Review of The Keep (1983) by Robert H — 02 Feb 2014

A wonderful film that's obviously been hacked to bits at least twice if not more. Somewhat ridiculous, with golems and whatnot stumbling around sucking people's brains out, but somehow, even in its mutilated state, it still generates that sense of there being things out there that are bigger than we are.

I guess the original version ran over 3 hours; knowing that makes me wish I could convince Michael Mann to give me his original script and everything he shot and I could check into a Avid editing suite for three weeks and get this thing put together properly once and for all.

At an hour and a half, it's obvious there's stuff that's been surgically removed by someone who cared nary a whit about the flow of the picture. Juergen Prochnow is excellent as always, and Scott Glenn's a lot better than he was in The Right Stuff, which perhaps isn't saying much.

The Tangerine Dream soundtrack is a little derivative sounding, but it works with this movie...locating it squarely in the mid-'80s. And to think, from this Michael Mann went to Miami Vice...who at the time could have seen that coming?