Mild Peril Video Club : The Keep (1983)
The Keep (1983) ★★★★☆
Part of the Mild Peril Video Club, 2nd degree.
This is the kind of film I live for. I had a period of discovering old films which I think is long past now, and this was like accidentally finding the holy grail or something. A housemate had it taped off the television, and I ended up forking out £25 quid for a VHS copy some time after.* Nazis in a castle having their souls sucked out by a floating brain that then turns into a kind of undead bodybuilder, filmed in the most 80s style that clashes with its period setting, starring Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen, and with music by Tangerine Dream? Fuck off, as if that exists. And directed by Michael Mann of all people.
But I've made it sound as if the appeal is that it's cheesy. And okay yes it partly is that, but while it is doomed to fall apart before the last third, it just has such an atmosphere in it that just speaks to me, and that carries me far enough that I don't mind the ending. You can laugh at how silly it is to distract you from the sadness that the film was never properly finished, for various reasons you can read about elsewhere.
It's that same kind of feeling of having fallen into an alternate universe as when I discovered the vast amount of obscure old synth pop & disco there is out there. It's definitely partly attached to nostalgia, and to a kind of tongue in cheek attitude, like 'I love it because it's bad' but not really... I've always said that there's no such thing as cheese, if it's something you like. Calling something cheesy is a defence mechanism, and it's fine, sometimes you need armour that to break through your fear of ridicule, into a new realm of joy.
I of course took the name of the monster in The Keep for my side project Molasar.
This review on Letterboxd.
The (New) Mild Peril Video Club, 2nd degree - a better version I’m currently working on.
*I can vouch for this DVD issue, by the way, the one by Via Vision. I'm not sure how official it is, and it's not been restored at all, but this is the only way you'll own it.
This trailer was put together by a particular cinema screening the film, but it showcases Tangerine Dream’s score nicely and is of better picture quality than the original trailer.
