CASTLE KEEP—keep out of this 1969 quiche bath war flick or raise the drawbridge and keep it to yourself. There’s flair in a few of the performances, some extravagant visuals in the palette of cinematographer Henri Decaë and enough sonic battering in the orgiastic finale to make D-Day seem like a few popguns by comparison. Beyond those embellishments the sheer ridiculousness is so dogged it’s almost exquisite. Normally on-target Sidney Pollack misdirects an able cast in a surrealist/tragi-comedy/pap-philosophy rumination on art, time, sacrifice, sex and, oh…war—since its allegorical stewpot of arguing, coupling and killing are set during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge. *

“You find me degenerate – or worse even, French.”

A ragged (and monumentally loquacious) squad of wearying war-weary GI’s fort up in a 10th-century Belgian castle in the Ardennes forest. Eyepatch-adorned ‘Maj. Falconer’ (Burt Lancaster) is a cool customer, unimpressed by the art treasures ‘Count Texier’ (Jean-Pierre Aumont) holds in the isolate splendor of ‘Maldorais’. Art scholar ‘Capt. Beckman (Patrick O’Neal) appreciates the castle’s trove, but Falconer is more alert to acquiring a bed with  beautiful and accommodating ‘Countess Therese’ (Astrid Heeren, ravishing, inexpressive). The other grunts are on the lout end of the spectrum, except for a budding author (Al Freeman Jr.—the squad is pre-integrated because the script has no bearing on anything like reality—who also provides the risible narration). Others on hand to die trying include Peter Falk as a sardonic quipper and Bruce Dern as a semi-deserter/religious nut—they get the most amusing dialogue exchange—BIX: “We believe in God. That frightens you, doesn’t it? All you believe in is fornication, and killing.”  ROSSIE: “What?”  BIX: “We’re conscientious objectors!”  ROSSIE: “You mean, you conscientiously object to fornicating?” 

After interminable babble, the party-spoiling Germans show up (wouldn’t ya figger, and, in this case, thankfully) and the jiveathon concludes with a 20-minute battle, thunderous (sound crew and effects guys earn their pay) but as far from reality as the previous year’s bogus firefights in The Green Berets.

The actors do what they can. Lancaster’s always interesting; O’Neal’s cultured fellow allows him a break from essaying a raft of bastards (The Cardinal, In Harm’s Way, Alvarez Kelly, Chamber Of Horrors); Falk goes with the play-like flow (he’d just done what he could with the previous year’s lousiest WW2 opus, Anzio); Dern lights up his scenes as the born-again madman.

But the material–yeesh. The wretched gas-bag script by the normally astute Daniel Taradash (From Here To Eternity, Picnic, Hawaii) and steady Pollack associate David Rayfiel (10 collaborations) was exhumed from William Eastlake’s 382-page novel (Eastlake served during the Bulge). If the intent was to show how absurd war is the result mostly reveals how asinine some writing about it can get. Another of the attempts to filter the warped mode and mood of the Vietnam War thru sagas set in ‘safe’ WW2—some worked (Kelly’s Heroes, Catch-22), others stumbled into ‘heavy statement’ minefields (Beach Red, Too Late The Hero, Hannibal Brooks) but this lulu is so fartsy pretentious you’ll want to slam The Wild Bunch into the DVD player and fast forward to the wipeout for catharsis over enduring indulgent dross like this.

Jason Abbey of ‘Movie Waffler’ bonks it on the schnoz: “it ends up feeling a bit like being cornered in a room by an accountant who has dropped acid for the first time.”

At least the camerawork courtesy Mssr. Decaë on location in Serbia is grade-A, as befits (one would hope) an $8,000,000 production. Michel Legrand’s score varies from effective to irritating. Most reviews were not kind, and 53rd place with a gross of $5,300,000 turned this Bulge bullsession into a self-defeating Bust. With Scott Wilson, Tony Bill (a pill as usual), James Patterson, Michael Conrad, Caterina Boratto and Olga Bisera. 107 minutes.

Cue hairstyle, 24 years off target.

* Track recording—-Sydney Pollack directed some excellent movies (They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Tootsie, Out Of Africa), some good ones (The Yakuza, Three Days Of The Condor, Absence Of Malice, The Firm), a half dozen that were fair  and only a couple of real duds (This Property Is Condemned, Bobby Deerfield). This one’s more bearable than the last two mentioned, but just by a whisker. Or explosion.

Stunning German model Astrid Heeren, 28, is billed as being “introduced”, even though she’d had a small role in The Thomas Crown Affair the year before and a bit part in Roger Vadim’s  Vice and Virtue back in 1965. The beauteous Ms. Heeren only appeared in one more film, 1972’s culty item Silent Night, Bloody Night.

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