THE KEEP (1983) - Michael Mann's monster movie

THE KEEP

(1983, UK)

A Michael Mann movie that's not on DVD...

I enjoyed The Keep in the cinema, though it didn't all make total sense at the time. Watching it again after a long break, I understand it better and still enjoy it, especially the dreamlike quality. Admittedly, it's a very dark dream.

In 1983, Michael Mann wasn't a 'name' yet and had only directed TV shows and one other movie. Looking back, The Keep doesn't snugly fit in with his body of work, and perhaps this is why it hasn't been released on home video in nearly twenty years...

But before I'd even seen it, I was already sold on the premise and some of the startling photos. German soldiers tangling with a monstrous evil in an ancient castle keep - it was a story I wanted to see. Hints of the Dracula legend being reimagined, Nazis versus monsters, were all very promising. The coverage in Fantastic Films, Fangoria and Starburst magazines all had cover stories. This looked to be a new kind of monster altogether. The cast looked good, so for me it didn't need a big name director to warrant seeing it.

World War II. A German army commander (Jürgen Prochnow, inbetween Das Boot and Dune) rolls into a remote Romanian village and houses his soldiers in a mysterious old stone fortress. Despite warnings not to tamper with the strange crosses embedded in the walls, his soldiers start to die, blown apart by an unseen force. An SS officer (Gabriel Byrne, inbetween Excalibur and Gothic) arrives to solve the murders, instantly blaming the villagers. He pressures an old Jewish professor (Ian McKellen, in an early leading role) to translate the writing inside the keep and unravel its mysteries. Meanwhile, a lone traveller (Scott Glenn of The Right Stuff, Backdraft) is on his way to the village, somehow alerted the very moment the keep was breached...

But The Keep didn't appear in the usual local cinemas near me but the BFI repertory cinema instead, meaning that it hadn't had a wide release and had been relegated to the arthouse circuit, which suited it very well. The studio were presumably annoyed they hadn't got a straightforward monster movie (though it wasn't much more different approach than Alien, which also had careful art direction and a slowly measured pace). There'd already been news that the film had been extensively recut before release.

Michael Mann directed this after Violent Streets (a gritty heist story, made in 1981, also known as Thief) and wanted to avoid "another street picture" and "another cops and robbers picture" (which he's mostly been stuck with ever since). "It had to be original and unique", "like no other movie with supernatural entities", (Mann quoted in Fantastic Films #38). Instead he was aiming high, at a horror story, a fairy tale, a fable about evil, with stylised visuals, but not gothic like the novel. Watching it again, I think he largely succeeded.

The soundtrack is crucial to the mood, and Tangerine Dream doesn't work for everyone, especially when the synth-heavy score is illustrating a wartime period piece. For me this very 1980s music may be an anachronism, but makes it feel more like it's happening in the now. It adds hugely to a dreamlike experience set against the surreal story and setting.

The visuals are also very 80s, but is that because the look of Mann's work influenced the decade? Carefully colour-coordinated production design, symmetrical camera compositions, backlighting, slow-motion montage, heavy filters and floods of dry ice are consistent with Mann's following few films. His next film was Manhunter, a wait of three years presumably because of The Keep's box-office failure. Meanwhile, he made his name producing the mega-hit TV series Miami Vice.

At the centre of The Keep is a monster. Mann wanted something original but had to compete with the impressive work done on Alien and The Thing. Experimenting with visual mechanical effects, the production was delayed and the budget crept up. Constrained by what was possible at the time, I wonder what he would have imagined with CGI?

The violence is bloodless because he was "not interested in gore", feeling he couldn't outdo John Carpenter, "The Thing was the ultimate prosthetic movie", (Mann quoted in Starburst #58). He did however have visual effects by Wally Veevers (Superman - The Movie) and mechanical effects from Nick Allder (Alien, The Empire Strikes Back), plus some spectacular prosthetic suits made by Nick Maley. Though the 'muscles on the outside' approach had been prefigured by the climax of Altered States. Unfortunately, Cinefex magazine didn't write up the visual effects in detail at the time (probably because it was produced in Britain and not Hollywood), but Fangoria #33 had a well-illustrated look at the suits.

