bsmith5552 "Castle Keep" is a strange sort of movie. The first three quarters are spent for the most part within the walls of an old Belgian castle before the final action.A group of eight rag tag soldiers going nowhere in particular, come upon an estate located in a strategic area, whereupon there is a large castle. The castle is owned by the Count of Maldorais (Jean Pierre Aumont). The motley crew includes three officers two sergeants, a corporal and two privates. Where they came from is unknown.Leading the group is a one-eyed Major Falconer (Burt Lancaster) who wastes no time in bedding the castle's Mistress Therese (Astrid Heeren) who is by the way, the wife/niece of the Count. Also in the group are Art loving Capt. Beckman (Patrick O'Neal), Sgt. Rossi, a baker (Peter Falk) who moves in with the local town baker's wife, Cpl. Clearboy (Scott Wilson) who falls in love with a Volkswagen, young Lt. Amberjack (Tony Bill), Sgt. Devaca (Michael Conrad), Pvt. Elk, an Indian (James Patterson) and Pvt. Benjamin (Al Freeman Jr.) an aspiring author who narrates the story.Count Maldorais manages to convince the group to defend his castle and its treasures against an expected German attack. For most of the first three quarters of the movie, the men enjoy the luxuries of their environment even to the point of going to town to visit the ladies of "La Reine Rouge". In town, the men encounter a group of burnt out veterans led by Lt. Billy Bix (Bruce Dern) who see themselves as conscious objectors.Major Falconer, in one of the most bizarre sequences, rides into town on a white horse to recruit retreating soldiers to help him defend the castle. He sees that they are shell-shocked and recruits Bix and his followers to lead the group to the castle, at which point all but Falconer are blown to smithereens.So that leaves the original eight alone to defend against the advancing Germans. Falconer will defend at all costs including the destruction of the castle, Beckman wants to fall back and thus protect the castle. What ensues is a "Wild Bunch"/"Alamo" type of battle with the predictable results.The final battle is well done but we have to wait through all of the nonsense preceding it before there's any action. Director Sydney Pollock, whom I admire, has done much better work.

benbaum-280-362993 Eight wounded shell shocked soldiers take refuge in a castle in Belgium. There they begin a crazy 60s psychedelic take on WWII involving wanton women, booze, an impotent Count, a young barren Countess, a Volkswagen beetle, a Romantic US Army Major, a baker and a band of AWOL Born Again Christians....to odd to even begin to explain. I'm sure there is meant to be some parallel to the Crucifixion of Jesus and maybe even his birth and the destruction of Jerusalem in the 1st Century but I'm not entirely sure I got it. Certainly not for everyone but somehow I couldn't help but watch in order to see what strangeness would happen next. I couldn't help but think this reminded me of parts of Apocalysoe Now and Platoon. It also has something to say about how micro societies are affected by war (perhaps?) as seen from the view of a castle which has been held by the same family for 17 Generations and believes itself to be above the trivialities of others' wars.

