PROOF THAT IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW GOOD YOUR CAST IS, HOW BIG YOU TRY TO MAKE YOUR FILM, HOW LUSH THE SCORE IS, OR HOW MUCH TO TRY TO MAKE YOUR FILM EPIC - IT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT GONNA SUCK...

The Keep (1983) US/UK

This movie should have been amazing. Should have. Yes, it's my last Nazi movie for a while and I've just dumped the rest of my draft pile, realizing I'll just need to watch stuff again and make new reviews because looking over my notes gives me a bigger headache than you'll get if you try to watch and understand what the hell is going on in this movie.

I mean my God, look at the cast. Ian McKellan (he wasn't knighted until 1991), Scott Glenn, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and other prestigious names well versed in film and theater including Rosalie Crutchley, who starred in the original The Haunting (1963) the first film of the book The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, that they totally ruined with the awful 1999 The Haunting with... other people.

So it has to be epic, right? I mean it's about Nazis and a huge stone fortress with an evil spirit locked inside and only a Jewish man can help them figure out what's going on and... nothing. This movie is one huge six million in 1983 dollars ($7,169,608.43 today) 210 mind numbing minutes (unless you're lucky and see the 91 minute version) of... nothing. This movie should have been right up there with Star Wars, or Indiana Jones, or Star Trek. Instead it's a movie that when most people hear the title they scratch their head and say, 'huh?'. Shame.

I'll try to keep this blissfully short since I've been tending to run on and on with horrible movies. Funny how easy the decent ones are to review, yet the really bad ones take days. Hmm...

So the story was simple, the actors great and the setting a winner. So why did this movie suck so bad? Perhaps (my theory, keep that in mind) the actors weren't really given a whole lot to go on in this movie. After all, this is about the spirits of good and evil, and how little mortal man means to the big picture as far as whether they are good or evil. Does that even make sense? No? Well, now you know why this movie will make you scratch your head so hard it'll draw blood.

We are in Romania during WWII. The Nazis are moving in and plan to occupy this small town when they notice a huge fortress that the locals call 'The Keep'. Well, nothing's too good for Nazis so despite local protests (which meant diddly to the soldiers anyway) they all move in. Now you've got to be thinking (which is a dangerous thing to do in a movie like this - you could cause a seizure), hey, sounds like a cool movie to me - Star Wars without the ships and the aliens and the lightsabers and the special effects and the... wait a minute...

Told you not to think. Go get a tissue and wipe that blood from your eyes.

Like every movie with a group of anybody in it, we've got different 'kinds' of Nazis - those who are sympathetic to the people they're tromping on, those who want to tromp on them harder, and those who just want to blast the whole world to kingdom come and get it over with. 

In the small village by The Keep is a Jewish scholar (Ian McKellan) and his daughter who soon will be under the focus of the Nazis. See, this big rock is keeping inside something called Radu Molasar (a crappy low-budget looking monster). The Keep isn't preventing him from leaving, but a cross embedded in a wall is.

Now, here I could get into what makes a cross, whether a cross as is pictured was actually used to kill Jesus, on and on. Nope. Believe what you want, I'm too tired.

I'll just give a brief entry from wiki: The Cross of Tau, named after the Greek letter it resembles, is a form of the Christian cross symbol. It is also variously St. Anthony's Cross, Old Testament Cross, Anticipatory Cross, Cross Commissee, Egyptian Cross, Advent Cross, Croce taumata, Saint Francis's Cross, Crux Commissa. The shape of the letter tau or T was interpreted as representing a crucifix from antiquity.

So. There are (and somebody thought this meant something although the movie mucks this up so badly that the meaning is lost) 108 total 'T' symbols in metal embedded in the walls throughout The Keep. Two greedy Nazi soldiers decide to steal one, only to find them made of nickel. They figure that a ton of worthless 'T's were there in order to hide a valuable 'T' and since this is war and they have nothing better to do, they go look for it.

