The Keep is a 1983 supernatural horror film written and directed by Michael Mann and starring Scott Glenn, Gabriel Byrne, Jürgen Prochnow, Alberta Watson and Ian McKellen. Set in Romania during World War II, it follows a group of Nazi soldiers who unleash a malevolent supernatural force after setting up camp in an ancient stone fortress in the Carpathian Mountains. It is an adaptation of the 1981 novel of the same title by American writer F. Paul Wilson. The musical score was composed by Tangerine Dream.
Filmed in Wales and at Shepperton Studios during the autumn of 1982, The Keep suffered numerous post-production problems, mainly the death of special effects supervisor Wally Veevers before he completed his work on the film. The film was also subject to significant editing troubles, as Mann's original director's cut was 210 minutes long, which its distributor, Paramount Pictures, required be cut to 120 minutes. After test screenings of the 120-minute version received unfavorable audience responses, the film was truncated to its final 96-minute cut, which was released theatrically in December 1983.
Upon release, The Keep received mixed reviews with many criticizing it for its unclear narrative, though it received some praise for its visual elements. The film performed poorly at the U.S. box office. However, The Keep has gone on to develop a cult following in the years since its release.
Plot In 1941 Romania, following the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, a motorized Gebirgsjäger unit of the Wehrmacht, under the command of Captain Klaus Woermann, arrives at an uninhabited citadel known as 'the Keep', with the aim of taking control of the Dinu Pass in the Carpathian Mountains. Two soldiers, privates Lutz and Anton, attempt to loot a metallic icon within the Keep, but accidentally unleash a spectral entity who kills them. The being, known as Radu Molasar, kills five more soldiers in the following days and begins to take corporeal form.
Woermann's report of the deaths and request for backup is answered by the arrival of a detachment of SS Einsatzkommandos, under the command of sadistic SD Sturmbannführer Erich Kaempffer. Kaempffer claims the deaths are a result of Soviet partisan activity in the village overlooking the Keep. He executes three civilians as collective punishment and takes another five as hostages, despite Woermann's protests.
The Germans find a mysterious message emblazoned on a wall of the citadel. The local village priest, Father Mihail Fonescu, suggests they retrieve a native of the village, ailing Jewish historian Theodore Cuza, from a concentration camp, to decipher it. Upon arrival, Cuza translates the message and says it's written in Old Slavonic, using the Glagolitic alphabet. He and his daughter, Eva, are given quarters inside the Keep.
Soon after, two Einsatzkommandos attempt to rape Eva. Molasar saves her by obliterating the soldiers, brings her to Cuza and, by touching him, cures his debilitating scleroderma. He, then, demands Cuza remove a talisman, which he claims is his, from the Keep. Molasar states this will allow his escape from the Keep's confines and affirms he will, then, destroy the Nazis as he did Eva's assaulters. Cuza, twice indebted to the entity and relishing the emergence of an anti-Nazi force, agrees.
Having remotely sensed Molasar's presence, a man named Glaeken Trismegestus travels from Axis-occupied Greece to the village, carrying a large case. He seduces Eva and incurs Cuza's ire. Questioned by Eva about his origins and identity, Glaeken says his mission is and always has been to destroy the evil within the Keep and that, when that evil is gone, he will be, too. Learning of the plan to remove the talisman, he tells Cuza the talisman is his, not Molasar's, and that its power is all that is preventing the evil within the Keep from being unleashed upon the World.
The malign influence of Molasar begins to affect the villagers, driving them mad. Kaempffer sends a group of soldiers to arrest Glaeken. When he resists, the soldiers shoot and force him into a ravine. Woermann furiously denounces Kaempffer for his sadistic crimes, claiming that the monster hunting the Nazis is a reflection of their evil. Their conversation is suddenly interrupted by the sound of horrible screams and machine-gun fire from the Keep's inner courtyard. Kaempffer shoots and kills Woermann, then goes to the silent courtyard. He finds all Germans slaughtered and all the military vehicles parked inside disabled.
Molasar appears and kills the terrified Kaempffer, while Cuza retrieves the talisman to remove it from the Keep. After acquiring the talisman, Cuza starts for the outside while Glaeken, having survived the fall, climbs the ravine and goes to the inn, grabbing a staff from his travel case.
Eva enters the Keep and attempts to stop her father. Cuza resists and strikes her down, but, when Molasar commands him to kill her, he stops fighting and starts questioning the entity, instead. As punishment, Molasar returns Cuza to his diseased state. Glaeken arrives, retrieves the talisman, combines it with the staff, forming a weapon, and confronts Molasar. The weapon emits beams that interact with the Keep's icons to disable Molasar, turning him back into mist and banishing him back into the innermost recesses of the Keep. Glaeken is transformed in a storm of light and seals the aperture that freed the entity, containing him within, once more. The villagers, freed from Molasar's maddening influence, escort Eva and Cuza away.
