The Keep

The Keep wears its crap bits proudly on it's sleeve, its qualities are more hidden and emerge only once you've watched it, dismissed it and then found that it's atmosphere refuses to disperse. Read full review

Mann’s achievement in creating his own dreamlike alternate reality alongside a historical one isn’t necessarily diminished by his failure to bring the story across. The keep has a presence: castle walls that stretch to infinity, an ancient Evil that forbids lodgers and requires rituals to contain it, the metaphorical heft of standing over a war of unimaginable atrocity. And thanks to Mann, The Keep has a presence, too. Read full review

The movie can’t always keep its many moving parts in lockstep, what with its hinted-at mythos that obscures more than it elucidates and its cast of enigmatic characters whose precise dealings with one another are never made entirely clear, but its World War II backdrop, ravishing synth score by Tangerine Dream and Third Reich mysticism make for a poppy but brooding atmosphere. Read full review

Eerie, chilling, at times engaging. But Mann's attempt to superimpose an analysis of the emotional attraction of Fascism simply doesn't work within the Heavy Metal magazine cartoon format. Read full review

A minor disaster. Director Michael Mann presents a fantastic-looking movie, filled with great production values and lush cinematography. Unfortunately, these are combined with a totally incoherent narrative, punctuated by incredibly inept performances from usually fine actors. Read full review

Before it goes completely off the rails into yoga sex and ill-advised special effects, The Keep manages to establish an intriguing sense of atmosphere and dread. Read full review

Buried deep within The Keep’s mysterious exterior lies that chilling Hollywood question: how do these dogs get made? Read full review

Mann deserves credit for trying new stuff, of course; The Keep is nothing if not ambitious. But it isn't anything more, either. [20 Dec 1983, p.D5]

The movie makes no sense as either melodrama or metaphysics, so that its expensive special effects go up in smoke. Literally. Read full review

Nothing if not monumentally obsessed, Mann seems to be volunteering himself as the American film industry's answer to the cinema of ultraportentous imagery and crackpot visionary affectation. One imagines him entering the unofficial competition trailing swirls of smoke or ground fog and radiating backlit shafts of light, like half the characters in his movie. [17 Dec 1983, p.B3]

The Keep has opened just in time - if it had waited another couple of weeks, it would have been the worst horror movie of 1984 and there wouldn't have been anything to look forward to all year. [17 Dec 1983]