In the meantime we have Scott Glenn. This is absolutely the most awful, badly developed, worthless 'hero' in the history of film - and the writer of the book would probably agree. Scott plays a mysterious being named Glaeken Trismegestus (I am NOT making this up) whose whole life is to apparently wait around the centuries in case some idiot lets out the evil in The Keep. He 'senses' Radu is loose, grabs his mysterious... gym bag and heads to Romania. Wow, what a man.

So. Again. The two Nazi stooges find the silver 'T' and dig it out. Bad move. Or good move, if you want this movie to end more quickly. Once Ragu... I'm sorry, that's spaghetti sauce... once RADU is unleashed, Nazis in The Keep start to die. Nasty Nazi SD Sturmbannführer Eric Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne) tells the villagers every time a Nazi dies an angel gets his wings... sorry. Every time a Nazi is killed, they will kill a villager. A priest finally convinces them to use the services of a Jewish professor (Ian McKellen) to interpret writing they found within The Keep to prevent further deaths. Because he has a smoking hot daughter (um, that's according to the movie) Kaempffer is more than happy to have the two as guests in the freezing stone whatsijigger.

But the professor suffers from scleroderma, which can be made much worse in cold, damp places. Plus the naughty Nazis won't leave his daughter alone. He discovers the freed Radu and sort of does one of those 'deal with the devil' things that are stupid 'cause how do you end them once you start? Radu saves the daughter and sends her back to the village, then cures the professor of his ailment. So who is really evil and who is really good? I'm sure the book kept everything straight, but this movie was just a huge mess.

While back at the inn in the little town the professor's daughter, Eva, meets up with Glaeken and (I am NOT kidding) within ONE MINUTE OF MEETING HIM and before she can ask "Are you a vampire? 'Cause you have no reflection... and what the hell is wrong with your eyes?" (they glow), they have sex. The only thing I can postulate (and I hate to do that 'cause I'm usually wrong) I would say this was either because the movie was botched, or because the 'Hello my name is...' part of their relationship ended up on the cutting room floor.

Let's end this mess, okay? The professor realizes he's been a bad, bad boy, he finds a flashlight that's supposed to help dispel the evil (I shit you not, it's a freaking flashlight that they're trying to make into some sort of icon). But that's not even nearly as bad as what Glaeken has been carrying around with him this whole movie. His secret weapon? A BLACK PIPE. No, not the smoking kind, the kind that is everywhere in your house. WHAT'S THE BLACK PIPE FOR? For holding the flashlight of course! DUH!

So. The professor comes back from the dark side, Glaeken uses his magic pipe-n-flashlight to force Radu back into his prison - his eyes turn into grids for some reason they're not going to tell you, and the flashlight on a stick lights up all the T's which pisses the badly done smoking dude considerably.



As the film runs backwards, into the rock goes the monster, all the smoke, and Glaeken, for some reason they're not going to tell you, now is fused to The Keep, but at least all the Nazis there are dead (all what, thirty? big deal).

Fin. Forever.

                        

WORKING THROUGH THE PILE OF DRAFTS AND FINDING THAT DAMMIT I HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIES AGAIN TO MAKE SENSE OF MY NOTES PLUS MY MEMORY IS KAPUT AND GEEZ, HAVEN'T I ALREADY WATCHED THIS TWICE AND NOW I'M DOING IT AGAIN AND I HAVE YET ANOTHER NAZI MOVIE TO GO...

Frankenstein's Army (2013) US/Netherlands/Czech Republic

Somewhere in Hollywood we-don't-give-a-shit land, greedy overlords were desperate to find a way to earn their million for the week. They met around their solid oak table that approximated the cost of three houses and pondered for five minutes. Then they decided to write their ideas on a piece of paper and throw it in the I-don't-give-a-shit box. What they didn't count on was the president had had 'friends' over the night before (EXPENSIVE friends) and he had a hell of a hangover, so he hadn't heard that they were only going to pick ONE idea. Instead this genius took all the scraps of paper, laid them out on the table and said, "This is our next movie!"

So there you go. This movie really has no particular genre - no, scratch that. This movie can be put in any genre you choose, depending on your mood at the moment. It is a horror-creature-feature-sci-fi-Frankenstein-war-found-footage film. With whipped cream on top.

