The Keep, at the Mahoning

Back in December 1983, Hollywood studios started taking flack for releasing mostly R-rated films during the holiday season. That is when they stuffed audiences' stockings with Scarface, Christine, Gorky Park, Sudden Impact, and Uncommon Valor. This was also part of that ill-considered bout of scheduling, but timing was always a problem for Michael Mann’s second film. Not particularly faithfully adapted from F. Paul Wilson’s bestselling novel, Mann’s The Keep fittingly screens tonight as part of an 80’s horror night at the Mahoning Drive-In (if you don’t know who they are, check out the documentary, At the Drive-In).

Eventually, The Keep became part of Wilson’s loosely connected “Adversary Cycle,” but when the film was optioned, it was one of the biggest new horror novels not written by Stephen King. Sadly, it probably qualifies as a “cursed film,” because special effects supervisor Wally Veevers died during post (with nobody entirely understanding what he had planned) and then the studio gave Mann’s two-hour-plus cut the Harvey Scissorhands treatment. It could have been different and probably better, but what survives is still definitely interesting.

It is 1941, in the Romanian mountains, while the Antonescu regime was still formally aligned with the Axis Powers. Capt. Klaus Woermann of the Wehrmacht dutifully follows his orders, occupying a remote but imposing keep, literally built into the side of a mountain. Formerly a progressive intellectual, he is not initially unhappy to be sidelined from the war. Unfortunately, when a malevolent force starts killing off his troops, the brutal SS officer Erich Kaempffer is dispatched to deal with the supposed partisans. Of course, it is really an ancient evil the Germans themselves have let loose.

In the book, the entity Molasar (a.k.a. Rasalom) was decidedly more vampiric, while in the film, it bears a clear resemblance to the golem. That sort of helps to explain why the Jewish scholar, Dr. Theodore Cuza, who is whisked off a transport with his daughter Eva, to interpret the ancient writings found within the Keep, would so readily fall under Molasar’s sway. Meanwhile, Molasar’s immortal nemesis Glaeken (who also calls himself Glenn in the novel, but not in the film, in which he is played by Scott Glenn) senses he has awakened, so he returns for a final showdown.

The Keep is indeed a flawed film, but Mann’s visuals and the trippy Tangerine Dream soundtrack (arguably their best film work) is so distinctive, it ironically raises the comparison stakes for any prospective remake. Despite the troubled production, the first 30 minutes or so of the film really are remarkably eerie. The keep itself is a marvel of design work and cinematographer Alex Thompson’s lighting and camera work is some of the best you will ever see in a genre film.

Mann’s adaptation is another matter entirely, at least as far as we can tell. Molasar is a perfect example of a monster that loses most of its power once we get a good look at it. In its irreparably truncated form, the exploitative nature of a Jewish character helping a cosmic embodiment of evil knock off Nazis also awkwardly stands out. Nevertheless, there is no question Woermann is the only remotely sympathetic German character.

Kino! ’18: The Final Journey

Historically speaking, Russia’s military aggression in eastern Ukraine is nothing new. Just ask the Cossacks—if you can find any left. There is one particular Cossack woman an elderly German man would dearly like to find. His connection to the Cossacks is news to his granddaughter, but their family does not talk very much. However, she might finally get to know the old man before it is too late in Nick Baker-Monteys’s The Final Journey (trailer here), which screens during this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

The recently widowed Eduard Leander was always a prickly cuss, but when he suddenly leaves on a seemingly inexplicable Ukrainian voyage, his daughter Uli still feels duty-bound to dispatch his slacker granddaughter Adele to retrieve him from the station. Much to her chagrin, Adele finds herself train-bound for Kiev instead. Old man Leander is somewhat put out having her tag along, as is she, but at least she finds some companionship with their hard-partying compartment mate, Lew.

Of course, once they reach Kiev, they realize his life is much more complicated than he prefers to let on. Lew is ethnic Russian, but still identifies as Ukrainian—as well as Russian. It turns out he is the only member of his family with such divided sympathies. He was a Maidan supporter, but his brother Boris has become one of the few fig-leaf separatists in Donetsk, providing cover to the plain clothes Russian troops. However, those connections make Lew the perfect guide for Leander as he searches for the mysterious Svetlana.

Frankly, Baker-Monteys and co-screenwriter Alexandra Umminger are tepidly cautious in the way they depict the fighting in Donetsk, preferring to cast it in brother-versus-brother terms, as if it were not unlike the American Civil War, then the conflict of neo-Soviet imperialism that it is. However, they clearly address the repression and ethnic cleansing suffered by Cossacks like Svetlana, whom we learn spent years in a Soviet Gulag (as did Leander, which is quite a surprise to his family).

In some ways, Final Journey is highly formulaic, but that also means it will be very accessible to non-German, non-Ukrainian audiences. In fact, one of its greatest merits is the appealing chemistry that develops between Adele and Lew. Petra Schmidt-Schaller’s turn as Adele is unusually subtle and earthy, while Tambet Tuisk is genuinely charismatic as Lew. Oddly, veteran movie bad guy Jürgen Prochnow largely relies on cranky old man clichés, at least until old Leander’s big third act pay-off.

Arguably, Lew is the film’s most compelling character, but the Cossack back-story is quite distinctive—and in many ways a tragically prescient prologue to the current Imperial Russian war against Ukraine. Recommended for general audiences, The Final Journey screens tomorrow night (4/8) and Tuesday (4/10), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.