Watch The Keep For Free

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

At times, THE KEEP is very atmospheric, foreboding and suspenseful, with solid acting by Ian McKellen and Jurgen Prochnow. Unfortunately, THE KEEP was a troubled production (its story should emerge in a KEEP documentary to be released in 2017). In short, weather conditions were difficult, Mann kept re-visualizing the film (especially its primary villain) during production, and worst of all, his head Effects expert, Wally Veevers, died during early post-production, leaving a number of key effect scenes unfinished. Paramount then refused further production monies, time for proper sound mixing, and edited the rough film's 210 minutes down to a "theater-friendly" 96 minutes, resulting in numerous plot holes. Paramount's brief theater release was followed by home video on VHS, but in part due to rights issues over the music (a moody yet haunting score by Tangerine Dream) has kept THE KEEP from an official Paramount DVD release. In recent interviews (also part of the upcoming documentary), Michael Mann showed little interest in revitalizing this film.

So many people here have come to this movie with modern eyes. Of course the SFX are going to look dated it was made 32 years ago! However, the movie is carried along (for the most part) by the visuals and the excellent (if mixed somewhat loudly) Tangerine Dream soundtrack.The story does seem to jump evidencing the loss of footage at some point and at someone's behest...I hope to see a Directors Cut one day if the "issues" with who/whatever has them ever get sorted. A new sound mix would be excellent to add more dynamic range to the audio, it seems a touch over compressed as was the style in the 80's.An unsettling movie somewhat let down by a chain of events starting with the death of the SFX head Wally Veevers. Add in some studio meddling and a whole bunch of other wrangling with Tangerine Dream and it's evident the movie isn't what it could have been.As for Paul F Wilson's opinion it's moot, as an author will very rarely think any adaptation lives up to what he envisioned.**The version from Netflix is currently the best quality anywhere in the wild**

Finally caught up with this: I'm not a Michael Mann fan, but this really is sensationally bad. Some terrible performances from otherwise capable actors, seemingly edited by Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, but the sound cut by a child. It's not a triumph of cinematography either .. but seriously, how Gabriel Byrne's career survived this one is a happy mystery. Oh, and Ian McKellen appears with his face covered badly in talcum powder, to denote old age.I shouldn't compare this to the triumph, the monument, that is 'Lifeforce' - but it has something of the same clunky, imbecilic quality. One for the completist or the connoisseur of the stinky.

I tried to like this strange movie. Looking more like a pantomime set rather than a film set, plus the T.Dream music that for me did not help but was intrusive and at times grated. There was a better movie in there somewhere, Maybe M.Mann's original cut? Sir Ian's accent was anything but Eastern European, more American than anything. I notice on his own site he says the director asked him to drop the Rumanian accent for a Chicago one, if true it sounds strange to say the least. The only actor who seemed believable to me was Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne doing pretty much as every other actor doing the sadistic Nazi act does with the exception of the brilliant Christoph Waltz in Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' I thought the monster quite good until 'it' opened it's mouth, it spoke with a better accent than Ian Mckellen. In my view this 'mish mash' was a missed opportunity.