Cast
Themes Writer Steven Rybin notes in his book Michael Mann: Crime Auteur that The Keep "does not construct a view of the world in which simple and unambiguous forces such as 'good' and 'evil' do battle. Mann clearly finds human evil in the failure of systems and not in individuals", citing the fact that the Nazi soldiers in the film pillage the metal crosses from the stone fortress for economic gain, unwittingly unleashing the evil spirit of Molasar. Rybin also asserts that, despite the narrative's core thematic elements, Mann is more concerned with crafting a "visual and sonic fairytale".
Production Filming Principal photography began in September 1982 in Wales, with an original shooting schedule of 13 weeks. Filming was gruelling, and once principal photography was finished, additional re-shoots were done which extended the filming for a total of 22 weeks.
The sets for the Romanian village were built at the disused Glyn Rhonwy quarry, a former slate quarry near Llanberis in North Wales. Some interiors of the keep utilised the stonework within the Llechwedd Slate Caverns, near Blaenau Ffestiniog. Due to heavy rain, the film suffered significant delays in its shooting schedule. Shepperton Studios near London was used for interior Keep scenes featuring the demon Molasar. A secondary crew also went to Spain for footage depicting Greece.
English historian and film costume designer Andrew Mollo, brother of John Mollo of Star Wars fame, worked as an historical consultant for the German military costumes. In spite of the fact that war time Waffen-SS members typically wore grey-green (field grey) uniforms, according to Mollo, Michael Mann was insistent that they wear their iconic black uniforms, to let the audience know that Byrne's character and his men were Nazi fanatics.
Special effects The appearance of the film's malevolent villain, Molasar, was changed several times during filming because Michael Mann was unsure of how he wanted him to appear. Initially, Molasar was envisioned by Mann as an intangible entity whose appearance would be influenced purely by his surroundings. However, this description as it appeared in Mann's screenplay proved difficult for the special effects team to create. Mann ultimately settled on the entity initially appearing as an amorphous ball of energy which begins to take human shape with each appearance as the film progresses, morphing from a bundle of energy resembling a human nervous system, to a skeletal and then muscular form, and ultimately, a "statuesque Golem-like" body in the film's climax. A mechanical version of Molasar, which was designed early on during production, ultimately went unused due to Mann's shifting ideas about the monster's appearance, and instead the creature was portrayed by an actor in a bodysuit in its later humanoid stages.
The film's special effects were designed by Nick Maley, along with Nick Allder, who had previously worked on Alien and The Empire Strikes Back. Molasar was conceived by Enki Bilal.
Post-production troubles Two weeks into post-production, visual effects supervisor Wally Veevers died, which caused enormous problems because nobody knew how he planned to finish the visual effects scenes in the movie, especially the ones that were planned for the original ending. According to Mann, he had to finish 260 shots of special effects himself after Veevers' death.Mad Movies #47, 1987
The original climax that Mann envisioned involved Glaeken and Molasar in an epic effects-laden battle on top of the keep tower, ending with Glaeken opening an energy portal that blasts forth from the ground of the keep. The two were to fall from the keep wall and get sucked into the portal and tumble through a void. After that, Glaeken would materialize in the cavern below the keep by a pool and be reawakened as a mortal man.
With the production extensions and the film already having gone well over budget, Paramount refused to pay for the filming of the additional footage needed for this finale, necessitating that Mann instead opt for the simplified conclusion present in the film's theatrical cut.
Original director's cut Mann's original cut of The Keep ran 210 minutes in length. At the demand of Paramount Pictures, this was trimmed to around 120 minutes. Test screenings of the two-hour cut were not favorable so Paramount further cut the film down to 96 minutes, against Mann's wishes. These last-minute cuts resulted in many plot holes, continuity mistakes, obvious "jumps" in soundtrack and scenes, and issues with poor editing. A proper sound mix of the movie could not be completed due to Paramount's interference, causing every version of the movie to suffer from poor sound design. The original 3 June 1983 release date was pushed back to 16 December due to the many problems in post-production.
The original happier ending — which had Eva finding Glaeken inside the keep after he defeated Molasar, and Eva and her father leaving Romania by boat with Glaeken — was cut by Paramount in order for the film to have a shorter running time. Removal of these scenes caused confusion because numerous stills of this ending were shown in magazine coverage. The cast, crew, including Mann, said in interviews that the film had a happy ending. Part of the happy ending, in which Eva goes into the keep and finds Glaeken, was used in 1980s TV versions of the film. Other deleted scenes include more backstory between Glaeken and Molasar, actual explanation for why Eva and Glaeken fell in love, Glaeken killing the captain of the boat (the one who brings him into Romania) who tries to steal his "weapon" which he uses in the end to kill Molasar, more scenes between villagers and with Father Mihail and Alexandru, and Alexandru being killed by his sons when the keep starts to corrupt the village.
Contrary to rumor, there was going to be a scene near the ending showing Molasar killing all the German soldiers inside the keep. Much of the effects for this scene including shots of soldiers heads exploding were filmed but this scene, which would include a lot more complicated effects, was unable to be finished after Veever's death. () ()
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