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.

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'm so glad I didn't pay attention to IMDb's 3 rating and read the reviews. Although I've heard of much of the cast, David Carradine, Norman Reedus, Paul Sampson, Billy Drago, Max Perlich, I hadn't heard of this movie until I was doing a "Templar" search on the internet. This movie is one of the coolest movies (and I stress coolest) that I've seen in a long time, like back to Reservoir Dogs.

Well acted, very well directed (Paul Sampson, first time and also great job in dual lead roles) and very well shot. 70's feel with music and vibe. Very sexy scenes and keeps you guessing. I can normally predict the next scenes and movies yet couldn't peg this one.

Almost all the reviews are very favorable but IMDb lists this as a 3 out of 10 user rating?! This isn't the first time IMDb is waaay off base. I'm losing confidence in the accuracy of this site.

A Paul Sampson Film.

Occasionally I watch a film that leaves me so dumbstruck that I go and look it up on the ol' net thingy. This is one such film. I watched amazed as this trope-fest unfolded in front of me, shook my head and went looking for the reviews. My amazement at the film was nothing compared with my amazement at the glowing reviews with their talk of fine acting and marvellous story, superb direction, lavish sets..

I was so amazed that I checked the profiles and review of a couple of the critics. Yep. it was the only film they'd reviewed. I checked a couple more, then another half dozen, then a dozen... Sure enough, in each and every case it was the only film they'd ever reviewed on IMDb. I gave up after just over half of the reviews. All were on-offs. Am I seeing a smoking gun here, anyone? Of course, my selection of reviewers was made blindly, though apparently with the sort of randomness that makes us all lightning-struck lottery winners. Maybe the ones I didn't look at were all seasoned critics who had never met Paul Sampson. You can do your own leg-work - or let your inner statistician decide.

A Paul Sampson Film.

The hilarity began with the opening credits.. A Paul Sampson film, handled by Sampson Enterprises. Produced by Paul Sampson. Directed by Paul Sampson. I think maybe Wardrobe by Paul Sampson, Catering by... I'm sure you get the picture. Starring wait for it... wait for it, it'll be a surprise... PAUL SAMPSON!!!

Rather like - Starring George Lucas as Darth Solo!!!-

Now I've absolutely nothing against vanity enterprises. Some great art has come our way thusly. This isn't some of it, unfortunately. This is to film what the Dave Clarke Five was to drumming - pretty boy with the business plan at the front of the stage. In this case, pretty boy with (it seems) a lot of friends with favours he can call in, in front of the camera. The whole premise is "look how handsome/cool I am.. how can I wrap some kind of plot around that to justify me mugging at the camera for an entire feature film?" Well, he's appealing enough in a caricature-handsome large-featured kind of way and he's in pretty good shape, but boy, he wants us to notice it. If anyone doubts this, check out the whole new genre of "Sword and Underwear" he seems to have invented as an answer to decades of chain-mail bikini fantasies. Unfortunately it presents as very dry parody, which is often a wonderful thing - but not when it's this clumsy and the thing being parodied is the ongoing film itself. Anyway, the acting, and "feel" of the entire film was that of a comedy TV series doing a sketch based on an early 80s porn film, without any of the porn. Not the Swedish/Dutch "I haff cumm to mends your vashink machine. It looks ferry vet down there, let me get my tool out while the funky guitar and keyboard play..." but the American/German "We have rented a place in the country and have only one reel of film. Let us party and think up a situation we can finish up by being naked and smearing each other with offal and ketchup" type of entertainment that my grandmother so likes to watch, but purely for the soundtrack.

I enjoyed the watching of the film, rather than enjoyed watching it if you see the difference. Sometimes I enjoy the process of watching the film-making, not necessarily the end result. Here the end result was risible, which is rather a shame because a couple of the cast were really putting something special into it and it was nice to see Carradine again though the parallels with Béla Lugosi in Plan Nine From Outer Space drew rather poignant grid lines. Sadly missed, both. Worth seeing as a curiosity, and if I must draw another parallel - in intent if not style or subject matter - I'd say Easy Rider for the focus on the ac-tors rather than the pseudo medievalism of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - which was far funnier on a smaller budget. Knights/Night Templar was not intentionally funny, and was not terrible enough to be really great as some truly memorable turkeys are, but it is an awful, fascinating train wreck of a movie which has no charm whatever. I feel the same cast could have pulled it off with more astute direction, but we'll never know for certain.

Oh - nice to see Mr Mxyzptlk again, playing The Butler.

3 out of 10 as it stopped me thinking about the overdraft and sciatica for the duration.