The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 18

Friday, Dec. 30, 1983 B4 I I i i I From uH the mists real horror it 4 PETER WILSON reviews The Keep, a film so bad it's already becoming a cult classic of the ghastly kind 0 SCOTT GLENN strides forth to do battle with an evil force: yet another dry-ice extravaganza THE opening shots of The Keep led me to believe it was going to be a nose hair movie with everything, particularly the nostrils of Jurgen Proch-now, in extreme close-up. But suddenly director Michael Mann opened his movie out and I realized within seconds that I was being treated to yet another dry ice extravaganza in which mist billows ominously and half the scenes are shot in slow motion. If the mist isn't whipping portentously around people's feet, the actors are gliding towards us as if they're running for the tape in Chariots of Fire and sometimes, when Mann wants to get clever, the mist itself rolls through scenes in slow motion. There is, I am told, a cult following already growing around The Keep a film so bad that anxious executives at Famous Players pulled it from its original Christmas booking at Denman Place to slot it in at the tiny number four theatre of Capitol 6.

Theatre chains often make mistakes, but this is not one of them and the cultists must be becoming exceedingly desperate for movie icons these days. Mann, who also wrote the screenplay based on a novel by Paul Wilson, never overtly states anything and The Keep is all hints of plot rather than plot itself. We begin to understand from context that a unit of the German army (led by Proch- now) has arrived at a castle in a mountain pass in Romania in the fall of 1941. Slowly exceedingly slowly we find that the keep has not been built to keep an invading army out but to keep something really scary and horrible and nasty and awful and evil in. Accidentally let loose, the rotten creature goes around killing soldiers and sucking the evil from them and starts growing in power, or something like that.

Meanwhile, Glaeken Trismegis-tos (Scott Glenn) awakens from a centuries-long sleepy exile in Greece just knowing that the creature has been released and grabs a ship and then rides a motorcycle to Romania. When he arrives at the keep he has a slow-motion roll on the rustic floorboards of the local inn with the redheaded daughter of a Jewish scholar who has been brought in by the SS to explain the killings of the German soldiers by the creature. Are you following this? I'm not sure I was fully awake at this point, but I'm doing the best I can. Anyway, Glenn's character must battle the evil force (which first appears as a cloud with a glowing head) to the death. Much is made by Mann of the fact that evil has been unleashed on the world in the form of the Nazi armies and the S.S.

in particular and that evil begets evil and that all of this is some kind of allegory having to do with facisim and dark forces. Easy listening with Orwell Gabriel Byrne as an S.S. sturm-bannfurher. Glenn, having once attempted building a character as Alan Shep-hard in The Right Stuff, returns to his John Carradine mode for The Keep. While some of the acting problems can be blamed on Mann, other failures, particularly those in storytelling, may not necessarily be his fault.

The Keep, at just over 90 minutes long, has the feel of having been pared by at least half an hour, certainly enough wasted footage to 'leave mounds of essential plot information on the cutting room floor. Tie Keep, rated Restricted, is at the Capitol 6 and Willowbrook. But, try as I might, I can't make much of it. All in all, The Keep seems more like an updated swords and sorcery epic than it does a look back in anger at Adolf Hitler and friends. Prochnow whose Das Boot performance as the U-boat commander was followed by a bout of extreme overacting as an East German communist political agent in Comeback is suitably steel-faced in The Keep until a final all-stops-out drunken sobbing scene when he gets into a scenery chewing match with NICHOLAS READ on a CBC radio marathon EORGE Orwell chose the title of I I his most celebrated novel, 1984, quite arbitrarily; he simply reversed the last two digits of 1948, the -ihr -i zl --to Ti? A playwright tells how it's done 'r.

i llliNR 3 31 ZZ 3 A A 3 mm .1 it ie 3 BARRY MORSE as the great man ii WW'" I. terviewees sound as if they must be liv ing icons of pre-war Britain, and they are a delight to listen to not only for what they say, but for how they say it. rather than the professional critic. Moliere got his cook to criticize his plays. Would your plays pass a similar test?" If playwrights took all their cues from cooks, not people who see a lot of theatre as their profession and expect something more than the easy and formular, we'd be getting nothing but the hamburger and dried-up pastrami of Neil Simon, Bernard Slade and Murray Schisgal.