It does have its moments though. I wouldn't say run from this movie, maybe a slow walk would suffice. It also wouldn't hurt much to watch it just once. I'm just being a wussy 'cause to get this review done for good (instead of drafts I can't understand because it's been too long) I've watched this bloody thing at least three times. Pffft. Double DUH on me, I know.

You think they'd have run like
hell when they found Frank Tank...

So. This is WWII and we are with the Russians in this one. If I interrupt with a couple of 'facts', it's only because I care about your welfare and if you can at least learn a little bit of history it's worth it right? I know I learn from these 'cause school didn't do squat but teach me how to memorize facts for 24 hours, then forget everything. It wasn't a bad school, I was a lazy student.

Kentucky Fried Nuns... yeah, I know,
I already slapped my hands with a ruler...

Oh yeah, Russians. They are currently under the thumb of Stalin. At the beginning of the film a man, using what's supposed to be a camera of the age, announces that he is Dimitri and he is doing this for the mausoleum and for Stalin. Sigh. What's a mausoleum got to do with it? Short answer: That's where they put Lenin. Stalin was in it until 1961 before it was quietly removed. There were no ceremonies and no fanfare. 

About 300 feet from the mausoleum, Stalin's body was buried near other minor leaders of the Revolution. Stalin's body was placed near the Kremlin wall, half-hidden by trees. A few weeks later, a simple dark granite stone marked the grave with the very simple, "J. V. STALIN 1879-1953." In 1970, a small bust was added to the grave.

...and this is where techno came from...

Sorry, that wasn't very short, was it? Anywho, right now the Russians are fighting Nazis - their group has the required stereotypes - the peacemaker, the asshole, the lied-about-his-age-to-fight kid, the photographer of course, and others. Two are Jewish - one escaped Krakow as the Nazis invaded and so wanted to fight to avenge his mother. 

You're the only guy we've come across
but don't worry, we're too dense to figure out
that you're Viktor so you're safe...

Everyone seems to have their own agenda, and we are beat over the head with the message that 'no matter what side you're on if you war against others you are a monster' kind of thing. Just because this didn't have American troops in it doesn't mean they wouldn't have acted just this way. War is hell and people become desperate when the death of another means that you get to live.

And don't think I'm picking on Germans, 'cause this is a Nazi problem - the Nazis threw a lot of German people in the camps as well. There were many colored triangles delegated to the different 'undesirables':

• Red triangle - political prisoners: social democrats, socialists, trade unionists, Freemasons, communists, and anarchists.
• Green triangle - "professional criminals" (convicts, often working in the camps as Kapos).
• Blue triangle - foreign forced laborers, emigrants.
• Purple triangle - primarily Jehovah's Witnesses (over 99%), and members of other small religious groups. They were considered a triple threat because they were Pacifist (and therefore had to refuse both voluntary military service and conscription), were forbidden to swear oaths (and therefore couldn't swear loyalty to the party or allegiance to Hitler), and socially and politically opposed the Nazi party.
• Pink triangle - primarily homosexual men, as well as sexual offenders including rapists, pedophiles and zoophiles.
• Black triangle - people who were deemed "asocial elements" and "work shy" including Roma (Gypsies later assigned a brown triangle), the mentally ill, alcoholics, vagrants and beggars, pacifists, conscription resisters, prostitutes, some anarchists, drug addicts
• Brown triangle - Roma (Gypsies), primarily men. Previously wore the black triangle with a "Z" notation to the right of the triangle's point.
• Uninverted red triangle - an enemy POW, German spy or traitor, or a military deserter or criminal.

And in case the US starts feeling superior I know more than a few Japanese immigrants sent to internment camps in your country that would like to speak with you.

Ahem. The soapbox is in the closet and we are gonna do this movie if it kills you... umm I mean kills me. Let's see, Russian detail with a movie maker in tow to catch the 'action' for Stalin. Yay. While in battle the men act all brave and noble, but when they approach a small cluster of houses, they kill all they find and steal the rest. And that was normal for all sides.

