The Keep (film)

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The Keep

Directed by	Michael Mann
Produced by	Gene Kirkwood Howard W. Koch Jr.
Written by	F. Paul Wilson (novel The Keep) Michael Mann (screenplay)
Starring	Scott Glenn Gabriel Byrne Jürgen Prochnow Ian McKellen Alberta Watson
Music by	Tangerine Dream
Cinematography	Alex Thomson
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 16, 1983 (U.S. release)
Running time	96 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

For other uses, see The Keep.

The Keep is a 1983 horror film directed by Michael Mann and starring Scott Glenn, Gabriel Byrne, Jürgen Prochnow, and a dubbed Ian McKellen. It was released by Paramount Pictures. The story is based on the F. Paul Wilson novel of the same name, published in 1981 (1982 in the United Kingdom).

The video run time of 1:37 is thought to be a studio-ordered cut against the wishes of Michael Mann. His cut of choice is speculated to be in the three to four hour range. ^{[citation needed]}

Wilson himself has expressed his distaste for the film version publicly, writing in the short story collection The Barren (and Others) that it is, "Visually intriguing, but otherwise utterly incomprehensible." When talk of a DVD release of the film came about in 2004, Wilson and a friend recorded a caustic CD commentary to go along with it, which he teased to his official mailing list [1], "The F File", although the CD appears to have never actually been released.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film focused on a deserted citadel (the keep of the title) in Romania within which lives a dangerous demon. When the German Wehrmacht occupies the castle to control a mountain pass, the demon is mistakenly unleashed from the walls of the citadel and begins killing German soldiers. At this point, the Einsatzkommando arrives to deal with what was thought to be partisan activity. The Einsatzkommando actions only fuel the demon's rage and soon troops begin to die in mysterious ways.

This results in the Germans locating a Jewish professor who had studied the Keep years before. The demon enlists the aid of the professor to escape from the Keep; however a mysterious stranger then arrives to stop the demon. The stranger confronts the professor and tells him the demon of the Keep is as evil as the Germans it is killing, and then the stranger and the demon do battle. The demon is destroyed, but the stranger (who is revealed to be a super-human creature who imprisoned the demon centuries before) is mortally wounded. Alternate versions of the film show the stranger coming back to life and leaving the keep with the professor's daughter, with whom a love interest had developed.