Don't think I'm discounting Michael Mann's name here. Without delving too deep into my thoughts, know that I am a HUGE fan of his filmography. Except for his HBO series, Luck, which was fucking dreadful. Not sure what went wrong there, but part of it was likely due to the fact that watching jackasses bet on horse races redefines ennui. But I digress. It's also relatively well-known that he has more or less disowned this film, which (if I had to guess) is almost entirely due to the fact that he hasn't ever re-cut it to his original intentions. Mann is one of those filmmakers who loves to re-edit his movies, sometimes years after the picture has found an approving audience (or not). Sometimes he even pulls off sly edits, with no press given to them, by removing or adding small bits of footage because he is clearly a fastidious auteur obsessed with the minutia of his films. I'm fairly certain Heat has been slightly tweaked for each subsequent home video release, as just one example. Mann's original cut for The Keep was rumored to run around three and a half hours in length, which is a far cry from the current running time of 96 minutes. To prove just how much he hates his own movie, Mann successfully blocked Paramount from releasing it on DVD in 2004, although another reason for that release's cancellation was a dispute between Tangerine Dream and Virgin Records, too.
Enough with the history lesson, pal. How's the damn movie? Intriguing and dark, despite clear evidence that it has been substantially altered. It opens with Nazi officer Klaus Woermann, played by the always intimidating Jürgen Prochnow, leading his party of German troops to a desolate village. Surely, he has come to crush these peasants with his iron f- oh, wait, he's being nice and polite to everyone. What kind of sick film is this? Klaus sets up camp inside an old citadel (the titular "keep"), whereby he is instructed to "NEVER TOUCH THE CROSSES" by an emphatic, enigmatic servant to the keep, played by Wild at Heart's William Shepard. These Nazis are greedy fuckers, though. So, sure enough, a couple of them start trying to pry off a cross made of silver when suddenly - WHOOSH! (That was the sound of ancient evil being unleashed). Something has been awoken in the keep, and it is absolutely destroying the shit out of these Nazis. Fearing Klaud may not be up to the task of keeping his men safe, the SS troops send in Eric Kaempffer - a subdued but cunning Gabriel Byrne - to get a hold of the situation. Using sensitive and investigative SS tactics, Kaempffer threatens to kill five villagers for every one Nazi that dies until he gets an answer as to what's doing the killing. Even though Klaus has told him the villagers don't know. Hey, maybe that old servant dude knows! He's been tending to the keep for his entire l- oh, wait, Kaempffer just shot him and his two sons dead. Well, shit. Guess it's up to this mysterious holy man, Glaeken (Scott Glenn, with a goddamn majestic pair of blue eyes), to combat whatever old-school evil is up to nefarious deeds.
I got sucked into the film's mystery quite easily once the picture got rolling. Mann had already displayed his trademark abilities - long, lingering shots; deft camera work; fantastic shot composition - in his directorial debut, the utterly brilliant Thief, starring James Caan, so it's not like he made this film still rocking his directorial training wheels. In fact, his style is a major reason why the film manages to work as well as it does. In lesser hands, this could have been a cheap looking, unspectacular monster movie. The keep is an ominous building, standing like a massive monolith above this shanty town. The mysteries surrounding it spark interest, and the more we learn as an audience the more it feels like the film is building up to something big.
Only it doesn't. Not exactly. Once this "evil" is unleashed, it turns out to be a roided-out version of Uncle Frank from Hellraiser. The more souls this big beast claims, the more complete his physical appearance becomes. I do have to admit that the demon design, supervised by Alien's Nick Allder, isn't all that bad. It's right on that borderline of being a big, blocky meathead, but the sculpt - and some well-placed lighting - ends up lending the creature a foreboding visage.
"I've been trying to cut down on my carb intake."
Scott Glenn's mysterious wanderer, Glaeken, seems to have taken the brunt of the editing massacre. Very little is known about him. Maybe that was intentional, though I'd like to think Mann wanted to build him up to be a little more than a pretty set of (contact lensed) eyes who bangs a concentration camp victim's daughter within moments of meeting her. The only thing we really know for sure is that he can combat whatever evil is trying to escape the keep. Once he does, however, the film's big climax ends in a very anti-climactic fashion. The writing is on the walls; you can see what Mann likely wanted to do here, but lack of final edit over the finished film means that we probably won't ever get to see his true vision. Even in this truncated form, it's not a bad film by any means. And Tangerine Dream fans will undoubtedly dig on the score. I hope that a company like Shout! can somehow obtain the rights and see that this film is given its due.
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