I was disappointed that some of the visual effects hadn't made the final cut, and that the wild-looking photos of various stages of the creature weren't showcased in the film. But it's hard to say why that is. Was that cut out by the director or the studio? There's footage on YouTube of an unseen alternate ending and it's certainly a short film for Mann. Also several minor characters (like William Morgan Shepherd) disappear completely after being dramatically introduced, (more about the deleted scenes here).

The 'less is more' glimpses of the creature work to its advantage. It looks impressively huge, an outsized humanoid like the Golem legend, which is mentioned in passing as the soldiers flee. One unique apparition of the figure enshrouded in a cloud of self-circulating smoke is astounding, mainly because some poor devil had to build it all and make it work!

But the mystery of The Keep is intensified by both the surrounding story and locale. Cinematography that's allowed to breathe, with some very long shots that allow us to relax and enjoy the view. Magnificent sets, particularly the village exterior built in a spectacular slate quarry in North Wales. Mann wanted a steep-sided valley with black walls, and there it is in the Glyn Rhonwy Quarry, Llanberis (before and after photos here), together with a full-sized exterior of the keep and half a Romanian village. I remember visiting a scary open slate quarry in the area on a school trip (we were at the top of the quarry cliff looking over the edge) - we were only camped a few miles away, so there's a very good chance it was this one.

In terms of production, with a British crew and an auteur director striving for atmosphere rather than pace, this bears close comparison to Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). As ambitious maybe, though not as effective. I still find it fascinating and the initial build-up of lurking horror is hard to beat. When the soldiers break inside the inner keep, there's a single mindblowing 'pullback' shot that just keeps on going. It totally worked in the cinema, but the visual 'trick' is more obvious on the laserdisc. With careful grading for a digital presentation, I'm still hoping that this scene will regain it's initial power.

The complete removal of language barriers between all the characters is too convenient, and there's an uneven variety of accents on offer. Ian McKellen is supposedly Eastern European but sounds strangely American (just as strange that his film career was so very slow to take off). Gabriel Byrne (Stigmata, Ghost Ship, Miller's Crossing) plays German without an accent, but Jürgen Prochnow can't help himself. Incidentally it was fun seeing Scott Glenn again in Sucker Punch. Looking good, but with more furrowed wrinkles...

But the performances are excellent, with Alberta Watson (White of the Eye, The Lookout) in a difficult but standout role against all the heavyweights. Also a rare horror-role for Robert Prosky, who I first saw as a regular in Hill Street Blues.

The Keep has a carefully-composed 2.35 widescreen aspect, like all Michael Mann's movies, and was really badly cropped down to 1.33 for the videotape release. Anyone watching the VHS will have trouble following what the hell is going on. After being so impressed by it in the cinema, I was delighted when The Keep had an early widescreen release on laserdisc in the US (one of the main reasons I got into the format was the likelihood of widescreen).

The film is becoming increasingly famous as a 'missing film' on home video, last seen on that Paramount laserdisc in 1993. But there's still no DVD on the horizon. It notably appeared on Netflix recently, in the US.


Here's an original trailer on YouTube, (but cropped to 4:3 for home video...)

Sir Ian 'Gandalf' McKellen wrote a little about his involvement on his own website, including a few photographs...

http://www.mckellen.com/cinema/keep/notes.htm

French special effects artist Stéphane Piter has a huge fansite about his obsession with The Keep. The picture-heavy website, English version, begins here... 
http://the.keep.free.fr/default_en.htm

ONE MILLION B.C. (1940) - the original Tumak and Luana

ONE MILLION B.C.

(1940, USA, MAN AND HIS MATE)

Trend-setting rarity not on DVD, later remade by Hammer Films

I've always enjoyed dinosaur movies, but ones with good dinosaur effects are hard to find. This mixes great special effects with rubbish ones. It also set a blueprint for caveman movies for decades to come. The script was closely remade by Hammer Films in 1966, the format repeated by When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

 King Kong (1933) and The Lost World (1925) mixed humans and dinosaurs by having the animals survive for millions of years. This story reverses the format by pushing humans back into the same timeframe as dinosaurs, a huge historical inaccuracy that the film makers ignored, mixing in mammoths and other large mammals as well.