They find a monastery with a pile of burning nuns - all the religious trappings are piled in corners and huge generators are providing electricity to... something. They find a "man" hooked up to electrical wires, stitched all over, blind, with a drill for a hand. He manages to kill one of them before being shot up by the soldiers. 

After lots of monsters (the most interesting part of this movie - definitely puts 'creature feature' into the movie) they discover they've been chasing a 'radio signal' set up for them to find - and the cameraman, Dima, is involved. He's the one who'd been blocking their transmissions so they could stumble onto the monastery. He outranks them all and blackmails them with the lives of their families in case they want to kill him.

They keep going down, down, down, until they think they've found the actual 'lab'. To get there they have to go down a blood-slick shute and the others decide that Dima should be first - whether he has the ability to get their families killed or not. They throw down all his gear and leave him groaning on top of a pile of assorted body pieces. After cussing out everyone he can think of (including Stalin) Dima watches as another monster grabs his gear bag (probably thinking it another body) and throws it on the pile he is pushing in a mine cart. Dima follows. 

Teddy Ruxpins always did creep me out...

It's a regular assembly line of monsters making more monsters. Dimitri realizes he's gonna die. On his last roll of film, he apologizes to his mother and father, as they too were being held captive unless he did this job for Stalin. Now they will die too. For one last dash at freedom he runs and finds the doctor's office - full of everything a mad doctor could want - including a teddy bear with a woman's head belonging to Viktor's mother apparently (Just in time for Christmas!).

After watching more... gore, he decides to make a run for it. The movie becomes like the POV of a video game player, running down hallways, meeting monsters, turning to different hallways, meeting more monsters, etc. It's nauseating. He runs into what was formerly Ivan and being movie-stupid assumes that means it won't kill him. It tries. But nope. Now we FINALLY see the actual doctor as he tries to figure out how to work the camera (it's upside down for a bit) and he has another man sitting at his table. 

It's Dimitri. The doctor wants to film him and Dimitri together. He feeds him Eintopf, a traditional type of German stew which can consist of a great number of different ingredients. Technically, the term refers to a way of cooking all ingredients in one pot, not to any specific recipe. Dimitri gags although he's fed by force because he realizes that there's got to be at least chunks of human in the stew but the Dr. wants him 'strong' to film his work. 

Viktor's specialty was novelty Halloween decorations...

The doc explains his dad told him man needed hammers and screwdrivers for hands to be more efficient, but when the doc tried it on cats the dad said it was against God and beat him for it. So he's been screwed up since birth.

Dad died (Viktor killed him) and he was sent to the camps until the Sturmbannführer (equivalent to a major) asked about his cats and whether he could do the same to people. Yup. He used his grandfather's techniques but had generators instead of thunderstorms. He gets mad when Dima suggests their automated machines - he insists they're alive and they eat Eintopf. He shows his next project - the fusing of two soldiers brains together, the right side from one and the left from another (massive duh - like pulling out half a brain and plunking it into another skull would work - meh, who am I kidding - they don't care).

Jabba's gonna be pissed when he
finds out that Oola is moonlighting...

The gist of the deal is the Russians want Viktor to help them win the war and since the Russian front is closing in on them he hopes Viktor will take the deal and they can both make like a hockey stick and get the puck out of there. But Viktor believes that a half-n-half soldier will end the war. No, it'll just hit itself in the face 'til it dies, asshole, sheesh. Dima's fine when the skull comes off the Nazi, but when his 'comrade' gets the drill, he passes out. Waking up he finds there is no deal and he's about to become one of the 'experiments'.

Viktor has already been in a Nazi camp, he expects no better from Russia. But alas, the bombing begins before he can cut Dima open. He decides to leave Dima tied up and take his camera, but he is shot in the back before he can grab it. Who shot him? Sasha, the youngest I-lied-about-my-age soldier. 

Dima has a shitfit because it was Viktor that was going to save his own life and his parents. Sasha takes Viktor's head, the camera bag and, of course, the camera. He leaves Dima behind.

Our last picture is a (supposedly) old photo of Stalin, with Sasha right beside him. Huh. I don't seem to feel bad for Dimitri at all.

