The Keep (1983)

Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Alberta Watson, Scott Glenn, Jürgen Prochnow, Ian McKellen, Gabriel Byrne, Robert Prosky, W. Morgan Sheppard, Royston Tickner. [R]

Eerie horror film set during the second World War, excessive and arty and certainly the strangest effort in writer/director Michael Mann’s career (his second film, coming off the terrific neo-noir Thief). To protect a mountain pass, Wehrmacht soldiers hole up in an uninhabited fortress above a tiny village, but while greedily trying to steal silver crosses hammered into the keep’s walls, they unleash a murderous supernatural entity known as Radu Molasar. The plot seesaws between incomprehensible and unimportant, and the frequent flubs in continuity on all counts (e.g., the soundtrack drops out entirely on multiple occasions) bear the wounds of rushed, unwillful post-production editing—the final cut is less than half as long as Mann’s reputed original 3.5-hour version. There are imaginative visuals and amusingly-acted scenes, but even the film’s few strengths are inconsistent; since the movie is best appreciated as a messy but sometimes mesmerizing experience of the unknown exaggerations of ancient evil, some will be eager to join the movie’s small cult following, but whenever the moody atmosphere and chilling suggestions retreated, I almost always grew listless. Fans of TV’s “Miami Vice” can at least take comfort in the fact that this flop led him to pursue projects like that one on the small screen before returning to feature filmmaking.

42/100