zardoz-13 Clearly, Academy Award winning actor Burt Lancaster must have gotten along well with director Sidney Pollack because they made two films together: "The Scalphunters" (1968) and "Castle Keep" (1969) and Pollack contributed in the one in between, "The Swimmer," that Lancaster appeared in for director Frank Perry. A one-eyed U.S. Army commander, Major Abraham Falconer (Burt Lancaster of "Elmer Gantry), leads a squad of eight soldiers, consisting of three officers, two sergeants and three enlisted men soldiers into the Ardennes Forrest in 1944. They billet themselves in a breathtaking 10th century castle in Belgium on the eve of the historic Battle of the Bulge. The dry humor comes through the dialogue that cleverly undercuts each situation or predicament that our protagonists encounter. If fantastic photography guaranteed that a movie would be artistically great, "Night of the Generals" lenser Henri Decaë would make this the rule rather than the exception. His widescreen cinematography is a consistent treat for the eyes and the pictorial compositions are well-balanced and imaginative.Director Sidney Pollack and scenarists Daniel Taradash of "From Here to Eternity"(1953) and David Rayfiel of "Valdez Is Coming" (1971) adapted the novel by David Eastlake. "Castle Keep" emerges as a surrealistic World War II action epic. Major Falconer and his men defending the castle against an onslaught of German troops and armor. During the first half of this 106-minute movie, castle owner Count of Maldorais (Jean-Pierre Aumont of "The Siren of Atlantis") welcomes Major Falconer, Captain Beckman (Patrick O'Neal of "El Condor"), Lieutenant Amberjack (Tony Bill of "Ice Station Zebra"), Sergeant Rossi (Peter Falk of "Anzio"), Sergeant DaVaca (Michael Conrad of "Sol Madrid"), Corporal Clearboy (Scott Wilson of "In Cold Blood"), Private Allistair Piersall Benjamin (Al Freeman, Jr. of "The Lost Man"), and Elk (James Patterson of "Lilith") to the castle and hope that they will defend it from the enemy. Principally, Maldorais wants them to save his works of art and hopes that the virile Major will get his classically gorgeous wife, Therese (Astrid Heeren of "Silent Night, Deadly Night"), pregnant because the count is impotent and needs a male heir.After the Americans settle in—Falconer warms up the master bedroom with Therese, the soldiers head into town to the Red Queen brothel, while Rossi befriends the widow of a baker (Olga Bisera of Women in Cell Block 7") and starts baking bread. Captain Beckman gives lectures about the artworks in the castle. Not-surprisingly, Beckman was one an art historian. Falconer shows up in town and shows the prostitutes how to design Molotov cocktails and then throw them at German tanks when they enter town. The funniest scene involves Corporal Clearboy and the Volkswagen beetle that he finds on the premises. Late one night, two G.I.s set out to destroy the VW bug by pushing it into the moat. The bug floats so they shoot at it below the waterline to sink it. Corporal Clearboy awakens to the sounds of gunshots and scrambles for the stairs. A fellow soldier tells him to take the shortcut through another door. Clearboy opens the door and spaces on air. The door opens on the moat and the G.I. plunges into the moat, but he swims to the VW, cranks it up and drives it up onto dry land. The second half concerns the castle defense and a brief but explosive battle with tanks blasting away at the architecture as well as the Americans concealed behind it.Despite its pretentious, cool attitude toward warfare, "Castle Keep" qualifies as a traditional war movie, but it is far from conventional. The action boils down to a desperate siege with no hope in sight for relief. Indeed, some of the best World War II era films dealt with gallant last stands, such as "Wake Island," "Bataan," and "China." The Germans constitute a faceless enemy. Pollack keeps them at arm's length so we have no reason to hate them. The Americans are a cross-section of the United States and they are basically good guys who like to loaf when they get a caught. Major Falconer is a straight-up guy who does not lord it over his men. Nevertheless, despite its handsome production values, splendid photography, this World War II movie rarely generates any suspense because it the Americans are not portrayed in a sympathetic light and everything seems arbitrary. The performances are all good. Lancaster delivers a tight-lipped, no-nonsense performance as the disciplined commander with a purposeful manner. Pollack invests very little sentiment when the characters die. None of the Americans receive historic treatment. The sight of the castle burning is hypnotic. One of the most iconic character actors of the 1960 thru the 1980, perennial villain Bruce Dern turns up as a raggedly deserter who leads a religious sect. You can tell that "Castle Keep" is an anti-war movie because it refuses to glorify warfare. The problem with "Castle Keep" is that it doesn't have enough sarcasm to be a satire and it lacks exuberance in its combat sequences to be a warmongering classic. Interestingly, "Castle Keep" fails to measure up to its own—or perhaps Beckman's--definition of good art. According to Beckman, great art but disturb and awaken its audience. Sadly, "Castle Keep" neither disturbs us enough nor awakens us.

chuck-reilly 1969's "Castle Keep" is no standard World War II drama, although it starts out with the usual formula. During what appears to be the Battle of the Bulge (late 1944), a group of weary GIs led by a one-eyed monotone colonel (Burt Lancaster), stagger into a medieval castle that seems to have been preserved and isolated for centuries. There's also a small hamlet nearby and the townsfolk seem similarly stuck in the distant past. The castle itself contains numerous art works and its grounds are covered with classical sculptures and magnificent statues of all kinds. It's literally a work of art in itself. Aided and abetted by Lancaster's second-in-command (a cynical and disillusioned Patrick O'Neal) the GIs are as out of place in this medieval landscape as a collection of city slickers west of the Pecos. That fact doesn't stop the colonel from immediately taking a fancy to the lady of the house (Astrid Heeren) all to the utter chagrin of her much older husband, the Count of Maldorais (played by Jean-Pierre Aumont). The rank-and-file soldiers, including Peter Falk, Bruce Dern, Tony Bill, Al Freeman Jr., Scott Wilson and Michael Conrad, eventually move into the town and take up occupations as if they're back in the good old USA. If all this sounds a bit strange and out-of-place for a "war" movie, it is. Not to be outdone, however, the German army is on the advance and the castle and its accompanying town are directly in its path. Total destruction is on the way, and here lies the moral of this tale. In the ensuing and climactic battle, the castle and everything that it stands for (mainly humanity and the arts) is obliterated with few survivors. The town is crushed along with it and all its inhabitants killed. But because of the way the story is presented (i.e. with enough surrealism to rival Ingmar Bergman on his best day), viewers are never quite sure if the GIs have themselves been nothing but ghosts all along and that the whole exercise is merely symbolic of the destructive nature of war. "Castle Keep," filmed during the height of the Vietnam War, can certainly be classified as an "anti-war" movie, although its immediate subject matter and execution just doesn't fit with any of the other films of the genre. Of course, movies that are presented as World War II dramas are usually loaded with heroes fighting evil enemies (whether Germans or Japanese). Consequently, audiences were not enamored with the film's depiction and it flopped at the box office. Predictably, most critics of the day found "Castle Keep" to be too pretentious and over-the-top. Burt Lancaster's deliberate "one-note" performance probably didn't help it either. That's too bad because in retrospect the film has plenty to say and it was also an early indication of a major talent on the rise: Sydney Pollack. As for the others in the cast, Peter Falk and Al Freeman Jr. are standouts and Patrick O'Neal adds some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings. In the end, "Castle Keep" is another near-great film that could stand a critical reevaluation.