Until Jurassic Park, the most convincing dinosaurs had always been realised with stop-motion animation. But One Million BC ignores this approach, making it a weak link between King Kong (1933) and the remake One Million Years BC (1966) which had special effects by animation giants Willis O'Brien and his protegee Ray Harryhausen respectively. The special effects are still strong enough to make it worth seeing. The modelwork for the earthquakes and erupting volcano are exceptional. Some ingenious composite work also provides some shocks.

'Paste-up' composite publicity photo of 

a giant iguana somehow walking on two legs

The 'dinosaurs' are depicted with every visual effect that has never ever realistically worked. One Million BC has a crocodile with a dimetrodon sail fin stuck on its back, and a pig dressed up as a triceratops! Oh, and a pangolin with some rubber horns on its head - little more than a visit to a pets' fancy dress store. This looks silly, but the technique endured into the 1960s. Irwin Allen used dress-up animals extensively for his 1960 remake of The Lost World. Harryhausen even used one at the start of One Million Years BC. Visual effects like these made the basic animatronics in The Land That Time Forgot (1975) look like an improvement. 

But it gets worse - the animals are filmed fighting each other. There are some very nasty scenes of a crocodile and a gila monster chomping on each other and trying to twist off limbs. Exotic lizards are tipped through crumbling sets, buried in rubble, and surrounded by fire. There's a bear killing a snake and an almost dead gila monster pumping blood. Plus an astonishing shot of a cave/stuntman braining a charging bull with a staff. It's not quite Cannibal Holocaust but it's halfway there. This animal cruelty is apparently the main reason that this film has disappeared from home video. It used to play occasionally on British TV, sometimes under the alternate title Man and his Mate.

Least convincing is a disastrous 'man in a T Rex suit' which again looks like fancy dress. They knew it wasn't going to work and the suit is only seen in distant long-shots or hidden by really thick foliage. It's the scene in the remake where Tumak saves the girl up a tree in the village of the shell people. I've seen worse 'man in a T Rex suit' movies, but the best is easily The Land Unknown (1957).

The story, characters and dialogue were closely copied for the Hammer remake, though there's more soppiness here as the cave people all learn how to get along. A major difference is that the volcano eruption isn't the climax in the original. Victor Mature and Carole Landis seem to playing to a pre-teen audience, while Lon Chaney Jr milks pathos out of the deposed chief of the rock tribe, in a rare, disfigured make-up.

Without Harryhausen's dinosaurs and Raquel Welch's everything, this is a dry-run for a great remake with better dinosaurs.

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS' harpy temple location

On location: JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) The Temple of the Harpies!

Why build a set when you can use the real thing?

In 2006 we visited Sorrento, near Naples in Southern Italy. We stared into the mouth of Vesuvius and visited the well-preserved city of Pompeii. In 79 A.D. volcanic ash buried the city in a cataclysmic eruption. Walking around the streets and buildings, the preserved shells of fallen bodies brought home the scale of the ancient tragedy as if it were yesterday.

While visiting the ruined city of Paestum on another excursion, I got the feeling it had been used as a filming location in Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts. In the scene where Phileas (Patrick Troughton) is tormented by two harpies sent by Zeus. Jason and his Argonauts arrive to talk to Phileas, who will only help if they stop the harpies from stealing his food.



I'd not expected to run into this movie location and hadn't prepared at all - normally I'd watch the film beforehand for clues. Because the scene was vague in my memory and I was only working on a hunch, I only got the details right after the visit. On the day, I decided on completely the wrong temple! The information at the site didn't mention anything about it.


Paestum used to be a Greek settlement, named after the god of the sea, Poseidon. Incredibly the layout of the city is still easy to seen, as well as many remaining structures (like a small colliseum) and three well-preserved temples that are still standing. Some of the best examples anywhere, even in Greece. The original architects had even built in various earthquake-defying features, enabling a film crew to run around on top of it 2,500 years later!



