"Never touch the crosses. Never!"
In Romania in 1942 a detachment of soldiers under the command of Captain Klaus Woermann (Jurgen Prochnow) are sent to guard an abandoned citadel at the Dinu Mountain Pass. Two soldiers attempt to loot an icon within the keep and accidentally unleash an entity that kills them. Then several more soldiers die. The entity housed in the Keep is known as Radu Molasar.
A sadistic commander Eric Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne) arrives to handle the situation. He begins executing random villagers believing they are responsible for the deaths. They find writing on one of the walls that they do not know how to translate. The priest tells Eric that a Jewish historian named Professor Theodore Cuza (Ian McKellen) who is in a concentration camp may know what the writing means. Cuza is brought to the keep along with his daughter Eva (Alberta Watson).
The demon Molasar saves the professor’s daughter Eva from two soldiers trying to rape her and cures Cuza of his debilitating scleroderma just by touching him. The entity starts to take human form. Cuza is indebted to Molasar so Molasar asks Cuza to remove a talisman from the keep. The talisman is keeping Molasar from leaving the keep entirely.
A stranger named Glaeken (Scott Glenn) comes to the village. He is there to try to restore the keep as it was and put Molasar back in his prison. He needs to stop Cuza from removing the talisman before Molasar can be released upon the world.
“The Keep” was released in 1983 and was based on an F. Paul Wilson novel of the same name. It was directed by Michael Mann. The screenplay was also written by Mann. The original film was two to three ½ hours long, depending on who you ask, so Paramount pared it down to an hour and a half. Unfortunately the movie did not do well at the box office. And writer F. Paul Wilson was not impressed with the movie. Much is the pity since I thought it was great.
The music was done by Tangerine Dream and is fantastic. The visual and special effects are stunning. The cinematography was done by Alex Thomson. The movie is intense and foreboding, rich with eerie lighting and shading and a lot of blue. Some may find it a little hard to follow at times or a little slow at times but I was glued to it. The visuals alone kept me watching. I feel that it was a movie before it’s time.
The climax of the film may appear to fall a little short and there is a reason for that. Visual effects artist Wally Veevers died during post-production. Apparently without him no one could figure out how to complete it. It didn’t bother me since I find that sometimes movie climaxes are way to long anyway. Are there shortcomings to the movie? Sure, a lot. The music can be louder than the dialogue so it can be difficut to hear the dialogue at times. Cutting a movie down from approximately two to three 1/2 hours to one and 1/2 hours can result in some, make that a lot of, continuity issues. Lots of scenes were cut that would have explained what was going on. By then even Mann hated it. Plus the movie almost fell into obscurity since it was only available on VHS until recently. And there’s no guarantee on what quality you’ll get. Some vendors are selling copies of the VHS version burned to disc. Still, I loved the story, I loved the plot, I loved to hate some of the characters, I even liked the monster and it was great to watch.
Some of the missing scenes; Molasar’s effect on the town. Scenes of villagers going mad and attacking each other. Additional murders being done by Molasar on screen. Glaeken being attacked on the boat to Romania. Eva snooping in his room and finding the glow-in-the-dark sword plus getting to know him a little before going to bed with him. And some changes to the original ending.
Yes, at least half of the movie was cut, but the half that is there is fabulous.