Review: The Keeper

A private eye (Tell Schreiber, father of Liev) is investigating an insane asylum for the rich, run by a man of dubious medical credentials known only as ‘The Keeper’ (Christopher Lee). ‘The Keeper’ is particularly fond of using hypnosis for his treatment of patients. The cops (including police detective Ross Vezarian) are suspicious of ‘The Keeper’ as well, and the private dick and the cops join forces to figure out why the Underwood Asylum’s very wealthy patients all seem to die soon after their release. Sally Gray plays a patient with a person connection to our intrepid detective.

 

Deathly dull, poverty-stricken Canadian flick from 1976 directed by T.Y. Drake (writer of the mediocre “Terror Train”, in his sole directorial effort here) is pretty much a complete waste of time and mostly horribly acted. Bottom acting honours go to the one-and-done Ross Vezarian as a police detective, who initially is dreadfully dull, but who towards the end goes to the other extreme with some kind of weird gonzo comic schtick that doesn’t belong. It’s one of the single worst performances I’ve ever seen, but not in any entertaining way. Otherwise, this is a fairly serious, but supremely silly and supremely awful supernatural horror/mystery. It completely wastes the immeasurable talent of Christopher Lee yet again dolling out his disingenuously genial villain schtick. He’s not bad, in fact he’s the only thing here that isn’t bad, but it’s a performance you’ve seen many times before in far better surrounds. He’s opposite a bunch of far lesser talents here who didn’t amount to a whole heck of a lot. Yeah, Ian Tracey is a fairly frequent presence from Canadian-lensed TV shows, but I had to read about that. Otherwise you probably won’t really recognise anyone here, unless you’ve heard of Liev Schreiber’s dad Tell Schreiber, who is completely charisma-free in the lead role. He has absolutely zero screen presence.

 

The plot is stupid and badly told, leaving you wondering for far too long just why The Keeper is bothering to hypnotise people. When you find out in the final stretch, you’d wish you had never bothered to wonder. What a stupid scheme in a stupid film. Like a lot of films in the 70s and 80s from Canada that I’ve seen, it’s ugly and darkly lit, just really unattractive to look at. If at least the story had been worthwhile, or the rest of the cast been competent, one could more easily forgive its cheap and ugly look. It’s not like they were working with a big Hollywood budget here. However, the script is just as bad as everything else in the film. The weird thing is Lee is on record as having liked the script, his wife read it and approved of it, too. All I can say is that there’s little if anything of interest up there on the screen. It looks horrible, it sounds horrible, and it plays absolutely horrible.

 

Christopher Lee is OK, but this is an extremely dull, cheap, and insipid film that looks like it could’ve been made by a distant relation to Edward D. Wood Jr, except Lee is more coherent and competent than drug-addled Bela Lugosi. Utterly useless, one of the rare Christopher Lee films I’d actually advise you to skip. The shoddy screenplay is by the director, from a story by David Curnick (who has a couple of minor writer-director credits) and Donald Wilson (a veteran Brit TV writer from the 50s to the 70s). If it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it’s not remotely funny.

 

Rating: D-