Out of the three temples at Paestum, the one on a slight hill - the solitary Temple of Athena (or Ceres) - looked possible, but I'd guessed wrong. Note that it only has six end columns.

At the other end of this World Heritage Site, furthest from the site entrance, are two temples standing side by side - the Temple of Poseidon (or Neptune) and the Temple of Hera (also called The Basilica).

The Temple of Poseidon (on the right) is the more impressive, as it's more complete than the older temple behind it. But it's the Temple of Hera (on the left) that was used in the film. The above two photos are taken from the backs of the temples, from the east. But the filming was either done inside or from front...

These two shots (above) show the front of the temple from the west, before and after they erected a fence that keeps the visitors out.

The Temple of Hera has nine end columns, seen here in the film. But I didn't pay it much attention on the day we visited, because it stands so close to the Temple of Poseidon - I always thought of it being isolated in the film - but in several scenes you can see the neighbouring temple in the background (below)...

Also visible in the background of some shots are mountains, which indicates that the west end of the temple was used for filming. While it's not actually on the coast (the scene of Jason's arrival was faked with a trick of editing), in terms of realism, Jason and his men still arrive at the temple from the direction of the coast.

This overhead shot shows the Temple of Hera (on the left) with the sea in the distance. In 550 BC, the coast would have been closer. 

This location is also used earlier in Jason and the Argonauts. Harryhausen recreated the interior of Poseidon's temple for the opening scene where Jason's mother is murdered. In the film it’s a set, but the original building where those events took place were in that temple next door!

This view looking north shows the ground in front of the Temple of Hera where the film first shows Phileas at a table when the harpies attack. The Temple of Poseidon is behind it. The stone dining table and the fallen columns outside must all have been props. All three temples at Paestum are missing their roofs. The Temple of Hera is the only one also missing the arched decorative roof supports at the front and back, leaving a completely flat surface for Argonauts to run all around the top - making this temple the best of the three for catching harpies...

The columns were all about thirty feet high, making it very dangerous for the stuntmen running around with the Harpie nets. 

The wide flat tops of the columns match the close-ups in the film. 

Some of the filming took place inside the temple. Note the remaining columns inside the structure - they're also visible in this modern view (below) looking inside the temple from the front, towards the mountains.

It’s hard for me to precisely explain the fun of visiting old movie locations. But they're the only physic remnants that remain of many movies. We'd visited Paestum to see ancient temples, which was exciting enough. But it turned out we'd also seen an actual ‘set’ from Jason and the Argonauts, which is very exciting. Especially since it looks much the same as it did in 1963. In contrast, some of the locations for the legendary skeleton fight, like the cliff where Jason jumps, are now underneath multi-storey hotels. 

A good site for more views of Paestum here, at Sacred Destinations). 

(Sorry about the poor layout of this article - Blogger really doesn't like me updating old articles...)

(This is an expanded article, now including my own photos, originally posted November 27th 2006)

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÈLE BLANC-SEC (2010) - directed by Luc Besson

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÈLE BLANC-SEC

(2010, France, Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec)

Director Luc Besson previews his latest film in London

A great film while you wait for Spielberg's Tintin. This adaption of a French graphic novel will also make an interesting comparison in many ways. Besson uses actors to represent comic book characters rather than the far more expensive motion-captured, computer-generated people for Tintin.

That's not to say there aren't extensive visual effects in Adèle. CGI portrays impossible characters, like the pterodactyl. Digital compositing is used to present Paris and Egypt of a hundred years ago. For the more grotesque and bizarre human characters, prosthetic make-ups are used.

Adèle is on a trip to Peru to complete her latest book. That's what her publisher thinks. She's actually in Egypt raiding tombs. Why has she lied, and what has this to do with a pterodactyl terrorising Paris? The police can't believe that a prehistoric animal has killed a senior politician, they need to solve the case fast, no matter how much Adèle gets in their way.

Like the Tintin stories, there's a detailed and realistic presentation of the past, but with more magical and fantasy elements. Like Tintin, Adèle is also a writer, giving her the opportunity to travel. Her only real strength is her personality - she doesn't bow to convention. It may not be ladylike to ride a camel, but if she needs to learn, she will. With a burning desire to succeed, she overcomes the odds with little more than an umbrella and a bag of bird seed...

