Written and directed by Michael Mann
Based on the book by F. Paul Wilson
Starring Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Jurgen Prochnow, Robert Prosky, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen
USA/UK, 1983
What’s this? A horror movie written and directed by Michael Mann featuring a cast wall-to-wall with greats like Scott Glenn, Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and none other than Ian McKellen? AND a score by Tangerine Dream? Plus, it’s about Nazis? Sign me up.
Viewed as a critical and commercial flop in its day, and apparently cut down to just over an hour and a half from a much more ambitious 200-some-minute run time, THE KEEP tells the tale of a band of Nazis who show up in a small Romanian village to occupy an abandoned fortress, the titular “keep.” Turns out the locals have all kinds of superstitions about the keep, and while the Nazis roll their eyes and don’t believe anything, it becomes increasingly clear something evil lives within the keep and must not be let out.
Without getting too into the plot, I’ll just say the local priest (Robert Prosky) tells the Nazis they need a specific Jewish historian (Ian McKellen) to figure out the secrets of the keep. Of course this is just a ruse by Prosky to try to rescue McKellen and his daughter (Alberta Watson) from extermination. Meanwhile, the sadistic SS leader (Gabriel Byrne) is increasingly at odds with his more decent counterpart, a captain in the German army played by Jurgen Prochnow. There’s also an enigmatic stranger lurking around (Scott Glenn) who seems to know something about whatever’s in the keep.
Can the evil power in the keep be used to destroy the Nazis? Or, will letting it out just make the world even worse off than it already is? There’s only one way to find out, I guess.
If you think this sounds awesome, you’re right, though I will admit the movie sorta goes off the rails in the last act. This is a case where all the setup is pretty badass and then the movie doesn’t really stick its landing, but you have to wonder what might be in the rest of the footage Michael Mann shot that never saw the light of day. Maybe this is the best version of the movie we could hope for, or maybe there’s a super-duper director’s cut coming someday, but, yet again, this is not quite the embarrassing failure history would have us believe it is.
It's kinda like… if an entire movie was just the part in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK where the Nazis heads explode… it’d be THE KEEP.
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