THE KEEP (1983)
Directed by Michael
Mann
Starring Scott Glenn and Alberta Watson
Apparently the Paul Wilson novel upon which this film's based was a real "keeper."
Unfortunately, the film isn't. Glenn plays a Nazi stormtrooper who finds himself in a battle with a mysterious supernatural entity who's held up in a Transylvania fortress. When Nazis in the fortress unleash the entity by removing a silver cross from a wall in the castle, they start dying right and left. They have to turn to a Jewish professor to figure out what's going on.
Although not a perfect movie (it's way too serious and heavy-handed to be an enjoyable horror film), "The Keep" is an important flick. First off, it has an excellent cast that includes Glen, Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen. Of course, Mann would go on to much bigger things as well. Unfortunately, this film proved he wasn't the ideal man to drive a horror film. He wrote the screenplay too. Again, this film takes itself way too seriously. The performers are all pretty cold. The photography is brilliant. The Tangerine Dream score atmospheric and (for an '80s film) edgy. But it just isn't a fun horror film. The creature revealed at the end of the film looks like something out of a Wrightson comic -- not that that's a bad thing. But in the context of a heavy-handed Nazi movie with a Tangerine Dream score, it just doesn't add up to an enjoyable viewing experience.
The film does have its followers, however. This is probably the kind of movie you'll groove if you liked "The Hunger," another heavy-handed early '80s fear flick. The rest of us, however, would be advised to steer clear. Mann would steer clear of the genre on his future projects, becoming the director of stylish and heavy-handed dramas and action films like "The Insider" and "Heat," not to mention creating the TV series "Miami Vice."