As a newcomer to the stories, I loved the completely unpredictable nature of the story, and it's always nice to see a guillotine in action. This wasn't as consistently funny as it wanted to be, but maybe I was missing out on the Frenchier in-jokes. It could almost be a family film, though some of the more intense drama and some casual nudity might not be for younger viewers. Film Forager has a tougher review, here. Personally we're holding out hopefully for a blu-ray with English subs.

Besson mentioned that this story was a childhood favourite of his. He spent many years gaining the trust of the author, Jacques Tardi, who'd already dealt with three film studios trying to adapt the story. While this isn't as dark or as adult as many of Besson's earlier films, I think that's because he's committed himself to being as faithful to the original story as possible. While he's more likely to be the producer nowadays, after writing the script he couldn't let another director make this one.

I haven't read the comics yet, but I will. Actress Louise Bourgoin is far more beautiful than the grumpy character in the comics. The first two stories (which combined to form the basis for the film) have been translated into English as one volume. There's a little more about Jacques Tardi's original stories here.

After the screening, Luc Besson held an informal question and answer session that touched on many stages of his career. Movies hadn't been a part of his childhood at all. His parents (both divers) didn't even have a TV. The nearest cinema was far away. But after seeing a movie on a daytrip to Paris, he immediately fell in love with the medium and left home to make movies for himself.
Subway (1985) was based on characters he actually met when he opened a maintenance door in the Paris Metro and disappeared for two days while meeting a whole community living down there. He didn't now think that the film was a satisfying 'whole', as much as a patchwork of several stories he'd written.

The diving experience he'd learnt with his parents led to The Big Blue (1988) and Atlantis (1991), though he doesn't think he'll ever do another underwater film now. He doesn't enjoy directing anything similar to previous projects, unless he thinks he can learn from them. This partly explains why he has been producing so many projects.

When asked if he was flattered by the (three) remakes of La Femme Nikita (1990), he said he would be if any of them had been any good (laughs). It also wasn't a favourite film of his because he had to rewrite and reshoot the ending at the last minute, and that wasn't a great way to make a film.

He dismissed the suggested idea of a sequel to Leon: The Professional (1994) unless a good idea for a story came along. He hinted that there was a demand for one because it would make money.

The films he'd made that he was most satisfied with were the ones that turned out the way he'd imagined them - he named The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) and Angel-A (2005).

He's currently finishing work on The Lady, starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewliss, and said he was trying to get it ready for a November release. After that, he was interested in maybe another sci-fi story. He described the frustration of filming the intricate special effects for The Fifth Element, just before the digital revolution would have made them far easier. Being dependent on motion-control cameras and modelwork, he felt his camera moves were being too restricted.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is already out on DVD in many countries, having been released around Europe and Asia last year. Besson presented this screening on March 19th at BFI SouthBank to promote Optimum's UK release in April. Doesn't look like the film has yet launched in the US.

Here's an original trailer on YouTube, no English subtitles but not much dialogue either...

IT'S ALIVE! (1974) - Larry Cohen's monstrous baby

IT'S ALIVE
(1974, USA)

Kill, baby, kill, kill!

Hollywood movies usually have an A-list cast, beautiful cinematography, superb production design and state-of-the-art special effects. It's Alive has none of these. But director Larry Cohen still provides a unique horror concept and a script rich in ideas. It still keeps me interested right to the bloody finish where many mainstream movies fail to. Anyway, why bother with production values when you can make it cheap, make a profit and spawn a couple of sequels?

The first of the three is easily the best - don't feel compelled to watch the sequels...

A newly born baby slaughters five doctors and nurses in the delivery room, before escaping into the night. As the parents struggle to cope with why they've given birth to a monster, the police try to track 'it' down. The newborn craves milk, toys, and its parents. If anything gets in its way, it has teeth and huge claws...

