There are a lot of movies that got a bad reception but go on to become cult classics. The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing and Blade Runner all bombed on release but are now hailed as masterpieces. Then there are films that don’t just don’t just fail, they are reviled like The Keep.
Hated by the director, the lead actor, the author of the book it was based on, and the studio that funded it The Keep was plagued by problems on the set, cost overruns, the effects supervisors untimely death, and a rejection by the moviegoing public. It is universally agreed upon to be a failure as a film.
A failure, but an interesting one, which is why it is still being discussed more than 40 years after it’s release.
The pedigree helps. Michael Mann (famous for Heat) directed an astonishing cast including Ian McKellen, Jurgen Prochnow Gabriel Byrne and other heavy hitters. The book it was based on was a bestseller and it also comes with an anachronistic, but strangely appropriate, soundtrack by electronica pioneers Tangerine Dream. The ingredients for success are there
We open in 1941 with a convoy of German soldiers heading up a mountain pass to a remote Romanian village. Their commander, Jurgen Prochnow (from Das Boot to Beerfest), is quickly identified as one of the Good Germans who serves Hitler’s War Machine while not buying into the Nazi cause. His goal is a mysterious black fortress with obsidian walls and little rhyme or reason. Is the courtyard his troop makes camp in open to the sky or is it a soundstage? How large is the keep? Who owns it and what purpose does it serve? When the soldiers under his command defy the local harbringer and break into a vast underground cavern a new question arises. With a cavern that big, why has the entire region not collapsed into it?
These questions are quickly abandoned when German soldiers start dying. Watching this on Pluto things happened so quickly I wondered whether parts of the movie were being snipped during the commercial breaks. It turns out the trimming happened much earlier. The director’s cut came in at 210 minutes but the studio demanded it be trimmed back to a slim 96. Mann being Mann kept all the moody atmospheric bits at the expense of plot and exposition. Probably for the best because The Keep holds your attention for most of it’s run.
Prochnow, fearing for his men, asks to abandon his post but never thinks of stationing them outside the eponymous keep. His cries for help are met by a detachment of the SS, led by Gabriel Byrne (Miller’s Crossing, Usual Suspects) who we meet massacring the local villagers. This establishes him as one of the Bad Germans whom it is OK to hate. Emphasizing this point, when we meet Byrne he is a disembodied torso protruding from the turret of an armored car, making him a literal part of the Nazi War Machine.
(On a tangent? The vehicle itself is apparently a LeichterPanzerspƤhwagen and this one later appeared as Hubert Jr in the BBC Comedy comedy set in Occupied France Allo_'Allo!
After the opening massacre establishes his evil bonafides Byrne decides to get to the bottom of things. He starts by ordering the village priest to translate inscriptions in a dead language carved into living rock by claws of inhuman strength. Knowing he is out of his depth, the priest suggests calling in Gandalf/Magneto/Ian McKellen, a Jewish scholar who once lived in the village.
The plan is to spring McKellen, accompanied by his daughter and caretaker, Alberta Watson, out of the concentration camp and get him to safety overseas, but McKellen switches the plan after meeting the monster stalking the keep.
The monster, named Molasar, has been literally body building by snacking on German soldiers, but is now looking to leave the keep and recruits McKellen as his ally. After curing his ailments, saving his daughter from certain rape, and spinning a pretty good line of BS? Molasar quickly gains an ally in McKellen who needed little convincing, because hey, dead Nazis.
What follows is a game of wits as each of our four players schemes against each other amidst a background of horror and rising madness as Molasar’s influence erodes the sanity of all involved. Or it would in a better film. Instead we waste screen time one Scott Glenn, a stoic, mysterious and rather boring immortal who is summoned by Molasar’s efforts to escape the keep. Glenn by the way is wasted in this role but was a memorable bad-ass in his brief appearances in Hunt For The Red October and Silence of the Lambs.
This is where things kind of go off the rails and despite some pretty impressive scenes, including:
- A discussion on fascism that hits uncomfortably close to home in 2025 
- A re-telling of Abraham and Issac where the good guys win 
- A brutal offscreen massacre told entirely via sound effects 
The rest of the film, and to be honest most of the earlier part as well, just doesn’t gel together. Some critics will refer to this as ethereal, fever dream-like logic soaked in symbolism. Freedonia’s take is informative and typical of that interpretation. Or you could just say it's half-baked.
Which might be why we are still talking about. Masterpieces are recognized and enshrined, mediocre works are forgotten, but the ones that are almost there, but just miss the mark… those are the ones that haunt us.
Or as the old social media chestnut goes? “No more remaking good movies. Remake movies that were almost good.”
