Review of The Keep (1983) by Patricia S — 11 Nov 2009
On the surface this sounds like it could be an early 80s pre-cursor to movies like Dog Soldiers as a bunch of nazis are holed up in an old castle where an ancient evil lurks. Anyone hoping for a soldiers vs demons style dust off is going to be sorely disappointed here though.
After a couple of promising early scenes which deliver a great deal of tension and dread, The Keep just goes from bizarre to weird to downright silly. It ends up being about as scary as an Iron Maiden video.
People's heads blow up, Gabriel Byrne and Scott Glen arrive, the latter as some character who can stop the evil contained within but spends most of his time looking out the window and shagging.
Ian McKellen pops up as some sort of doctor type scientist guy and the unspeakable evil just looks like a piece of crap.
All the time there's this Tangerine Dream soundtrack going on in the background which works well with the early scenes but soon starts to irritate, as if there's a guy just out of shot permanently leaning on a keyboard.
The Keep could have been one of those pioneering horror movies like The Exorcist and The Omen but a bad script, bad effects, terrible overacting and a overdose of weird boredom make this, apart from a couple of good scenes, a bit of a joke and not the horror masterpiece it was so clearly trying to be.
This review of The Keep (1983) was written by Patricia S on 11 Nov 2009.
The Keep has generally received mixed reviews.
Was this review helpful?
