L'albero del male

Phil and Kate are a young yuppie couple just on the verge of having a child of their own. As both parents are too busy to take care of the baby,they decide to enlist the services of a nanny,and after screening many candidates,they eventually welcome Camilla.It turns out that Camilla isn't quite all she claims to be,as the baby is being groomed for an ultimate union with the tree she is beholden to."The Guardian" is William Friedkin's return to the horror genre.The film itself is well-made and offers some suspense and a decent amount of gore.However the plot is cheesy and predictable and the main performances are rather bland.Sadly neglected English actress Jenny Seagrove is the definitive highlight of the film.Despite some flaws "The Guardian" is worth checking out for serious genre fans.7 out of 10.

I remember seeing the edited version of this film years ago on cable and thinking. Gee, that was weird. Finally now though, the original version of William Friedkin's film is out. Frankly, given its ludicrous plot, the film isn't bad. There are some good scares here. The scene where Camilla's wolves stalk Runcie in his glass house is great. Scary, violent and real. Unfortunately, its the best scene by far.

The cast is really good in this "nanny from hell" story. Jenny Seagrove is sexy, yet spooky. Cary Lowell and Dwier Brown are fine. The supporting work from Miguel Ferrer and Brad Hall is top-notch.

The plot is just too silly to be true, so this doesn't work that well and too many scenes are just dumb. The punks at the park, the chainsaw versus bloody tree, etc. The music is bad and the photography sucks. So why give this a shot? Because its by a master film-maker and and, if your'e really into film, you can see about 3 or 4 different endings they could have used. Fun on a dark, rainy night.

The Guardian: Lesser known William Friedkin film which he co-wrote and directed, he was none too happy with the result but I would classify it as good Folk Horror. There are references to Druidic Tree Worship and human sacrifuces A nanny who is really a Hamadryad has a penchant for sacrificing infants to her Mother Tree seeing as there are no druids around to do the job.

Great horror action as people are devoured by the tree, roots strangle and crush them, spikes burst up through the ground impaling unfortunates. Not having wolves to hand (it's in LA), a pack of coyotes also take care of troublesome oiks who discover not all is right about the nanny. Outdoes a lot of Nasty Nanny films. 7/10. On Horror Channel.

** 1/2 out of ****

I always enjoy a good splatter flick and while I wouldn't necessarily call The Guardian a "good" film, it sure as hell is an entertaining one. The plot's pretty silly, with Jenny Seagrove as Camilla, a newly hired caretaker of a young couple's (Dwier Brown and Cary Lowell) infant son. Camilla appears to be the perfect nanny, sweet and loving, but actually, she's a Druid who needs the baby to prolong her immortal life, or something to that effect (the movie really didn't explain too much, and if you think I gave anything away by mentioning her as a Druid, the opening subtitles already state that info). She's also got a weird relationship with a big tree in the forest.

The film's got a lot of stupidity here and there, especially the young couple, who don't bother checking Camilla's references before hiring her, or the fact that this caretaker happens to be able to move around so many residences freely without too much suspicion (okay, for a while, at least). And considering the fact Camilla's a Druid, where'd she get this tree? This is set in L.A., not Europe. As I said before, not much is answered, and I guess I should be grateful because I can't imagine any answers that wouldn't delve the material into further silliness.

But I credit director William Friedkin for handling all this with a straight face. Some of this stuff (particularly the scenes with the tree) could have been played as camp, but I'm rather glad Friedkin plays this seriously and, as he did with The Exorcist, he manages to craft some truly suspenseful and frightening moments. Still, the film does slide into scenes that are too silly to be taken very seriously; you'll know what I mean when you see the chainsaw scene near the end of the movie.

Unlike The Exorcist, he shows no restraint with violence, preferring to give us several enjoyably gory death scenes and a LOT of blood spattering everywhere. There's also a decent amount of nudity present, courtesy of the rather lovely Jenny Seagrove. She's not quite as effective a horror villainess as, say, Mathilda May in Lifeforce, but gets the job done. Dwier Brown and Cary Lowell are okay, a little flat during some scenes and certainly not aided by a script that makes them act like idiots, but are convincing enough as caring and concerned parents.

