The Keep (1983, Michael Mann) (Patreon)

17/100

You know what movie I had not for one moment expected might repeatedly come to mind while watching a feature that world-renowned filmmaker Michael Mann wrote and directed immediately after Thief and just before Manhunter?

The Room. 

Granted, Wiseau didn't have a major studio step in and cut roughly two hours out of a 3.5-hour epic. I learned about that only afterward, though—had never encountered The Keep's history, somehow; didn't even really know what it was about, apart from Nazis being involved—and so got to wonder, gobsmacked, over and over again, how somebody as accomplished as Mann could possibly have made something so flat-out inept. Lynch's Dune looks downright elegant and coherent by comparison. Certain inexplicable choices did suggest, at the very least, some sort of post-production debacle: At one point, Scott Glenn's mystery dude is warning Ian McKellen's Gollum-in-progress not to remove the talisman from the keep, and the film cuts from McKellen pushing another actor aside and stepping toward Glenn, clearly with the intention of responding, to a scene within the keep that also features McKellen. Probably doesn't sound that egregious in written form, but trust me, it's strikingly incompetent editing, and most of The Keep functions at a level that's only marginally less dire. As with The Room, I occasionally half-barked, half-laughed mystified questions at my TV set, e.g. "Do they know each other?" when Glaeken shows up in Eva's room and she just sorta rolls with it for no apparent reason. Hell, I could devote an entire incredulous rant just to Glaeken, an unaccountable cipher onscreen (no doubt the source novel provides crucial details that either got cut or were unfilmable to begin with), demonstrating that it's possible for someone to serve as a deus ex machina even if the work keeps reminding you that he's en route. 

For all of the ways that The Keep unmistakably suffers from Paramount's haphazard machete work, though, it's equally awful scene by scene. I'm not sure there's a notable actor here who's not giving the single worst performance of his entire career, at least that I've seen—certainly true of Glenn and Byrne, arguably the case with McKellen and Prosky. (Just realized Prochnow's in both this film and Lynch's Dune! His nadir might well be elsewhere.) Special effects are cheesy even by '80s standards, culminating in Glaeken vanquishing Molasar with what appears to be a magic flashlight. And frankly I think people do a whole lotta special pleading vis-à-vis the film's ostensibly impressive atmosphere, based on their knowledge of who directed it and how singular a mood he usually creates. There's not a moment in which I'd have guessed that a first-rate filmmaker was behind the camera, excepting maybe the long pull-back into the keep's depths right before Molasar fries his first Nazi rando. And maybe some of the initial foggy exterior shots. In general, though, the keep itself gets utilized quite poorly, given that it's meant to be a repository of (and prison for) pure evil—evil that's expressly and rather ham-fistedly likened to that of Hitler, no less. I could rattle off 100 creepier cinematic locations without breaking a sweat. And Mann indulges some of his most cringeworthy affectations, too, including a sex scene that places both lovers on a symbolic cross (why?!) and concludes by zooming into the out-of-focus distance beyond their entwined limbs. I've just spent some time reading impassioned defenses that place all the blame on Paramount, and while I respect the effort, they do not convince. Great directors sometimes make terrible movies, and this is a truly terrible movie that might have been merely mediocre had Mann's original vision been left intact. Then again, it might simply have just stunk a bit less. Precious little seems worthwhile.

(Yes, Tangerine Dream's score is excellent. That ain't enough. I own the soundtrack for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; doesn't mean I ever want to sit through that again.)