                        

NAZIS IS THE CWAZIEST PEOPLES FINAL CHAPTER

The Devil's Rock (2011) New Zealand

I didn't intend to do two WWII movies together, but as the fates and Netflix would have it, here we are. Once again, we are back in time but this time instead of zombies we get demons. Oh goody. I insert massive sarcasm here because after seeing the last effort, watching this slow, incredibly boring version of a Nazi horror movie was even more excruciating than it would have been if I'd just picked it up one day.

And this IS boring. Massively boring. Soooo boring it has about a hundred different movie posters for it - mostly with sex for a selling point although there is none. For one thing, we have very few people in this movie. It's a WAR for crying out loud - where the hell IS everybody? This is their intro: June 5, 1944. The eve of D-Day. Allied commandos carry out sabotage raids on the German occupied Channel Islands (off the French coast of Normandy), to draw Hitler's attention away from Normandy. Setting: Forau Island, 5 miles northeast of Guernsey.

DAMN that Campbell's tomato soup!

So we have TWO guys paddling to the shore of the island, and realizing they're in the wrong place. Duh. After almost getting blasted by a hidden mine they somehow make it inland. They then hear screams and gunfire. So someone besides Germans is on the island. <sigh> Okay, I'll bite - who's there? Well reader, you're not going to find out for a while, so relax. We have to go through personal issues between the two, listen to their histories and THEN they find a bunker where out pops a young German uttering the typical 'Gott im Himmel' before bazooka barfing all over. Doesn't keep them from killing him though.

They're just supposed to set some dynamite, set it off and leave for the Germans to gather to the site, taking them away from Normandy beach I guess. But one of them just can't leave - some of the screams are definitely female. Why that should matter in war time I have no idea but he can't let it go. So against orders both venture inside.

He won the coin toss to get out of this movie early...

There's not much to see - the typical cheap tunnel sets with signs in German that they didn't bother to translate (they said things like 'gas hazard' and other cautions) and, besides the occasional scream, all they hear is a radio with German codes transmitting. The curious one quickly gets his buddy killed so now all we have in this whole damn movie is one NZ soldier, one Nazi and who or whatever is making all the noise down in a room somewhere. The Nazi spoke perfect, non-accented English (DUH) and the NZ soldier spoke in 'an Australian accent with that gutteral nuance'. Their words, not mine.

Wait - she looks like his wife and he DOESN'T want to shoot her?

So now we get to the <YAWN> point of this terrible movie - yet another take of the Nazi agenda to use the occult to control the world. This is repeated so often they could do a cartoon about it - Scooby Doo And Those Darn Nazi Occultists or something. 

Yup, they've found a special grimoire (from Barns & Noble no doubt) and have summoned a femme varou - that's 'red female looking demon with no clothes on' to you. And she's worked her way, despite being held by a 'special' chain to a wall, through the guts of pretty much all the Nazis in the compound. 

Don't get too excited about the gore though - when the Nazi goes to 'feed' her from the guts of one of his former colleagues, it definitely was sausages and some other animal meats. The blood is almost rust colored and I kept thinking he looked like he'd spilled a can of tomato soup on himself. Yuck. And boring. 'Cause for most of the rest of the movie the two argue about the demon, because to the NZ dude she looks like his late wife (shapechanger, pfft) and she's nice to him so... what? 

Oh, right - they've got to 'send her back' because the Nazi has had a change of heart (and probably more than a few pairs of underwear) and knows she needs to be, uh, unsummoned. That's not a word, I know.

So the two set up the ritual but OH NO THE NAZI WAS PLANNING TO SACRIFICE THE OTHER GUY THIS WHOLE TIME WHAT A SHOCK I NEVER SAW THAT COMING WATCH OUT GOOD GUY WHOSE NAME I CAN'T REMEMBER BECAUSE YOU SUCK AT ACTING AND THIS MOVIE IS WORTHLESS... whew. Sorry about that.

