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Must See Movie...

Best movie ever!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Powerful science fiction film from gifted director Ayton Davis, this is not the usual SyFy production. With careful attention to period detail and the creation of strong characters, Davis brings both the era and atmosphere of the Second World War to life. The special effects are extraordinary and some sequences are absolutely haunting in their imagery. The scene where an ME-109 is challenged with only a mortar is one of the most exciting ever filmed. Joe Penny gives one of his most effective performances in years as the battle hardened Gus, a man who has seen far too much combat but still answers the call of duty. The Germans are depicted as more than an enemy in this motion picture and it is made clear they regret deeply they have unleashed and uncontrollable and ultimately unholy evil.

This is one of these movies that gets frequently broadcast on the SyFy Channel . You can understand why someone might do their best to avoid watching it but as so often happens there's absolutely nothing else on so it was either REIGN OF THE GARGOYLES or having to watch a movie I'd seen several times before and had commentated on it on this site . After all I'm amongst friends at the IMDb and I can always share my opinions amongst my friends here The general consensus on this page is that REIGN OF THE GARGOYLES is better than most of the films produced by the SyFy Channel which is admittedly faint praise but some people have qualified this by stating it's almost a good film in its own right and contains a couple of good scenes . There's certainly contains the bare bones of a good film and one wonders if a film containing some downed pilots and SAS soldiers behind enemy lines during WW2 might have been better pitched to one of the major Hollywood studios . Indeed a cross genre mixing war and monsters starring Jeremy Renner , James McAvoy and Olga Kurylenko probably wouldn't break box office records but it'd certainly make a great night out at the multiplex . This SyFy production is let down by two major things First of all is the budget . You want flying Gargoyles , squadrons of planes and explosions . No problem for a Hollywood studio with a lot of cheque books , but a very big problem for SyFy who can only realise these sequences via ... go on guess ? I'll give you a three letter clue - CGI . The unfortunate thing because there's so many CGI sequences the budget for it is spread very thinly which means it's often worse than you see in this type of production . It also seems to bite in to other aspects such as sequences where characters fire their weapons is it's patently obvious that the actors are just shaking their props around The second thing is the amount of errors made concerning military matters and timeliness .Early a character talks of UFOs and flying saucers terminology that wouldn't have existed in 1944 . We also see SAS troopers with British Parachute regiment insignia and berets and over-sized B-17 Flying Fortress interiors where the crew have no need for oxygen and are happy to fly 20,000 feet in dress uniforms without suffocating or succumbing to minus 20 degree temperatures In summary REIGN OF THE GARGOYLES is a mediocre film but one recognises that with a bigger budget and a bit more thought this would have been a fairly enjoyable piece of pop corn entertainment . Perhaps if Hollywood is thinking of doing a mixed genre film featuring monsters and the war with an international cast they could watch this film seeing the obvious contrast in what works and what doesn't

Given the well documented interest of the Nazi party hierarchy in the occult -Hitler and Himmler especially -it is a minor pity that so few supernaturally themed movies or science fiction movies have taken this as a starting point ."The Keep" , a pretentious rambling Michael Mann movie and the altogether better if more modest Trancers apart it remains a relatively unexplored area for genre cinema.Reign of the Gargoyles does tackle this subject and makes a decent if somewhat undercooked stab at it Nazi scientists are able to resurrect stone demons and set them loose in an attempt to sabotage Allied attacks on the Central European heartland .An American aircrew is dispatched to try to discover what is going on ,and are brought down by an attack of these winged demons .They combine with a small local partisan band to destroy the creatures ,and this involves locating a sacred spear from the grave of a long dead knight who had originally imprisoned the demons some time in the Middle Ages The problem is a lack of quality in the special effects ,which are workmanlike rather than exceptional and a cast of unknowns whose talent is such they are likely to stay that way .The script is underpowered and allows for little or no character development The location photography is good however and makes good use of the bleak ,wintry landscape to give an eerie and edgy look to the pictureA bigger effects budget and sharper scripting would have made this a better movie .As it is ,what we have is an okay picture which just fails to do justice to its premise

There is hardly anything left to say; the title says it all. Crappy CGI (a bit better than average for SciFi channel) meets silly cardboard characters. And cardboard wins because CGI is virtual! It's like one of those Santa Claus and a smart beautiful blonde jokes.Anyway, with the limited, but larger than average budget they could have chosen one of the thousands of good scripts floating out there. No, they chose a story where German sadists try to kill brave Americans helped by the beautiful French resistance girl. Oh, and there are gargoyles around. Puh-lease!Bottom line: total waste of time. Not bad enough to count. Not good enough... for anything ;)