New Films, New Options, New Rumours....

That's great. F. Paul Wilson is a great writer and his Adversary Cycle (The Keep is book one) is a great read.

I have still to see the original version of the movie.
 
It's a long time since zi last watched it, but I wouldn't call the movie of The Keep awful, it's just very poorly edited and (the only copies I've seen) didn't have very clear viduals. A quick look on Youtube and there's a cleaned-up 4k intro to the movie, which mskes it look much more light it should have done.

Apparently the director's original version was around 210 minutes, which was eventually reduced to 96 on cinematic release. This gives you an indication of just how butchered the movie is, and why the director (quite rightly) would disown it.

With a 4k clean up, and with some of the missing material added back in, it still has the potential to be a great movie. But we probably won't see that.

As it is, the finsl 96 minutes does not do any justice yo yhd book on which it us made. It's a confusing mess; however the lead actors, the visuals and the movie lend the movie a very creepy, ethereal atmosphere that any newer mivie is likely to eschew.

Think the theatrical version of Lynch's Dune, or Alien3. Yes, the it has been destroyed on the cutting room floor, but for all that the creepy atmosphere still makes the movie worth watching. Just be prepared to be disappointed if you have read the original book.
 
paranoid marvin said:
Apparently the director's original version was around 210 minutes, which was eventually reduced to 96 on cinematic release. This gives you an indication of just how butchered the movie is, and why the director (quite rightly) would disown it.
Click to expand...
I don't know about the director but it was the writer, F Paul. Wilson who disowned it
 
AE35Unit said:
I don't know about the director but it was the writer, F Paul. Wilson who disowned it
Click to expand...


Probably because the 96 minute movie doesn't tell the story of the book. It's too short, and it tells.

This is from memory, as it's some years since I last watched it. There are redeeming qualities, but mainly through winsering what could have been. It has a very weird, ethereal quality to it and some of the visuals particularly of the Keep itself, stay in the memory. It was apparently partly filmed on location in Wales.
 
I saw a trailer for the new Joker film yesterday that was literally one minute of a man weeping in the rain, with a blue filter over the camera. I like the way that every Batman film has to be longer and "darker" than the previous one. It's like the Four Yorkshiremen sketch set in Gotham.

"In my version, Alfred is played by a pile of old rags, and Batman sits in his cave and just growls at himself for three hours."
"That's nothing! In my Batman film, Commissioner Gordon is reimagined as a heap of dead rats and it's nine hours long."
"Dead rats? Dead rats? You were lucky! My Batman would have been overjoyed to find a heap of dead rats! In my film, Batman sits in a sealed room for thirty-eight hours, punching himself in the face. There's a black cloth over the lens, that's how dark it is. And if you tell that to Adam West these days, he just won't believe you."
 
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Toby Frost said:
I saw a trailer for the new Joker film yesterday that was literally one minute of a man weeping in the rain, with a blue filter over the camera. I like the way that every Batman film has to be longer and "darker" than the previous one. It's like the Four Yorkshiremen sketch set in Gotham.

"In my version, Alfred is played by a pile of old rags, and Batman sits in his cave and just growls at himself for three hours."
"That's nothing! In my Batman film, Commissioner Gordon is reimagined as a heap of dead rats and it's nine hours long."
"Dead rats? Dead rats? You were lucky! My Batman would have been overjoyed to find a heap of dead rats! In my film, Batman sits in a sealed room for thirty-eight hours, punching himself in the face. There's a black cloth over the lens, that's how dark it is. And if you tell that to Adam West these days, he just won't believe you."
Click to expand...
There are times when I miss the Adam West's Batman...
 
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The Batman films are particularly bad examples of what I think of as "Gloomy Man Films", a genre pioneered by David Fincher, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve (all of whom are genuinely good directors and have made really good stuff). A Gloomy Man Film is very long, completely humourless and ideally has no female characters. They tend to be slightly monochrome. They are immensely popular with a certain kind of male amateur "film critic", the sort of guy who has a Youtube channel called something like "True Secrets of the Screen Geniuses (no gay woke libs allowed)".
 
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