{"id":19927,"date":"2020-02-22T09:15:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T14:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19927"},"modified":"2020-02-22T09:43:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T14:43:21","slug":"unleashing-michael-manns-the-keep-1983","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19927","title":{"rendered":"Unleashing Michael Mann’s THE KEEP (1983)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The fact a third of the poster is devoted to explaining THE KEEP (1983) is an indicator of a confused, disinterested, and already dismayed studio.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I learned of Michael Mann’s\u00a0The Keep<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in two parts \u2013 the TV trailer, packed with haunting, purple-and-pink-hued colours; and Jay Scott\u2019s short, terse review for The Globe and Mail. Scott referenced the pre-release studio tampering, which caused serious gaps in coherence, yet he seemed to recognized that Mann’s pink & purple opus looked nor sounded like anything else.<\/p>\n

While the film did make its rounds to home video and TV airings, it sort of became that weird, wacked-out movie Mann directed before hitting pop culture fame with TV\u2019s Miami Vice<\/strong>, and what still ranks as the definitive Hannibal Lector thriller, Manhunter<\/strong> (1986).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m saving further comments about Manhunter<\/strong> for a later blog \u2013 I plan to dig out my old laserdisc and see if it still has the fat bass that I remember \u2013 but it is worth nothing that of Mann\u2019s feature films, The Keep<\/strong> has remained the ugly child, the ill-conceived thing which even its maker refused to acknowledge or seemed willing to fix in an era of Director\u2019s Cuts and restorations.<\/p>\n

Or not.<\/p>\n

When Stewart Buck\u2019s soon-to-be-completed documentary A World War II Fairytale: The Making of Michael Mann\u2019s The Keep<\/a><\/strong> emerges after a long period in development and post-production \u2013 expect a release sometime this year – it may well confirm that Mann rightly felt hurt and ill in the gut from having his version truncated. A series of mishaps plague the production, and affected the planned visual effects that were to make the supernatural Molasar come alive.<\/p>\n

Even after finally seeing the film on home video via a letterboxed laserdisc dub in the early 1990s, I sensed a mess, but a fascinating one, with flashes and whisps of technical and stylistic brilliance.<\/p>\n

Alex Thompson remains one of my favourite cinematographers \u2013 think Ridley Scott\u2019s Legend<\/a><\/strong> (1985) and David Fincher\u2019s Alien 3<\/strong> (1992), two similarly flawed films with messy production and post-production phases. Tangerine Dream wrote one of their most interesting scores for Mann, and one of their best for the messy North American re-edit of Ridley Scott\u2019s Legend<\/strong>, which was previously married to a score by Alien<\/strong>\u2019s Jerry Goldsmith.<\/p>\n

Like Goldsmith, TD\u2019s second teaming with Mann (after their iconic music for Thief<\/strong>) was affected by deep cuts and a flawed mix, and neither composer(s) worked with their respective directors again. Mann tried to get subsequent composers to pay homage to TD\u2019s dense synth atmospheres and rhythms in later films, while Scott perhaps found large scale orchestral works, pass\u00e9, and found that his own visual style \u2013 perhaps more overtly commercial than Mann\u2019s, but nonetheless dramatic \u2013 was better supported by electronica and orchestral-synth fusions.<\/p>\n

Scott has similarly fiddled with his films, creating needed Director\u2019s Cuts (Kingdom of Heaven<\/strong>) and mucking up perfect edits (Alien: The Director\u2019s Cut<\/strong>), whereas Mann\u2019s created longer cuts (Ali<\/strong>), altered original theatrical releases (Miami Vice<\/strong>), retooled prior theatrical and home video editions (Last of the Mohicans<\/strong>, Thief<\/strong>), and most extreme, fiddled with Manhunter<\/strong> which exists in multiple versions: Theatrical Cut, Director\u2019s Cut, Restored Director\u2019s Cut, and the 1991 NBC TV edit which has significant differences, including the new title Red Dragon: The Curse of Hannibal Lector<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Keep<\/strong> has remained untouched, but it\u2019s the one that deserves the biggest overhaul \u2013 if not to satisfy its legion of fans, then offer closure for its maker. TD\u2019s score similarly deserves a proper release featuring the original used & unused film versions \u2013 if not to satisfy fans, then render the countless bootlegs obsolete by presenting the music to the film the group was hired to score.<\/p>\n

Via Vision\u2019s Australian Region 0 NTSC DVD is the first legit release of the film in its original 2.35:1 ratio, and in an okay stereo mix. I\u2019ve taken a peek at the disc, examine the film, and spotlight the raw warts and the genuine virtues that still resonate from this bizarrem alluring shocker.<\/p>\n

It is a film meant to be seen on the big screen, and if Clive Barker\u2019s original version of Nightbreed<\/strong> (1990) was finally recreated using elements from the vaults, why not The Keep<\/strong><\/a>?<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Michael Mann’s THE KEEP (1983), the maligned, misunderstood & messy supernatural thriller making its legit DVD release from Australia’s Via Vision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[2562,2563,545,4934,323,615,6363,6372],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Keep_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-5bp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19927"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19944,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19927\/revisions\/19944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}