Night of the Templar

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.

Saw that this film had a very healthy 6.5 rating on IMDb and so sat down to watch it at home with great expectations.This is a very,very bad film and does not deserve a rating anything like the one it has.It has obviously been hyped up by the Director's wife's cousin, the Producer's son's baseball team and the Best Boy's pet spaniel. A plot so convoluted as to be virtually incomprehensible,feeble acting and a script you wouldn't use to wallpaper your toilet await the unsuspecting viewer.This was apparently David Carradine's last film and the poor man must be spinning in his grave to have left this dross as his final legacy to the world or maybe he did it on purpose as his ultimate two-fingered gesture to the rest of us.My advice is that when you read the reviews of this film,you concentrate on the ones with a rating similar to mine and ignore the sycophantic ramblings of the camp followers.I managed about half an hour before I switched it off and darned a pair of socks which was infinitely preferable.

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.

I watched this movie some time ago, because I was in a Reedus-frenzy after TWD, but Oh My, nothing could prepare me for this movie! It is the most awkward movie I have ever seen, and I barely made it to the end, wanting to just turn it off way before. The only thing holding me back was my friend, who I had forced to watch this movie with me, who said: We have made it so far through this awful film, we might as well see if it stays bad 'til the very end. Nothing was good about it. I cringed,and laughed (not in a good way) and hid behind a pillow (to protect myself from the awkwardness), The story was shallow, the "history"poor, I felt bad for the actors, the females were horribly portrayed and treated, the production was bad..... The only funny thing about this, is the reviews, which I have a suspicion is written of or on behalf of the creator of the movie. But seriously - don't waste your time with this! You will never get that time back!

A great blending of many genres that not many can pull off. I was really into who was who and what was what. And it was expressed in a way I exactly like, in a well told suspenseful manner.

The scenes were really intense threw out the movie. Vengeance on a level that really has to be watched in full to be appreciated. The movie has so many things happening it's sure to keep you watching from start to finish.

I can't wait to watch this movie with my friends or anyone for that matter. And watch all the varied emotions and facial expressions they wont be able to suppress or hide while watching it.

Night of the Templar still has me thinking about it days after I watched it. A true gem worth every viewing minute.