On this day in movie history – The Keep (1983 movie & novel):

The Keep

directed and written by Michael Mann,

based on the novel by F. Paul Wilson,

released in the United States on December 16, 1983.

Music by Tangerine Dream.

Cast:

Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Jürgen Prochnow, Robert Prosky, Gabriel Byrne, Ian McKellen, William Morgan Sheppard, Royston Tickner, Michael Carter, Phillip Joseph, John Vine, Jona Jones, Wolf Kahler, Rosalie Crutchley, Frederick Warder, Bruce Payne, David Cardy, John Eastham, Philip Bloomfield, Yashar Adem, Stephen Whittaker, Ian Ruskin, Stephen Jenn, Benedick Blythe, Robin Langford, Renny Krupinski, Peter Guinness, Sean Baker, Timothy Block, Owain Gwyn, Ralph G. Morse, Doug Robinson, Peter Ross-Murray.

Recommended reading:

The Keep

By F. Paul Wilson.

Published by New English Library.

First published 1981.

ISBN 13: 9780450054556

ISBN 10: 0450054551

ASIN: 0450054551

Description:

“Request immediate relocation. Something is murdering my men.”

The message, sent by Captain Klaus Woermann to German Army High Command.

The location: a medieval fortress overlooking the Dinu Pass, high in the Transylvanian Alps.

Where the German garrison was being taken and murdered one by one, night after night, and left, throats torn out, to drive the survivors mad with fear.

The solution: a reinforcing squad of terror-hardened SS Einsatzkommandos.

The mistake: ignorance. The legends of Transylvania meant nothing to them. Nor the existence of an evil centuries older and hideously more powerful than anything in even the most diseased imaginings of an SS killer.