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.

Born on this day – Robert Prosky:

Robert Prosky

Actor

December 13, 1930 – December 8, 2008

On this day in movie history - Christine (1983 movie & novel):

Christine

directed by John Carpenter,

written by Bill Phillips,

based on the novel by Stephen King,

was released in the United States on December 9, 1983.
Music by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth.

Cast:

Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Christine Belford, Robert Darnell, Roberts Blossom, Kelly Preston, William Ostrander, Steven Tash, Stuart Charno, Malcolm Danare, David Spielberg.

Recommended reading:

Christine

By Stephen King.

Published by Viking Press.

First published 1983.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0670220264

ISBN-13: 978-0670220267

Description:

It was love at first sight. From the moment seventeen-year-old Arnie Cunningham saw Christine, he knew he would do anything to possess her.

Arnie’s best friend, Dennis, distrusts her – immediately.

Arnie’s teen-queen girlfriend, Leigh, fears her the moment she senses her power.

Arnie’s parents, teachers, and enemies soon learn what happens when you cross her.

Because Christine is no lady. She is Stephen King’s ultimate, blackly evil vehicle of terror…

Christine, blood-red, fat and finned, was twenty. Her promise lay all in her past. Greedy and big, she was Arnie’s obsession, a ’58 Plymouth Fury. Broken down but not finished. There was still power in her – a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded the mind and turned ownership into Possession.

On this day in movie history - Eye See You (2002)

Eye See You

aka D-Tox and The Outpost,

directed by Jim Gillespie,

written by Howard Swindle,

based on a story by Ron L. Brinkerhoff,

and the novel Jitter Joint written by Howard Swindle,

was released in the United States on September 20, 2002.
Music by John Powell.

Cast:

Sylvester Stallone, Charles S. Dutton, Polly Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Mif, Christopher Fulford, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Berenger, Stephen Lang, A.C. Peterson, Hrothgar Mathews, Angela Alvarado, Robert Prosky, Robert Patrick, Courtney B. Vance, Sean Patrick Flanery, Tim Henry, Dina Meyer, Rance Howard, Frank Pellegrino, James Kidnie, Yves Cameron, Harrison Coe, Peter Flemming, Chris Nelson Norris, Bill Mackenzie, Ian Gschwind, David Lewis, John Timothy Botka, James Ralph, Ruth Zalduondo.

On this day in movie history - The Heist (1989):

The Heist

directed by Stuart Orme,

written by William Irish Jr., David Fuller and Rick Natkin,

based on a story by William Irish Jr.,

was released in the United States on September 16, 1989.
Music by Arthur B. Rubinstein.

Cast:

Pierce Brosnan, Tom Skerritt, Wendy Hughes, Noble Willingham, Tom Atkins, Robert Prosky, Steve Apostolina, Ben Mittleman, Nino Surdo, Shelton Redden, Roger Hewlett, Joseph Carberry, Chino ‘Fats’ Williams, Art Frankel, Andrew Barnicle, Roger Chapman, Dan Hare, Will Cascio, Kevin Furlong, Fred Bailey, Gary Wright, Luisa Vargas, Susan Thompson, Gale McNeeley, Jack Orend, Matthew Wood, Alan Buchdahl, Brina, Dante, Melissa Dudek, Michael Smiley.

On this day in movie history - The Natural (1984 movie & novel):

The Natural

directed by Barry Levinson,

written by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry,

based on the novel by Bernard Malamud,

was released in the United States on May 11, 1984.
Music by Randy Newman.

Cast:

Robert Redford, Paul Sullivan Jr., Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Rachel Hall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky, Richard Farnsworth, Joe Don Baker, Darren McGavin, Michael Madsen, John Finnegan, Alan Fudge, Ken Grassano, Mike Starr, Mickey Treanor, Jon Van Ness, Anthony J. Ferrara, George Wilkosz, Robert Rich III, Sibby Sisti.

Recommended reading:

The Natural

By Bernard Malamud.

Filmed as The Natural (1984), directed by Barry Levinson.

Paperback.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

First published 1952.

ISBN: 9780374502003

ISBN 10: 0374502005

ASIN: 0374502005

Description:

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first – and some would say still the best – novel ever written about baseball. In it, Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material – the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era – and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which – now that he has done it! – looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."