dcw-12 The allegory of the film is the centerpiece. Which isn't the best thing considering its fairly ham-fisted. Allegory works best when its on a emotional level rather than an intellectual level and the allegory here in this film is predominantly intellectual.As I said in the summary it seemed like a lot of opportunity to create a better film wasn't taken advantage of. In terms of visual elements, emotion, lighting, etc. Again this goes back to the allegory being the centerpiece and the filmmaker overemphasizing this.Still the acting isn't bad and the film is watchable if you have some free time. If what you look for in a film is something to intellectually mull over this maybe just your ticket.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** On a mission to save strippers from a life of sin Redwood County cop Lt. Krebs, Dennis Hooper, kidnaps Gina Moore , Asia Argento, right out of his police station. He then locks her up in the basement of his house in order to straighten her out and get Gina to change her sinful ways. Being a victim of a crime where her boyfriend Derick, Alex Zahara, was murdered didn't at all change Lt. Krebs opinion about her. He in fact treated poor Gina like an animal in a zoo using a combination of mental and physical torture on her.We get an insight in whats going on in Krebs unbalanced mind when we start to realize as the movie unwinds that he himself comes from a very dysfunctional family. Krebs dad was a cop who blew his brains out after he murdered his wife who incidentally was also, like Gina, a stripper.Back in town Lt. Krebs is not only the towns top cop but also has a side-job as the lovable and funny Deputy Rock a TV personality who teaches the little kids in town the difference between right and wrong. It's at a local school that Kleb is spotted by teacher Ruthie Taylor,Helen Shaver, who falls crazily in love with the big strong, and unknown to Ruthie at the time, crazy lawman. Ruthie is also involved with the towns TV station and is very eager to get Lt. Krebs' show "Deputy Rock" national exposer.Not at all interested in Ruthie's ideas about making him a star Lt. Krebs is later confronted with a video tape, taken from a TV helicopter, of himself chasing and piling on to Gina. Who at the time the tape was made tried to escape from his dungeon. Hurt at not what Lt. Krebs was doing, attacking and brutalizing Gina, but at what she thought that he was doing on the tape, having consensual sex with her, causes an inflamed and madden Ruthie to blackmail the crime-fighting cop; not realizing that he's not only a criminal himself but a sick one at that.Dennis Hopper as Lt. Krebs is in fine form playing the usual nut-job role that he's been doing since his great success as an ether sniffing psycho in the film "Blue Velvet" some 20 years ago. Crazed from the word go it's hard to take your eyes off Lt. Krebs whenever he's on the screen since you expect him to explode or melt down at any moment.Both Asia Argento & Helen Shaver as Gina and Ruthie play off each other. With Ruthie thinking that the younger and more attractive Gina had stolen that great hunk of a man, Lt. Krebs, from right under her nose. When it fact Gina would want to have nothing to do with that deranged lunatic and be more then willing for the love-sick Ruthie to be stuck with him.There's also Lt. Krebs second in command the naive but also love-sick, not for Krebs but for Gina, Sgt. Burns, Lochlyn Monro, who spends the entire movie trying to track down Gina. In the end Sgt. Burns finds her almost by accident at his boss', Lt. Krebs, house. Ruthie found out the hard way, at the point of a butcher knife, what a dangerous psycho the man of her dreams, Lt. Krebs, was. Now it's up to the totally clueless Sgt. Burn, with Gina locked in Lt. Krebs car-trunk, to find that out as well before Krebs murders him.

fcasnette do not read if you have not seen this movie! A quite ridiculous and unbelievable plot that the unhinged lunatic sheriff can hide someone in his basement for months without anyone visiting or noticing, and quite by accident has an unhinged lunatic TV presenter groupie woman too who finds the girl by chance and then does not free her because she wants the sheriff to be a TV show star... Boy do these Hollywood scriptwriters do nothing to earn their money. His deputy has no life except popping up every couple of weeks to say his entire mission in life is to find the missing girl as if he has no other work to do, so as to signpost the entirely predictable finale well ahead of time.Standard average TV movie fare with low production values.The only reason to watch is the performance of Hopper who is an actor who seems to be able to rise above any crap material, though he does his normal "unhinged" "creepy" type character here, which helps I suppose. After the majority of the movie being fairly "normal" (apart from locking up this girl for months) he goes mental giving her a show with glove puppets. Cliché follows cliché with the knocked out sheriff waking up just in time to knock out the rescuing deputy etc etc etc, lazy scriptwriting.

Stefan Koenen The reason for buying this DVD was that Dennis Hopper plays a lead role in the movie. Dennis Hopper is the kind of actor that can make a poor scenario work. One of the best parts he ever did was in True Romance, by Quentin Tarentino. The 10 minutes of his appearance in that movie are classic! The Keeper has some exciting parts that make up for the poor way (I think) in which the plot unravels... Why is deputy Burns sitting at a computer for hours with the same material on it??? The Keeper is an easy to watch movie and therefore simple entertainment. Because of the good acting by Dennis Hopper and Asia Argento I give this movie a 7-, although next time I want to see Dennis in a 10+ movie again!