The Mask - 1994

The Mask is a 1994 American superhero comedy film based on a series of comic books published by Dark Horse Comics. This film was directed by Chuck Russell, and produced by Dark Horse Entertainment and New Line Cinema, and originally released to movie theatres on July 29, 1994 through New Line Cinema The film stars Jim Carrey as Stanley Ipkiss (also known as The Mask). The film's supporting cast includes Peter Greene as mafia officer Dorian Tyrell, Amy Yasbeck as a newspaper reporter, Peter Riegert and Jim Doughan as two police detectives, Richard Jeni as Stanley's friend, Orestes Matacena as nightclub owner and mafia boss Niko, Ben Stein as a psychologist, and Cameron Diaz in her feature-film debut as Stanley's love interest Tina Carlyle. Carrey was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but lost to Forrest Gump.

Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey), a clerk in an Edge City bank, is a shy, luckless romantic who is regularly bullied by nearly everyone around him, including his boss (Eamonn Roche), his landlady Mrs Peenman (Nancy Fish), and car mechanics. His only friends are his Jack Russell Terrier Milo and his co-worker Charlie Schumaker (Richard Jeni). Meanwhile, gangster Dorian Tyrell (Peter Greene) runs the exclusive Coco Bongo nightclub while plotting to overthrow his boss Niko (Orestes Matacena). Tyrell sends his singer girlfriend Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz) into Stanley's bank with a hidden camera, in preparation to rob the bank.

Stanley is attracted to Tina, and she seems to reciprocate. Later that night after being denied entrance to the Coco Bongo, he is stranded with a broken-down rental car at the city's filthy harbor, where he finds a mysterious wooden mask next to a pile of garbage which at first he mistakes to be a drowning man. He takes the object home and jokingly puts it on. The mask wraps around his head, transforming him into a wackily-suited, green-headed, figure, "The Mask", a trickster with reality-warping powers, physical imperviousness and without personal inhibitions who exacts comical revenge on some of Stanley's tormentors and scares a street gang that attempts to mug him.

The next morning, Stanley encounters world-weary Edge City detective Lieutenant Kellaway (Peter Riegert) and newspaper reporter Peggy Brandt (Amy Yasbeck), both of whom are investigating the Mask's activities of the previous night. Despite these threats, the temptation to again use the mask is overwhelming and he puts it back on that evening. Needing money to attend Tina's performance at the Coco Bongo, the Mask noisily interrupts Tyrell's bank robbery and steals the targeted money while Tyrell's henchman and close friend Freeze (Reginald E. Cathey) is shot by police responding to the disturbance...