The Keeper ** (1976, Christopher Lee, Tell Schreiber, Sally Gray, Ross Vezarian, Ian Tracey, Bing Jensen) – Classic Movie Review 11,600

Writer-director Tom Y Drake’s 1976 low-budget Canadian movie The Keeper is a modestly made, comfortably familiar horror film with the admirable Christopher Lee as the sinister, crippled asylum head The Keeper and an ancient plot about the boss of a mental institution trying to extort money out of the rich relatives of his tormented patients.

Tell Schreiber plays private eye Dick Driver, hired to investigate the exclusive Underwood Asylum in 1947 British Columbia, where the millionaire families of The Keeper’s patients begin to die in grisly circumstances, leaving large inheritances to the patients.

The Keeper is a tolerable chiller, with a fairly good script, but not distinguished in any way. More style, attitude, seriousness and menace would be good. Ross Vezarian is way off beam in his overstated turn as Inspector Clarke, but Lee is dignified and effective, as always.

Also in the cast are Tell Schreiber as Dick Driver, Sally Gray as Mae B Jones, Ian Tracey as The Kid, Leo Leavy and Jack Leavy as The Biggs Twins, Bing Jensen as Danny, Malcolm Britton, Michael Meade and Burke Lundy.

It was released in Canada and the UK in 1976, premiered in America on TV on 19 December 1985, and was released in 1987 on VHS by InterGlobal Home Video.

Drake’s screenplay is based on a story by David Curnick and Donald B Wilson.

It was shot for CAN$135,000 in Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1 to 24 October 1975.

It was submitted for finance to the Canadian Film Development Corporation by producer Donald Wilson.

Drake was called in for a rewrite but took over as director when the original director left the production.

The Keeper is Drake’s sole film as writer-director but he also wrote the screenplay for the 1980 horror film Terror Train starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

Thomas Y. Drake (born June 28, 1936) died of cancer on August 8, 2008 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was married for 50 years to Sally Gray.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,600

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