THE KEEP
1983 Paramount Pictures
Director: Michael Mann
Producers: Gene Kirkwood, Howard W. Koch Jr.
Screenplay: Michael Mann
(Based on a novel by F. Paul Wilson)
Cinematography: Alex Thompson
Editor: Dov Hoenig
Cast: Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Gabriel Byrne, Jurgen Prochnow, Ian McKellan, Robert Prosky, William Morgan Sheppard, Royston Tickner, Phillip Joseph, Michael Carter, John Vine, Jona Jones, Wolf Kahler, Rosalie Crutchley, Frederick Warder
I just love this movie as it harkens to older times when the main thing to scare you was the unknown, when the true nature of the beast was not revealed until the end, if at all. To this day I am not sure what the two main protagonists are and this is all right by me. Maybe I'd find out if I read the novel that inspired this movie but I am not sure I want to know.
Here is a movie where the atmosphere is what really matters (and this is amplified by the amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack), the fog and the locale, a movie devoid of the now-too-common gore, a movie where motives are not black or white and the final confrontation between good and evil is actually very short and one-sided with no martial arts moves and happily no second breath (the dreaded Carrie effect where the seemingly dead monsters jumps back up for more punishment), and where we do not know the final fates of the opponents with any certainty.
A huge thumbs up for me as I'll be rewatching it again tonight.
1983 Paramount Pictures
Director: Michael Mann
Producers: Gene Kirkwood, Howard W. Koch Jr.
Screenplay: Michael Mann
(Based on a novel by F. Paul Wilson)
Cinematography: Alex Thompson
Editor: Dov Hoenig
Cast: Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Gabriel Byrne, Jurgen Prochnow, Ian McKellan, Robert Prosky, William Morgan Sheppard, Royston Tickner, Phillip Joseph, Michael Carter, John Vine, Jona Jones, Wolf Kahler, Rosalie Crutchley, Frederick Warder
Michael Mann's very strange and critically savaged film has a Nazi platoon setting up base in an old Romanian castle to guard a strategic mountain pass. The soldiers dismiss the locals' fear of the fortress as superstition, until they start getting picked off by the spirits that inhabit the place. They soon realise they are going to have to put their faith in a dying Jewish professor (Ian MacKellen) and his ravishing daughter (Alberta Watson) in order to translate archaic documents that hold the keep's secret.
I just love this movie as it harkens to older times when the main thing to scare you was the unknown, when the true nature of the beast was not revealed until the end, if at all. To this day I am not sure what the two main protagonists are and this is all right by me. Maybe I'd find out if I read the novel that inspired this movie but I am not sure I want to know.
Here is a movie where the atmosphere is what really matters (and this is amplified by the amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack), the fog and the locale, a movie devoid of the now-too-common gore, a movie where motives are not black or white and the final confrontation between good and evil is actually very short and one-sided with no martial arts moves and happily no second breath (the dreaded Carrie effect where the seemingly dead monsters jumps back up for more punishment), and where we do not know the final fates of the opponents with any certainty.
A huge thumbs up for me as I'll be rewatching it again tonight.