10 Best Movies Based On Dark Horse Comics
2. The Mask
When you wear The Mask, you turn into a character from a Tex Avery cartoon, complete with bugged out eyes and a jaw that literally hits the floor. A psychiatrist tells Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) that it might be a vessel for Loki, the Norse god of mischief (and bad Marvel sequels), but the viewer is under no illusion – it’s really an excuse for Carrey to blow everyone else off the screen.
Transformed into a green-faced, yellow-suited character (with a passing resemblance to Red Dwarf’s Kryten), Stanley explores his reality-bending powers during his first night as a superhero. After annoying his overbearing landlady with a routine that involves a walking alarm clock and a mallet (don’t ask), he turns a balloon into a Tommy gun to scare off a street gang and later injures the cowboy mechanic who charged him for unnecessary repairs to his car.
A comic book hero needs a comic book nemesis, and after inadvertently thwarting a bank robbery, Stanley finds his in the form of Dorian Tyrell (Peter Greene), a gangster whose singer girlfriend just happens to be Cameron Diaz, making her movie debut. Cue explosions, zingers and Carrey’s manic comic energy, and you’ve got one of the more inventive comic book adaptations of the 1990s.