Directed by: Michael Mann
Starring: Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Jurgen Prochnow, Ian McKellan, Gabriel Byrne, Robert Prosky
From: Paramount
Attention Letterboxd: this movie is now on the Criterion Channel… in the same terrible SD quality that is available everywhere else. Dammit. I still wanted to send out that alert even if it was rather foolish to think that the service wouldn’t stream something at 540p and we’d finally be able to experience the film in HD. At least the rest of the films in the 29 movie collection of 80’s Horror now on the channel is popular or deep cut genre efforts (many I have already seen & liked or should go and see due to reputation) in presumably good quality-and I’ll watch more than one of those. Another alert I have to make:
On Archive.org is a 35mm rip (!) of The Keep. It’s been there almost two full years. While the print is worn & beat up, the image is far less blurry than what’s legally available. I actually found that same print at another location, a site that hosts thousands of different videos of all sorts that I’d rather not reveal. PERHAPS this is not something I should be broadcasting as it could bring unwanted attention but…
Of course it’s the movie that many would think is the most disappointing in Michael Mann’s oeuvre, or at least the most frustrating due to various production issues greatly hampering the shoot-not to mention apparently half of the movie being cut. No wonder this was so incoherent at times. As is, the setting is 1941 Romania and Nazi SOB’s take over a town which holds the titular keep.
It contains an entity that is unwittingly unleashed. Then it becomes sort of cluttered… there’s Jewish Ian McKellan & his daughter, who was brought in from a concentration camp as the former’s a historian who grew up in the village, Scott Glenn waltzes in as he has some sort of powers (including glowing eyes), and Nazi’s Jurgen Prochnow & Gabriel Byrne often bicker w/ each other as the former has humanity while the latter is stereotypically evil. Intriguing and worthy ideas do appear-including a villain attempting to trick someone for their gain-as strands throughout a story that’s muddled too often.
The Keep is something I really wanted to like; it has a talented director, a cast full of familiar faces and an AWESOME Tangerine Dream score. It would be delusion, though, to not note the flaws that this has; how much of that was the original source novel from F. Paul Wilson and what was the end result of what was released on film is unknown to me. It would be unfair to criticize a novel I haven’t read so instead I’ll note that Wilson himself didn’t like the movie. Just from reading the Wikipedia summation of the plot I learned some things that were brought up on screen but never adequately addressed. All the excised footage was obvious—characters vanish out of nowhere or suddenly appear elsewhere, things suddenly happen, a romance suddenly begins, the finale was underwhelming… the worst fate came to Glenn’s character-he just came off as baffling. Concerning his role in the story, that’s a big problem.
Compounding what I just mentioned was such problems as Mann not solidifying right away his opinion on the villain’s appearance, reshoots, and VFX supervisor Wally Veevers passing away right after post-production began-no one knew how the finished effects were supposed to be constructed so there’s a massive headache. That and the shoot running way long meant that the finale was so limp instead of an epic effects-laden battle that would have been a hoot. All of it is a shame-there are some strong scenes still present & the quarry they filmed at in Wales provided for a unique scenic setting, even if at other times The Keep is rather loud and I’m not decided if the picture should be so blunt.
It is a shame we’ll never experience a longer version of the film. Heck, many would love to (legally) experience it in HD quality. I’ll just shrug my shoulders and at least be glad that I got to see the movie in a way that is tantamount to tasting some forbidden fruit.
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