an utterly obscure and sadly forgotten cheapie from the glorious early 60's. Honestly, I never would have known about this movie's existence if it weren't for a modest film festival held in my country, which included this movie in their nostalgic 3-D tribute series. Apart from the obvious classics, like "House of Wax" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon", they programmed this peculiar little oddity and it unexpectedly became a pleasant little surprise to pretty much everyone in the theater. The plot is non-existent and rudimentary schlock, but the 3-D sequences are nothing short of mesmerizing and vastly astonishing, especially if you bear in mind the time of release as well as the budget Julian Roffman presumably had to work with. The story is actually comparable to the one in the aforementioned Jim Carrey vehicle. Whenever someone puts on the titular mask, he/she undergoes a drastic transformation. But instead of changing into a jolly green-faced comedian, the mask-wearer here directly enters hell, witnesses all sorts of delirious and flashy tableaux and inevitably develops homicidal tendencies. The ambitious and stubborn psychiatrist Allan Barnes receives the mask from a patient who just committed suicide, and instead of returning it to the police or to museum where it got stolen from, he keeps it for research. Barnes constantly convinces his fiancée and himself he's resistant to the mask's powerful satanic side effects, but of course he soon undergoes an incurable transformation. The 3-D footage often doesn't make the slightest bit of sense and/or can't possibly get linked to the rest of the events in the film, but you'll at least have to admit the scenes are trippy and bizarre beyond comparison. There are gigantic skulls emerging from sacrificial altars, large mummified hands launching big balls of fire, ravishing witches luring you with their fingers, trees coming to life before your eyes and literally loads of other lovely stuff. Like any forceful type of drug, the 3-D scenes work addictive and pretty soon you don't even care about the wraparound story anymore as you're simply counting down the minutes until you can put those geeky red & green goggles on again. There's a funny introduction at the start of the film, in which a supposedly acclaimed collector explains to the audience they should put on our "masks" whenever the protagonists puts on his. If that isn't clear enough yet, there's also the brain-penetrating voice-over repeatedly shouting the phrase "Put … the mask … ON!!!". This is, plain and simply, undemanding but extremely relaxing 60's entertainment. It's probably not worth encouraging people to desperately seek for a decent copy (and, of course, matching glasses),but I'm glad I saw it nevertheless.