If there is one phrase I’m really tired of hearing, it is the words ‘cult 80s film’. It’s a label that is still thrown around way too much in movie fandom, usually to falsely attribute contemporary artistic value to a crusty old flick that should have stayed dead and buried. Even so, this very label continues to be a marketing boon for anyone peddling the final traces of nostalgia from a golden age of film. And who can blame them? It’s millennials like me, whose rose-tinted glasses for an era I was barely a young kid in, who keep taking the bait. I certainly won’t get back the three-plus hours that I dedicated to watching the 1984 Dune, but I’m sure Amazon loved me for giving them up. Or at least the money I forked out, because if there’s one thing Prime Video is very good at, it’s nudging you into watching movies that it insists are flawed yet underrated classics (here’s a mini-review for Dune 1984: it wasn’t).

I think the main problem lies in just how much we’ve already plundered out of that decade. There’s simply nothing left but mediocrity, and for a film to be truly ‘cult’, it must be anything but mediocre. It might combine the sublime with the truly ridiculous, or low-budget production with high art. Or it could even be an original take on a common genre with the potential for thought-provoking results. It is the latter that leads me to talk about The Keep. 

Deemed both a critical and box-office failure on its release in 1983, The Keep is a British-American effort to combine a WW2 setting with supernatural horror that hasn’t exactly been well remembered. Nonetheless, it was considered ‘good’ enough to be part of the Criterion Collection for a time and does check all the right boxes to be worthy of a re-evaluation. For starters, it is the second film in the directorial career of the esteemed Michael Mann (Ferrari, Heat, Manhunter). It has some stunning visual FX despite its time and its conservative budget. It stars legendary actors Sir Ian McKellen and Jurgen Prochnow, with the latter controversially playing a Nazi sympathetic to the suffering of his so-called enemies. And perhaps most importantly, it constantly treads the line between being an enthralling watch and a complete dumpster fire. Did I forget to mention it also has a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream? Put it all together and surely you have a film worthy of a rabid underground following - at least on paper anyway. Too bad film is made on celluloid, but we’ll get to that later.

At the very least, The Keep has the potential to be a breath of fresh air for veterans of 80s horror looking for something other than yet another slasher yarn. Providing both an epic battle against ancient evil and a character study on the corruptibility of human nature, it’s quite a contrast from its contemporaries in terms of its attempts to be more articulate with its narrative - especially visually. You get a pretty good taste of what this film is at least trying to be in its opening sequence: a sequence that details the slow-rolling arrival of the Nazi squad into the Romanian village that holds the eerie bastion of the title. It’s all trademark Mann - lingering shots of military vehicles rolling down rural roads, pensive looks from the characters on board and slow pans of the beautiful scenery around them, all juxtaposed with blood-red opening credits and a juddering synth track from Tangerine Dream full of foreboding. Some films take time to set a mood - others go straight into it. The Keep unquestionably sits in the second camp.

The first thirty minutes of the film are also its strongest. The anxious atmosphere of the intro sustains itself well as the Nazi deployment settles into the grounds of the keep, acclimatising with both the insular locals and the bizarre stories they tell of the monolithic stronghold they live around. With its haunting visage at night (Mann’s lighting work really on show here) and the unexplained silver crosses that line its thicker inner walls, it certainly has its fair share of mystery. Cpt. Woermann (Prochnow) puts two and two together and hypothesises something about the odd structure of it. Is the keep designed to keep out malignant forces, or keep them locked in?

If the film was supposed to let that question linger, it doesn’t do a great job of it - we get a frank and brutal answer in the very next scene. Mesmerizingly dream-like in its delivery (and nightmarish in its finish), this scene depicts two Nazi soldiers attempting to dig the crosses out of the walls for plunder, and instead find something far more other-wordly. It reaches its climax as they stumble through to the abyssal cavern that lies underneath - as well as the demonic entity that inhabits it - resulting in a discovery that marks the movie’s most horrific and arresting moment. Among some more superb lighting work, Mann also utilises an incredible pan-out shot that lasts an entire minute to reveal the magnitude of the cave under the keep, with Tangerine Dream’s ethereal synths supplying an exultant, almost holy ambience to the buildup beforehand. The very climax itself - the soldiers die horribly at the hands of the demon’s supernatural powers - is just the icing on the cake, and one that is also delivered with supreme technical prowess.

The hypnotic nature of Mann and Tangerine Dream’s joint aesthetic - those slow pan shots and ethereal synths - make The Keep’s first act a slow but gripping watch. Unfortunately, the film’s glaring weaknesses begin to kick in soon after. This is despite the arrival of two other focal characters - wheel-chaired Jewish scholar Dr. Theodore Cuza (McKellen, forced by Mann to adopt a daft Chicagoan accent despite his character being Romanian) and a mysterious figure by the name of Glaeken Trismegestus (Scott Glenn). The former is summoned from a concentration camp out of the Nazi desperation to explain the deaths of their soldiers, and to decipher an ancient message carved into the stone of the keep. The latter turns up while the murder panic is in full swing, and if his corny glowing white eyes are anything to go by, he also appears to have some mystical powers of his own. 