Unlike traditional monster movies where our heroes are isolated or trapped (at sea, in space, in a remote mansion), this attempts a realistic portrayal of a menace in a modern city, including nosy media, tired cops, and the politics of putting down killer babies. Cohen, who also wrote this, depicts the media as especially insensitive, intruding on the family during their crisis. The use of gentle irony and satire is similar to his later films The Stuff and Q - The Winged Serpent.

Presumably It's Alive was inspired by Rosemary's Baby and a desire to see what happened next. The poster even repeats the image of the pram (though there isn't one in the films). But rather than link this mutant baby to religion, Cohen switches the probable cause of abnormal size and psychosis to manmade - suggesting food additives, pollution, and radiation.

The opening images are simple but disorientating - a growing multitude of flashlights in the night. But even for the 1970s, the low production values are very basic - stark lighting, sometimes scenes are underlit, with bizarrely wide camera compositions and very shaky tracking shots.


While it looks cheap, most of the acting manages to convince that this is all happening to a real couple of people. The late John P. Ryan (Runaway Train, Death Wish 4), as Frank Davis, holds most of the film together, with a transition from happy prospective parent to a reluctant hunter. Some of the supporting actors are on the clumsy side of naturalistic, but the key roles are solid, with Frank's wife (Sharon Farrell) particularly well played.

The film is also blessed with one of the last soundtracks to be composed by Hitchcock favourite Bernard Herrmann.


While the drama is consistent, it's less successful as a seventies monster movie, and especially lacking now. While Jaws succeeded in gradually revealing the monster, It's Alive barely ever shows us the goods, despite the excellent photos of the creature that were published. While the larger-than-lifesize model may have looked good, it couldn't move convincingly. Some quick cuts look like someone waving a plastic monster baby around. There were stories of the young make-up artist Rick Baker dressing up his (then) girlfriend as the creature and tricking the scale down, but again, these shots are so brief, most of his hard work isn't in the film. It's a classic design, but it's not showcased onscreen.

All the films under-deliver in showing us the title character. It's hard to even get a sense of its size. The horror content relies on the repetitive throat wounds, without showing the actual attacks.

Cohen's cheeky script for Maniac Cop, gave us the ultimate in police brutality and a inarguable reason for the public not to trust the police (any of them could be the maniac killer!). It's Alive also plays devil's advocate with a hard decision to make - surely a baby should be terminated if it's going to kill the moment it's born...

If the baby was seen more, like in all the classic monster movies, this would be better known. As it stands, it's a rewarding cynical horror with real people and some substance.

At the time, with very little competition, this was a sufficiently powerful monster movie and audiences wanted more...


It's Alive 2: It Lives Again (1978) kicks in soon after the first, with another couple about to have a monster baby (an echo of the events of Village of the Damned). The young couple, played by Kathleen Lloyd (hot off The Car) and Frederic Forrest (Coppola's The Conversation) are lucky to get advice of Frank Davis (John P. Ryan again).

Coincidentally Ryan, Lloyd and Forrest had just appeared together with Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando in a western The Missouri Breaks. Demonstrating how good Larry Cohen was assembling his casts.

After an unlikely escape from a heavily-guarded hospital, there's an even nuttier storyline - a group of idealists trying to protect this 'new line of evolution', with unsurprising results. While there are plenty of fresh situations, the carnage is slow to kick in, with very few glimpses of now three monster babies. The camerawork is often so poor as to be mystifying. The drama is uneven and often implausible, but it's closer in tone to the original than...

It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (1987), Cohen released the monsters again, with a project perfect for the lucrative VHS market. While the world had changed considerably, Cohen's increased special effects budget didn't deliver anything more realistic, and the next generation of child mutations mostly keep to the shadows, even when battling very-eighties post-punk troublemakers. Michael Moriarty bounces between over-acting and going for laughs. Karen Black and Gerrit Graham act their socks off in a project that's gotten silly.

It's Alive is still around on DVD (don't get it confused with Larry Buchanan's 1969 It's Alive!), the two sequels are available together on DVD, and there's also a set of all three (above). It would make more sense to keep the first two films as a pair, and leave the third for fans of the 80s...


OK. Now should I face the 2008 remake?


An original trailer for It's Alive (1974) is here, from YouTube...