Gargoyles

I honestly have to say that this movie blows. The special effect look almost ten years old, the script is choppy, the acting is minimalist, the cinematography is thin, the lighting is less-than-stellar, the camera angles are amateurish and the foley editing (sound effects and sound editing in general) sounds like it was done on a Mac Power PC without a decent sound board. Lots of the dialogue has a tinny, thin sound to it, like it was almost telephoned in or the person was talking into a tin can from across the room (especially Michael Pare's voice). The music score sounds like someone tried futilely to imitate the stylings of Danny Elfman and failed miserably in the attempt.

The actresses are all fairly attractive, which makes for mediocre eye candy, but that's about the only thing this movie has going for it.

A fellow reviewer complained about continuity, BUT if he actually watched the movie and listened to the dialog he would have known WHY the priest anointed the arrow with his blood then shot the gargoyle. Special effects were not bad, but not top of the line. I thought the shots of the interior of the church were well done. I liked the beginning of the movie, which set the tone for the rest of what happened. The acting was fair to middlin as my mom would have said. This is your basic B rate movie. If you like B rate movies it is right up your ally. Not a bad way to spend some time. Michael Pare is still a good looking guy, the ladies are nice to look at according to my hubby.

Michael Pare brings a believable hero to this screamer.The special effects were awesome. Tim Abell as a anti-hero looks like Aragorn from LOTR.Lots of religious connotations,really it reeks of honesty in story-telling.NO SEX, on Sci-Fi Channel debut...Maybe on DVD or VHS.The women are very pretty and serve as unwilling victims,actually 2 leads are strong in personality.Think it was filmed in Romania,The church and graveyard...Why,did they let you borrow for important scenes ?

Wynorski is probably at his most potent as a director ,this time out. I throughly enjoyed this movie,and almost wish I could give Earth back to the Gargoyles.

I'll say it right away: I'm a sucker for monster movies. Also for the bad ones. Yes, even the really bad ones. And technically and theoretically "Gargoyle" is a bad one. No doubt about that. Hey, Jim Wynorski directed this one, so what can one expect, right? But I've started to like this guy a lot over the recent years. He made great campy horror-flicks during the 80's ("Chopping Mall", "Return of the Swamp Thing"), and during these last years I saw some of his newer, nonsensical monster movies. And I had loads of fun with them. Great thing with his newer monster-flicks, is that he puts so many crazy ideas and subplots in them, that you never get bored. Okay, most of the time it doesn't lead to anything, but it's still fun. Plus, he often even rips-off various plot elements or characters from his own movies, to re-use them in new flicks of his. These are the mysterious Ways of Wynorski. Anyway, here we got: Ancient Gargoyles with their offspring being born from "Alien"-like cocoons, a Roumanian setting with lots of castles, two CIA detectives investigating the strange goings-on and mutilated bodies, a terrorist-kidnapping, a drug-lord running a sinister voodoo-nightclub, rival drug-dealers, a Dracula-worshiping cult (mentioned only), two competitive priests (of which one has a secret agenda), a gorgeous-looking cutie with a degree in history/folklore/archeology (or something), Michael Paré, a spectacular car-chase with continuity errors, Michael Paré cranking up a smile at the end while laughing at a joke, one final "this ain't over"-shot. And some other things. So how can you not have fun with it? The CGI used for the gargoyle is surprisingly tolerable and even reminded me at times of those good old stop-motion effects back in the old days. Thinking about it, this film is a far better movie then, for example, "Pterodactyl" (2005) - another one of those flying CGI beasts of terror movies - because in "Gargoyle" at least there's an attempt at a story. Hell, put "Gargoyles" next to the recent, utterly abominable "Harpies" (2007), and you'll see "Gargoyles" for the genuine Wynorski Masterpiece that it is. Of course it's complete nonsense. But it's Wynorski-nonsense, and that's about the same as pure fried gold.

I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's experience of this film by telling you not to see it if you have anything better to do, like clean under the stove. It gets dirty under there and you've gotta clean it sometime.

I think the movie suffers from a lack of sex and violence, though there is one car chase stunt that looks so dangerous it could only have been filmed in a country where life is cheaper than beer. "Gargoyle"'s heart is in the right place, but its aspirations are conservative. It is at least not pretentious. But I had a great time acting in it, playing the perennial idiot in the horror movie who says "What's down this hole?" and dies for his hubris. Plus I got to meet Michael Pare. Every film junkie should work with a B-movie staple at least once before death. And Romanians are the loveliest people I've met. Literally the loveliest. Walk down the street in Bucarest: if 7 of every 10 women aren't absolutely beautiful, you're walking down a street I didn't come across; and be consoled by the fact that at least 5 of the 10 are available for drinks.

Part of the film was shot in Casa Radio, an abandoned, unfinished Classic Communist Bloc-cum-Georgian Nightmare edifice originally intended to house KGB propaganda ministries, i.e. Radio Not-so-Free Europe. The building's five stories tall and takes up a city block; best of all, while its facade radiates Big Brotheresque state solidity, it resides near the city center like a post-apocalyptic ruin in a jungle of burdock and hemp peopled by dozens of Gypsies and scores of wild dogs. Construction on Casa Radio was suspended when Caucescu and his wife were executed on TV in 1989, and still there are gaping holes that drop from the sun-baked top floor (offering surreal vistas of a modern quarter-mile stretch of concrete roof, decorated with jutting rebar and old car parts, overlooking a crumbling ancient city) all the way down to the damp, creepy sub-basement (which doubles in the film for the Gargoyle lair.) No American-style guardrails or warning signs for Bucarest.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Casa Radio has hosted several non-union film shoots, including "Highlander III". It is attractive to producers because it's a cheap location, massive in terms of scale and available space, bizarre looking, and free of insurance headaches as it's still state property. Plus no one complains if you don't clean up after your production: anything left onsite is interpolated into the resident Gypsies' construction of their shanty town in this actual urban jungle.

An assistant director was bitten bloody by a wild dog during the shoot of "Gargoyle". The apples provided by catering were pressed into service by cast and crew as projectiles in order to keep the prowling dogs at bay. I too was bitten by wild dogs in Bucarest, once in a bar (!) and once in a city park. I also survived two car wrecks in two weeks, both in taxis and neither of which was seen by the drivers involved as grounds for stopping the cars.

GEEK NOTE: The Sci-Fi Network or Channel or whatever was one of the backers of this film (the smaller the budget, the more producers on set), so it's a little weird that nobody had a problem with the original title, "Gargoyles", until it was almost time to show it on the network, even though Sci-Fi already had an unrelated series of that name. The title was changed sometime relatively close to release, as I have a color-corrected copy labeled with the former title.