Surprisingly very little music is used, with Friedkin trying to use the sounds of the wind and other such natural elements to create goosebumps. It's a good attempt, and while it works during two very lengthy, suspenseful sequences, he's still no M. Night Shyamalan. Considering the rather negative critical response The Guardian received, it's easy to see why Friedkin hasn't made a genre film since. But I enjoyed almost every minute of it would recommend it to horror fans seeking a quick-paced, gory thriller.

"The Guardian" was one of those films that passed through the hands for several directors (including Sam Raimi, who left to direct, "Darkman") and writers, before veteran William Friedkin came aboard, more as a 'director for hire' (think George Pan Cosmatos or Jack Lee Thompson in the 80's / early 90's) than an 'auteur'.

Friedkin was hired in the hopes that his masterpiece "The Exorcist" ('73) helped in the promotion of "The Guardian" as Friedkin's second entrance into the horror genre and after the box office failures of his two previous films, the stylish and vastly underrated, "To Live and Die in L.A." ('85) and "Rampage" ('87), the director needed a sure thing hit to re-establish himself for the 90's crowd.

Maybe "The Guardian" wasn't exactly the right project, because even if Friedkin did some rewrites to the shooting script, when something is a mess to begin it, even a mad genius can't do miracles.

The movie is about some druid nanny that kidnaps 4 weeks old babies to fed them to a huge tree in a dark forest, and the formulaic plot follows a young couple with a new born male baby that in the end will stop the nanny's obscure activities.

"The Guardian" is stylish directed and photographed, presenting peculiar camera angles and polished visuals, unfortunately the editing is a mess, the script is lousy and some scenes are so ridiculously staged that defies any sense of logic that looked like the movie was directed by a number of different directors, each one with a different view on the film's overall mood and atmosphere.

Some scenes are pure Friedkin's visual fanfare, like the beginning with the owl and showing the nanny with the previous family or the wolfs' siege at the architect house, grim, dark and moody with the mastered touch of creating the sense of dread upon the viewer, in other scenes looked like it was directed by some B-filmmaker trying to poorly mimmick Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" franchise, with badly staged sequences, like the three burglars in the park that got slaughtered by the huge tree, that were even worse acted, photographed and delivered.

In terms of performances, the english beauty Jenny Seagrove, from "Woman of Substance" ('85) fame, is very good in the role of the dark nanny, Camilla Grandier, she's expressive, seductive and charming in her evilness and she can act well with her dazzling blue eyes, leaving a strong mark into the plethora of horror movies villains. Like she herself said, and this reviewer agreed, she deserved a much better written film.

I don't know why, maybe due to the limited budget, William Friedkin gave the co-leading role of Phil Sterling, the baby's dad, to his stock character actor, Dwier Brown, when his more relevant role was playing Kevin Costner's dad in the flashback scenes of previous year's, "Field of Dreams" ('89). Brown sports a dumb face for the most part of the film and his reactions to Seagrove's acting is like seeing a rookie trying to upstage a veteran and failing miserably.

Former Bond girl in "License to Kill" ('89), hottie Carey Lowell fares better in an underused role of the mom and Miguel Ferrer is as essential to the plot as an umbrella in a sunny day. Brad Hall as Ned Runcie, the architect, who resembled a lot Woody Harrelson back in the day, shines in one of the best scenes in the film, the aforementioned wolfs' siege.

The big finale is the cherry on the top of the cake in terms of its ridiculousness. Suddenly the movie stops being subtle and went all "Evil Dead 2" rip-off with Dwier Brown dressing a blue shirt, same hairstyle and with a chainsaw fighting a tree, roaring and screaming with blood oozing to his face and gore everywhere. It's so Bruce Campbell versus Evil Dead, that Friedkin should have been ashamed of directing such a blatant carbon copy.

In short, "The Guardian" tried to be a realistic thriller / suspense film about a nanny kidnapping babies and a modern dark fantasy fairytale at the same time, somewhere beetween that and the constant rewrites and Friedkin's lack of heart in the project, the movie was lost for the worse. It didn't worked. Two years later, Curtis Hanson handled this plot better, minus the druids' non-sense, and directed "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" ('92), which was a huge critically and box office success.

I give it a 5.5, increasing to 6 here, due to Friedkin's visual elegance and some interesting camera angles.