Critically, both serve to carve out different subplots. Glaeken is just the ‘mysterious’ hero of the piece, cut from the typically 80s ‘good vs. evil’ cloth. He makes frequent ambiguous comments about knowing of the creature at the heart of the keep, carries a big staff-like weapon around with him, and also hooks up with Cuza’s daughter, Eva (Alberta Watson in a throwaway - read stereotypical - female role of the time) within five minutes of meeting her. Dull in nature and flatly played by Glenn, he gets no real development. McKellen, who at least puts effort into his role despite having to act out of the corner Mann’s direction has put him in, has a meatier narrative to work with for Cuza. The keep’s vaunted demon - a hulking, red-eyed but articulate soul-eater named Molasar - reveals himself to him, not only through curing his crippling disability, but also saving his daughter from being raped by Nazi soldiers. Molasar soon explains that he is spiritually bound to the keep (so that’s what those silver crosses were for!), and wants his freedom. In exchange for his deeds, he enlists Cuza’s help to find the artefact that binds him to the keep’s confines and extricate it so that he can free himself. He also throws in another sweetener - he’ll continue to act in vengeance against Cuza’s Nazi oppressors after his liberation.

Not a bad deal at all, right? And there is something compelling in the idea of making a pact with evil to vanquish evil, and the inversion of moral purism to achieve a greater good. The trouble is that once these plot points are in play, The Keep rapidly begins to fall apart as a film. The legend goes that Paramount Studios refused Mann’s original three-hour plus edit for the movie, and some serious cutting was required for release. What could have been a well executed conclusion thus becomes a mess. The pace suddenly becomes frantic, characters seem to completely turn their personalities on a sixpence, and nothing whatsoever is ever explained about Glaeken - that mysterious glowy-eyed lone wolf who’s just waltzed into town - nor his backstory. He even offers an amusing explanation to Eva as she tries to make sense of the madness that begins to grip both village and film alike. It’s Molasar’s evil influence at work, apparently - even though Molasar himself is still trapped in the keep. Has anyone looked at the cutting room floor to see if the explanation might be there?

It’s a bloody shame because despite the stupidity that descends, there are still some things to like about The Keep’s second half. Mann’s camera work continues to astound throughout the movie, even if it does get self-indulgent - one particular slow pan of an inn lodging with nobody in it offers practically no value whatsoever, and even breaks up dialogue in the process. Jurgen Prochnow follows his lead performance in Das Boot with another strong showing here as another ‘compassionate’ Nazi - one whose own past hints at being dragged into fascism’s death machine, and is a mere survivor of it than a supporter. His frequent conflicts with SS officer Kaempffer (competently and coldly played by Gabriel Byrne) - whose own policy toward the keep’s villagers is to simply line them against the wall and fire at the first sign of suspicious behaviour - also offer a bit of moral philosophy to the proceedings, albeit elementary. And again, McKellen does make the most of the weak script he’s offered. His own personal highlight would certainly be the epic stand-off he has with Molasar in the film’s climax; one that is awfully reminiscent of his role as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, and a certain monster he clashed with in Fellowship.

Speaking of monsters, there’s also the supposed villain of the piece (ignoring the Nazis, of course). Molasar, all things considered, is a pretty intriguing creature. A far cry from the dumb murder-beasts that so many other 80s horror utilised, his abominable spiritual powers are combined with a sharp, manipulative intellect. Plus, for a movie from 1983, he looks pretty damn cool, serving as the focal point of the best VFX the film has on offer. But his role as both an entity of terrible power and a pro-Jewish avenger might be The Keep’s most confusing angle of all. If we only ever see him killing Nazis, is he actually the bad guy? The fact that the clearly-angelic-but-never-fully-explained Glaeken faces off with him in the film’s hokey, brief final battle makes it seem that way. But that makes even less sense as it breaks one of horror’s fundamental rules: if you’re not convinced on who you’re supposed to be rooting for - good guy or bad - do you actually care what happens to them?

You need strong writing to pull off the kind of moral ambiguity The Keep aims for, and despite its original plot, it sadly has none of the sort. By the time its ending credits roll, you won’t be running any circles in your head - just scratching it. Its controversial subject matter plus outdated depictions of female characters as afterthoughts won’t make it easy to recommend to contemporary audiences, either. But it does have trademark Mann style, exceptional atmosphere courtesy of Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack, and gothic surreality in abundance. Not to mention that scene of the Nazi soldiers digging for silver - a scene so stirring I had to mention it twice. Stylistically immaculate but fundamentally flawed, The Keep stands as a worthwhile visual oddity for any 80s film nut looking for any remaining curios from this long over-pillaged era.