Night of the Templar

I waited quite the while for this one to be released in the states and was thinking I would be in for a let down. Let me tell you I was far from let down. It met all my expectations and completely went beyond. An original story telling for its kind that I have not seen for a long time, if at all. A rare find that is now in the front of my DVD collection. That will be watched over and over. And over.

I feel the need to point out the soundtrack also. It is worthy of the very best audio systems you can think of. It alone made it worth getting. I would have liked very much to have listened and enjoyed this one in the movie theaters. Then buy it on the way home to watch again. It has so many different aspects and genres happening together. It really doesn't matter where you are. You will lose yourself in this film.

Lets not forget the cast. What can be said about them that would be worthy. Skilled, artistic, masterful, original. And more to be sure. They really made this one-of-a-kind film into an instant cult classic. Kudos to multi-talented Paul Sampson for making and bringing together such an ensemble of talented actors, the like I haven't seen together before. And also have the ability to act out many great scenes from past to present. Along with David Carradine's performances and the entire cast. It makes this film a viewing sensation from honor and betrayal, to blood and vengeance, to dark humor and sexy indulgences. And a lot of things in between. I feel Night of the Templar will give viewers a wide spectrum of movie entertainment.

Saw that this film had a very healthy 6.5 rating on IMDb and so sat down to watch it at home with great expectations.This is a very,very bad film and does not deserve a rating anything like the one it has.It has obviously been hyped up by the Director's wife's cousin, the Producer's son's baseball team and the Best Boy's pet spaniel. A plot so convoluted as to be virtually incomprehensible,feeble acting and a script you wouldn't use to wallpaper your toilet await the unsuspecting viewer.This was apparently David Carradine's last film and the poor man must be spinning in his grave to have left this dross as his final legacy to the world or maybe he did it on purpose as his ultimate two-fingered gesture to the rest of us.My advice is that when you read the reviews of this film,you concentrate on the ones with a rating similar to mine and ignore the sycophantic ramblings of the camp followers.I managed about half an hour before I switched it off and darned a pair of socks which was infinitely preferable.

Betrayed by his own men for a wagon full of gold a Knights Templar named "Lord Gregoire" (Paul Sampson) vows to return after 10 generations and avenge himself on their descendants. Fast forward to the present and a young man by the name of "Jake McCallister" (also played by Paul Sampson) has agreed to host a small group of people in a fantasy retreat at a castle. As he surveys the castle he begins to have strange hallucinations. After that the guests begin to die one by one at the hands of a man dressed in the uniform of a Knights Templar. Now rather than disclose any more of the details and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this movie was built upon a very interesting concept. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the script and assembled the cast doesn't have a clue about making movies. First, Paul Sampson sounded like Elmer Fudd and was clearly not up to the task as the lead character. Likewise, having Billy Drago (as "Shauna the Chef") dressed in drag certainly didn't help matters. Additionally, the dialogue was terrible and some of the scenes appeared to be made up on the spot. On the plus side this movie did have four pretty actresses in Ingrid Sonray (as "Amy"), Lisa Gleave ("Ashley"), Sofie Norman ("Celine") and Mary Christina Brown ("Japoniko"). Unfortunately, their characters weren't developed as well as they could have been and their roles were choked out by other non-essential subplots. The bottom line is that this movie had a good idea but it was badly written and executed. Because of that I rate the movie as below average.

What a waste of time, money and resources. Gave it a go because of Norman Reedus, but even he is terrible. Tommy Wiseau put on an acting and directing masterclass in The Room when compared to this.

A narrated explanation of events at the beginning is an excuse for a lack of storytelling ability and I genuinely paused to check if it was a History Channel reenactment documentary before proceeding.

The male violence towards female characters was deplorable as was the passive acceptance by those characters; confusing and disturbing.

Woman wants to leave, gets choked out and the other people at the house start talking about the ladies liking the rough stuff? Poor at best.

This is the worst movie I have seen in a long time and I watched Grown Ups 2 recently.

Avoid.

I have just endured this film, and frankly, found it to be one of the worst films I have ever seen. The knights in battle scenes are reminiscent of a local village re-enactment society performing to a bunch of schoolchildren. The main character constantly talking to himself was laughable and made him less than believable as a character.

Flashback scenes to times of the crusades were cringe worthy. The sudden dramatic music when showing scenes of the main house, made no sense at all, other than to advise the viewer that this was possibly a scary house, where nothing really scary happened.

My local dramatic society, comprising of pensioners and eager school children, could have done a far better job of the story, and made it more believable.