The keeper: il custode

I give this film 2 points for hiring a well known actor like Lee. I give it another point for making it a historical film(set in the 40s or so)without any glaring anachronism and another point for having adequate camera and sound (which should be a given but I'll be kind as it was made in my place of birth).

This is a terrible boring film. Likely the worst Christopher Lee film I have watched--even worse than his Jess Franco Fu Manchu movies. Worse than the Star Wars prequels. Worse than the Crimson Cult. Worse than Howling 2.

By general bad movie standards it is worse than Dracula vs Frankenstein. At least those films had some entertainment value--this really has none other than wondering what Lee must have thought as he was making it.

Canadian movies can and often do lack passion, imagination, and when all else fails turn into feeble comedies. 9 times out of 10, if you hear about a Canadian sci-fi or horror movie made by native-born Canadians, chances are its a /comedy of some sort.

In this case the film is likely inspired by Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest combined with 1930s street drama and any kind of mad doctor story you can think of just to make it have low budget commercial appeal.

The private investigator Driver attempts to act suave and cool like Sam Spade and fails, but isn't aware of it. It isn't funny in a Leslie Nielsen kind of way.

The dialogue is disjointed and poorly thought out so you get exchanges like this: Private Eye: Has there been any murders at the asylum? Police Chief: Yes, seven--but what troubles me is, what if these deaths were actually murders? Its an amateur film on almost every level except the picture and sound are functional (perhaps to the viewer's detriment) with a decent enough use of locations and period costumes. There's no attempt at moody lighting, and the soundtrack is a 70s electronic score of some kind --not keeping with the era it is presenting.

This is the first Canadian genre film made in British Columbia by Canadians (other than a porn film) and it is a complete failure. Not even useful as a so bad it is good kind of experience. If you don't believe me, waste an hour and a half of your life and find out.

"The Keeper" is frustrating. The basic plot is pretty interesting and it stars Christopher Lee...yet the story is pretty dull and the acting often rather poor.

The owner of a mental asylum (Lee) is a very bad sort. He uses hypnosis to make people do all sorts of bad things and he kills the family members of rich residents so that he can eventually gain control of their fortunes. He also kills off residents if the family finds them to be embarrassing or too much trouble. Most of the story is about private dicks' attempts to catch 'The Keeper' (Lee) and put him out of business.

This should have been interesting...but wasn't. Poor acting by all but Lee and the shoeshine boy are much of the problem, though cheap music and special effects also hinder the story.

By the way, in lots of films you see hypnosis being used in all sorts of evil and exploitive ways. Sadly, as a trained hypnotherapist, I have been unable to do any of this and want my money back!

I do not know what it was with Christopher Lee during the mid-1970s, but he seemed to accept pretty much every script that came his way in an attempt to obtain for himself some kind of Guinness World Record for movie roles played (which he probably holds anyway)!; with this in mind, a sizeable amount of titles from his extensive career remain obscure to this day and, having watched a few of them already in my ongoing tribute to him, I regret to say that this status is justified certainly for the majority emanating from this vintage (with only ALBINO {1976} emerging thus far as being undeservedly forgotten).

This Canadian thriller (erroneously considered horror by some sources but, then, this would often prove the case with this particular genre icon) is a genuine dud, and one really has to strain to determine just what could have attracted the star to become involved!; it may have been the fact that he plays a cripple, but his condition is never explained and has no bearing whatsoever on the plot, or perhaps the notion that he can control minds by way of hypnosis – but the sessions conducted are downright laughable, with himself adopting a perfectly idiotic diabolical countenance throughout! Anyway, he plays the head of an insane asylum but insists on being referred to as "keeper": it transpires that his patients (one of whom turns out to be a "sympathetic" twin with another, shady character within the narrative) are all well-to-do and that their relatives – in line to inherit them – are being eliminated; since this would make Lee the eventual beneficiary of their fortune, a cop has been infiltrated into the establishment to investigate…but he too has been virtually reduced to a puppet in the master's hands!

Incidentally, this is given a period setting – complete with trenchcoat-sporting detective hero (though far removed from the hard-boiled prototype) and a resourceful shoeshine boy – but, since there was no concerted attempt at sustaining mood, the option was no more than a randomly-deployed gimmick! However, perhaps the most head-scratching decision here was to make the inevitable Police Inspector – first clashing with, then abetting – the protagonist a highly-strung and accident-prone buffoon, obviously intended to supply comedy relief but only serving a litany of cringe-inducing antics one would think hard before including even in an outright slapstick comedy! I am afraid THE CRAPPER would have been an equally appropriate moniker

Unlike some viewers, who have only "recently" become Christopher Lee fans, I've been a fan of Lee for 25 years. Now I don't have a gripe with Steven Kuroiwa's review of this film, since it isn't very good. I do, however, have a problem with upstarts passing themselves off as reliable critical sources, putting viewers off a remarkable film like Peter Sykes's To the Devil a Daughter, a film that falls just shy of his masterpiece Demons of the Mind (both films written, or co-written, by the great Christopher Wicking). So if you were unfortunate enough to read that review, put it out of your mind. And put To the Devil a Daughter at the top of your queue. I have spoken.

The key to enjoying this movie is not to expect a horror movie or a Christopher Lee movie. It is simply a low budget television-like movie that has a few interesting comedy bits and very good atmosphere and sound. If you play this on a good home theater system you would be amazed at the sound of this misunderstood little gem of a movie esp in a few very good hypnosis scenes. The inspector character provided some funny moments and the main character - the private investigator was not too bad. Lee as the keeper was ok, but not his best acting.

What I enjoyed were a few comedic moments offered up by inspector and the scenes where the patients were being hypnotized.

A fair movie to watch late in the night when you are bored!