BlazeLime
Strong and Moving!
SparkMore
n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Blake Rivera
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
grantdesouza
Was everyone involved in the making of this movie high on something? This film didn't know if it was a comedy, a drama or an art movie...it was ridiculous. I know it was the psychedelic hippie era of the late 60s so you could forgive it for being a little different, but seriously it was bad. I can't believe Burt Lancaster was even in involved in this rubbish. Undoubtedly one of the best actors of our time and his appearance was the only decent thing in this entire film. I'm sure he must have had regrets after he saw the completed picture. Example...Eight guys take on an entire German armored infantry division and mow hundreds of the Germans down, while of course the GIs never get hit(well not until the very end)...are they serious! Give me a break! And whats with the fire engines with lights and sirens turning up in the middle of a battle???? Enough said.
Spikeopath
Castle Keep, directed by Sydney Pollack and adapted to screenplay by Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel from the novel written by William Eastlake. Starring Burt Lancaster, Bruce Dern, Patrick O'Neal, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Peter Falk. Music is by Michel Legrand and cinematography by Henri Decae.Ambitious for sure, intriguing even, but ultimately a misfiring piece of pretentious tosh! An endgame allegory that finds Lancaster in WWII leading the defence of a medieval castle and its art collection against the German hordes. The action when it comes is savage and colourful, and Lancaster's one eyed Major is good fun, it's just everything else is masquerading as a near hallucinogenic anti-war movie mixed with euro pontifications. There's some war is hell messages in the mix desperately trying to get out, either as satire or serious (it's really hard to tell), but this is ultimately faux-art and painful to sit through until the explosions mercifully grace the last quarter of picture. 3/10
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.
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.
