Reign of the Gargoyles

You know the sort of thing in which they have Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner? I mean, when you've got Nazis, World War Two Pilots and supernatural creatures and they're referring to UFOs at least three years before the term was coined.... well, it seems that someone has written a script by channeling the spirit of Raymond Shaver, then edited the text while hitting himself on the head.

There is some interesting casting. The actors playing the pilots are as young as they actually were. There is also some fine cinematography by Lorenzo Senatore, who needs to be noticed by a real film maker far, far away from the Sci Fi Channel. These strengths cannot begin to make up for the overemoting actors and insane High Concept script. Next time, guys, make sure you add in the gladiators.

There is hardly anything left to say; the title says it all. Crappy CGI (a bit better than average for SciFi channel) meets silly cardboard characters. And cardboard wins because CGI is virtual! It's like one of those Santa Claus and a smart beautiful blonde jokes.

Anyway, with the limited, but larger than average budget they could have chosen one of the thousands of good scripts floating out there. No, they chose a story where German sadists try to kill brave Americans helped by the beautiful French resistance girl. Oh, and there are gargoyles around. Puh-lease!

Bottom line: total waste of time. Not bad enough to count. Not good enough... for anything ;)

Given the well documented interest of the Nazi party hierarchy in the occult -Hitler and Himmler especially -it is a minor pity that so few supernaturally themed movies or science fiction movies have taken this as a starting point ."The Keep" , a pretentious rambling Michael Mann movie and the altogether better if more modest Trancers apart it remains a relatively unexplored area for genre cinema.Reign of the Gargoyles does tackle this subject and makes a decent if somewhat undercooked stab at it Nazi scientists are able to resurrect stone demons and set them loose in an attempt to sabotage Allied attacks on the Central European heartland .An American aircrew is dispatched to try to discover what is going on ,and are brought down by an attack of these winged demons .They combine with a small local partisan band to destroy the creatures ,and this involves locating a sacred spear from the grave of a long dead knight who had originally imprisoned the demons some time in the Middle Ages The problem is a lack of quality in the special effects ,which are workmanlike rather than exceptional and a cast of unknowns whose talent is such they are likely to stay that way .The script is underpowered and allows for little or no character development The location photography is good however and makes good use of the bleak ,wintry landscape to give an eerie and edgy look to the picture

A bigger effects budget and sharper scripting would have made this a better movie .As it is ,what we have is an okay picture which just fails to do justice to its premise

Interesting to read comments about this film picking holes in the correct way for a WWII SAS officer to wear their beret when there are hundreds of (below average) CGI Gargoyles running around. A bit like having a go at Star Wars because Chewbacca does not have split ends. The film is straight to DVD/Sci-Fi Schlock and there are thousands of other similar movies out there which take themselves a lot more seriously and are more in need of being deflated. The film tries hard and does quite well considering it must be low budget. A more interesting goof is the comment that the holder of the Spear of Destiny was buried like a commoner and then watching the heroes breaking into his tomb - hardly the resting place of a commoner. Nice comment earlier about NAZI interest in the supernatural and mention of the excellent THE KEEP but add to the list RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and HELLBOY.

The animation here is HORRID, and the story is lacking, but the performances are what drives this Sci-Fi Channel original. The dialog is hokey, but the delivery is about as good as it gets. These guys at least make you believe they and their situation is meaningful ... at least to them. Most of these movies are done with an almost tongue-in-cheek delivery as if the film not only does not take itself too seriously, but the actors are making FUN of it while, at the same time, drawing a check for doing it.

This dreck-fest at least showed some heart. There are a couple of places where the performances made you forget (if only momentarily) that this was a typical "B" flick.

All in all? It was enjoyable, in spite of itself, and showed some real heart. Tom Penny was an asset this time. While it is NOT fit for Friday/Saturday night viewing, it is still more fun that first imagined.

It rates a 7.2/10 on the "B" scale, which is around a 4.6/10 on the "A" Scale, from...

the Fiend :.