KEEP On Truckin'

Boy howdy, this movie sure is a doozy!

THE KEEP is a 1983 horror film based on the novel of the same name by F. Paul Wilson. The film was directed by Michael Mann, who would later go on to work on such projects such as MIAMI VICE and the award-filming crime film HEAT. 

Unfortunately, THE KEEP is another one of those cluster-fucked studio hack-jobs. The production was a long and troubled one, and when it was time to be released, Paramount Pictures edited down the 3 hour-long epic to 93 minutes! Ouch. Needless to say, a lot of people weren't too pleased, especially the author of the book, who claimed it to be "visually intriguing, but otherwise utterly incomprehensible". 

The story takes place in WWII-era Romania, where a group of Nazi soliders have been sent to investigate a large stone fortress, known as The Keep. Inside, the walls are decorated with crosses made of nickel. One of the soliders removes one of the crosses in hopes to be rich, but little do the Nazis realize that The Keep was built to keep an evil monster known as Molasar trapped forever. And now Molasar has been released once again to terrorize mankind. A Jewish doctor (played by Ian McKellen), who is being held captive by the Nazis, is indebted to serve the beast after it heals him of his sickness. Meanwhile, the guardian of The Keep must travel back to the village to save the day. 

Although the film has yet to be released on DVD or Bluray, you can see the 93-minute mess on ITunes, which is how I saw it. It's pretty obvious that this was meant to be a longer film. Characters aren't given enough time to be properly developed, so you won't really care about any of them. There's even a character at the beginning who you think will be a major player in the story, but just disappears from the movie altogether just a few minutes after he's been introduced! 

There's a romantic relationship between the Keep's guardian and the daughter of the doctor, but it's rushed and it's nothing but dead weight. Motivations are muddled, the dialogue is REALLY hard to hear at times thanks to the often-awful sound mixing, and the ending is anticlimactic. But as usual with these forgotten films, there's much to admire. The soundtrack by Tangerine Dream is haunting and otherworldly, Molasar has a cool design, and I like the idea of Molasar convincing the poor doctor to help him with his evil plan. I wish more was done with that. 

And I'm sure the film would've delivered that and more had the film stayed at 3 hours. It might've been overlong, yes, but it would no doubt make everything much clearer to the viewer. As is, THE KEEP is an interesting film with enough moments to recommend to any fans of obscure cinema. Now, if only Paramount would release the full version.....


www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jaw-UD…