The Keep

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]