The Keep (1983)
Country: US
Technical: Metrocolor/scope 93m
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, Alberta Watson
Synopsis:
In 1942 a detachment of German soldiers arrives in a remote Romanian village and occupies the ancient keep where, despite the admonishments of the locals, they interfere with the silver T-crosses that adorn the walls and hold imprisoned a malevolent preternatural force.
Review:
Curious hybrid of genres, which tries to combine the holocaust with established Poltergeist-like manifestations of evil, and leave one with the sobering thought that it were preferable to let the Nazis do their worst than to unleash an entity still more malign. It doesn't work, due to a basic contempt for such things as character and backstory, and the inaudibility of the muttered dialogue; clearly Mann had not yet found his métier, despite the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, and the release version was a hacked-about imposition from a much longer one. He does, however, achieve one shot of unique power: when the German soldier violates the prison, we see his form as a speck of receding light as the camera reverse-swoops to a mysterious group of stones and then zooms back again.
Country: US
Technical: Metrocolor/scope 93m
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, Alberta Watson
Synopsis:
In 1942 a detachment of German soldiers arrives in a remote Romanian village and occupies the ancient keep where, despite the admonishments of the locals, they interfere with the silver T-crosses that adorn the walls and hold imprisoned a malevolent preternatural force.
Review:
Curious hybrid of genres, which tries to combine the holocaust with established Poltergeist-like manifestations of evil, and leave one with the sobering thought that it were preferable to let the Nazis do their worst than to unleash an entity still more malign. It doesn't work, due to a basic contempt for such things as character and backstory, and the inaudibility of the muttered dialogue; clearly Mann had not yet found his métier, despite the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, and the release version was a hacked-about imposition from a much longer one. He does, however, achieve one shot of unique power: when the German soldier violates the prison, we see his form as a speck of receding light as the camera reverse-swoops to a mysterious group of stones and then zooms back again.
Country: US
Technical: Metrocolor/scope 93m
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, Alberta Watson
Synopsis:
In 1942 a detachment of German soldiers arrives in a remote Romanian village and occupies the ancient keep where, despite the admonishments of the locals, they interfere with the silver T-crosses that adorn the walls and hold imprisoned a malevolent preternatural force.
Review:
Curious hybrid of genres, which tries to combine the holocaust with established Poltergeist-like manifestations of evil, and leave one with the sobering thought that it were preferable to let the Nazis do their worst than to unleash an entity still more malign. It doesn't work, due to a basic contempt for such things as character and backstory, and the inaudibility of the muttered dialogue; clearly Mann had not yet found his métier, despite the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, and the release version was a hacked-about imposition from a much longer one. He does, however, achieve one shot of unique power: when the German soldier violates the prison, we see his form as a speck of receding light as the camera reverse-swoops to a mysterious group of stones and then zooms back again.