Okay, let's just end this farce. The NZ guy wipes out the Nazi, feeding him to the demon who obligingly eats his head (the one with the brain in it you perverts) and, knowing that a whole slew of Nazis are on their way to the island for... whatever - oh yeah, D Day, sorry -  he tells the demon he's giving her freedom to, uh, eat as many heads as she can hold and then afterwards he's coming back with the fancy book to really banish her. He sets the key close to her shackle and leaves. We then see scores of the nasties coming by ship, plane, hovercar... wait, no, it was just ship and plane, and we know that she's gonna be gaining some serious weight before he comes back. But I won't be watching for a sequel.

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NAZIS IS THE CWAZIEST PEOPLES



Stone's War aka War Of The Dead (2011) US/Lithuania/Italy

I've stopped calling movies that use 'Of The Dead' Romero ripoffs 'cause he doesn't seem too terribly to mind and there are so many now they're not even associated with Romero's zombie movies anymore. This one is set in World War II which I confess I have little knowledge of, having had decent teachers and a good school but no head for history (I only memorized stuff long enough to pass tests) and thus had to look a lot of stuff up to understand what this was about (and whether stuff was legit or not), as well as try to enjoy what was surprisingly a decent zombie movie with minor complaints.

The movie starts by stating this: In 1939, along the Russian border with Finland, Nazi Germany begins secret underground "Anti-Death" experiments on captured Russian soldiers. Two years later they abandon the experiments. All records are destroyed overnight by direct order of Adolf Hitler. The test subjects are piled into mass graves, and buried. Finland, 1941: A small, elite unit of American soldiers is dispatched to assist a Finnish task force in their fight against the Russians. Their mission: to destroy the Russian bunker. This much is true.

Okay, back to me. Now the hubby is a lot more savvy at this kind of thing than me, and immediately said 'Finland? They were part of the WWII Axis.' I just looked blankly back at him (I'm good at that) but did a little research to get the ole' gray cells working. There were three countries that signed a Tripartite Pact - Germany, Japan and Italy. Later Finland became what was called 'co-belligerent' meaning, I guess, that although they didn't sign anything, they sided with the Germans. For a while.

This is a problem for the movie 'cause the whole point is that a platoon of American and Finnish soldiers are on a mission to blow up a German bunker. Since Finland sympathized with the Germans this is... not quite right - but let's get to the good part. Despite what might have been little inaccuracies (discounting the Finland one) in uniforms, weapons, etc. this was actually a solid zombie movie and was fast paced from beginning to end. Captain Stone and his American troops together (for the movie) with Finnish soldiers need to find and destroy a bunker in a German forest. 

Well they seriously underestimated things and most of the soldiers are wiped out in the first few minutes, leaving only a few who actually make it to the bunker. They find a young German soldier who surrenders, offering to help. Why? His girlfriend lives in a small village near the bunker and he wants to get her out of there. He kind of has an idea what's going on. Very quickly we have one American, one Finn, and one German with his girlfriend. And we find out what's been happening.

Even though the three made it to the bunker over the bodies of scores of soldiers, all of a sudden they are attacked by those same soldiers. Who don't go down when shot - unless it's in the head. Maybe. The bunker was a center of experiments and the soldiers 'juiced' with something that made them even more dangerous dead than alive. It plays on the constant theme that Adolf Hitler, heavily into the Occult, managed to overrule death and make super soldiers out of dead ones. That's stupid but hey, this is a zombie movie so, yeah.

Set in Russia, this movie was actually filmed in Lithuania and was the most expensive film ever made there. So expensive that they ran out of funds (it was shot in 2007 but only released in 2011 when they had the money). Uh, yeah, I guess it would be. The gore is decent but the zombies were badly done and looked very lazy. 

As for who shot what kind of weapon, the 'good guys' mostly had, from what I could see, something close to (not actually) a Russian PPSH41 sub-machine gun (without a pistol grip) with a ventilated shroud. What's puzzling is why it took eight years and many cast and crew changes to finish this movie. This wasn't the bloody Lord Of The Rings trilogy after all - it is what it is - a decent if not great zombie flick in a sea of stupid zombie flicks and worth a look if you're bored.

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