Illustration : Unknown

The Keeper
 

T. Y. Drake | Canada | 1976

“Love The Keeper. Obey The Keeper.” So intones Christopher Lee as the nominal ‘The Keeper’ in this low budget, listless piece of Canuxploitation, which switches between sapless comedy and creepy drama with wild abandon. Shot in British Columbia on 16mm in October 1975 this home-grown feature was all but lost until it surfaced on video in the mid 1980s, having been passed over for theatrical distribution. Director T. Y. Drake had previously worked as a writer for television, this being his one and only effort in the director’s chair. He later wrote the screenplay for Roger Spottiswoode’s Terror Train (1980).

Set in 1947, Lee plays the (it appears!) sole employee and director of ‘The Underwood Asylum’, a place where the rich citizens of the community send their insane relatives. All of the internees are the sole surviving heirs to vast fortunes: over a hundred of their nexts-of-kin have died — the victims of suicides, murders or accidents. The police, led by the goonish Inspector Clarke (Ross Vezarian), have the place under surveillance but are still without any leads.

Enter P.I. Dick Driver (Tell Schreiber), hired by the reclusive Mr Biggs to check on a relation currently incarcerated inside the asylum. We learn that Driver has already planted female accomplice Mae B Jones (Sally Gray) on the inside, and he plays the concerned relative in order to bluff his way in. Indoors, he learns that the limping, hunched-over ‘Keeper’ is using a form of experimental hypno-therapy, applied to the patients via a peculiar mechanical organ-like machine (the innovative and surreal hypnotising sequences are easily the highlights of the whole film — as created by avant-garde experimental filmmaker Al Razutis).

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‘The Keeper’ catches on to the ruse, and when Driver returns that night, he is nearly killed in a rooftop fight with inmate Danny (Bing Jensen), decked out in police uniform — brainwashed by ‘The Keeper’ into believing he’s an actual officer. Later and after their initially salty relationship, Inspector Clarke and Driver decide to combine forces; with Clarke acting as a concerned relative, Driver gets interned into the asylum pretending to be a narcoleptic. Unfortunately for them, ‘The Keeper’ is not fooled, and subsequently through his hypnosis machine, manages to extract from Driver and the now-exposed Mae B their plan to expose him as a murderous embezzler…

Passed without cuts by the BBFC in July 1986, the ‘15’ certificate seems artificially high for a film with practically no violence nor scares. Perhaps it was the psychedelic hypnosis sequences which the BBFC were overly concerned about. A prominent likeness of Christopher Lee forms the centrepiece of the brick-coloured illustration, but the two screaming heads at either side are poorly drawn and appear to be more of an afterthought.

 

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cast : Christopher Lee, Tell Schreiber, Sally Gray, Ross Vezarian, Ian Tracey, Bing Jensen, Jack Leavy, Leo Leavy, Malcolm Britton, Michael Meade, Burke Lundy