Hull's view is evidently determined more by marketing and commercial success than by anything else. He's out to tell you how to write a play that will sell. But there are sound observations, too. The most indisputable of them is that a play, like any work of art, is a compression and a formality, an orderly and rarefied picture of life with no place for the messi-ness and randomness of day-to-day existence: in the good play every moment is loaded and counts for something. He advises would-be playwrights to stay away from TV as their example.

And his comment on dialogue is good: bear in mind the tennis analogy. Make each speaker repel or deflect the idea that the opponent has just shot at him or her; let one character stumble and miss the chance to reply; let a player (suppose it is a doubles game) spring forward and make the stroke that by rights should have been left to the partner; let a spectator distract a player at an important moment; let someone steal the ball, or suddenly raise thenet, or shout How to Writ a Play. By Raymond Hull Writer's Digest BooksPrentice-Hall Canada $18.95. By LLOYD DYKK VANCOUVER author Raymond Hull has written about a dozen books, among them The Peter Principle, co-written with Laurence Peter. Several of the others are "how-to" books, including, believe it or not, one that tells you how to write "how-to" books.

Now, from the experience of the more than 25 play scripts to his credit, Hull gives us a book on how to write a play. The book, appropriately enough titled How to Write a Play, cuts a wide swath, from the history of theatre in ancient Greek and Roman times to information on where to send your wonderful new script. The tone is dry, instructional and no-nonsense and Hull is never too assuming of his readers not to spell out the obvious. For example: "Mime obviously offers little scope for the playwright" and "Avoid names that have acquired strong connotations from famous people (first names such as Elvis, Groucho, Dashiell and Thur-good; surnames such as Gandhi sic Strindberg, Toulouse-Lautrec or Daimler)." He discusses the "six Cs" of play construction: Conflict, Characters, Complications, Crisis, Catastrophe and Conclusion. Chapter headings are in bold face, with excerpts (frequently from Hull's own plays) quoted as examples, student exercises, and a recapitulation of points made at the end of each chapter.

Much of the information is sensible but the book shouldn't be taken as gospel. Hull is writing from the point of view of a technician. Many of his views as an year in which he wrote the book. But because of him, the date has become a prophetic benchmark, and the year even before it has begun one of special significance. When Orwell made that arbitrary decision 35 years ago, he inadvertently secured himself the posthumous title of 1984's Man of the Year.

So rushing in to commemorate the event along with every other newspaper, magazine, and television and radio station in the western world is the CBC," which will present George Orwell: A Radio Biography on CBC Stereo from noon to 5 p.m. on New Year's Day, and again as a weekly series on Sundays from 9 to 10 p.m. on CBC Radio beginning Jan. 1. The program is hosted by Vancouver writer George Woodcock, who was a friend of Orwell's, and the author of his biography, The Crystal Spirit; and includes the reminiscences of 85 people who knew Orwell.

The author's own words are spoken by actor Barry Morse. The idea for the five-hour special was conceived by executive producer Steve Wadhams, who spent nine weeks last spring driving all over England. Scotland, and Spain compiling and recording recollections of people who remember Orwell as a young boy, a student, a soldier, a budding writer, and a famous author. Hour one of the series is devoted to his boyhood and term as a colonial officer in Burma; hour two talks about his years living as a tramp in Paris and London; hour three, the Spanish Civil War and the effect it had on him; hour four, his experiences during the Second World War and the publication of Animal Farm; and hour five, the writing of 1984. Five hours is an inordinately long time to sit through one radio documentary, as anyone who attempts the New Year's Day marathon will realize.

But it is still insufficient time to record the events of an entire lifetime, and George Orwell: A Radio Biography suffers because of it. Turning to television, NBC will begin; the new year fresh with six new series-designed to replace the just-axed. Boone, For Love and Honor, Mr. Smith, Manimal, and Bay City Blues, and the; temporarily shelved Jennifer Slept; Here and The Rousters. The new series, which will be premi ered the week after next: RAYMOND HULL: no nonsense aesthetician leave room for doubt.

He advises against writing "talky" plays without significant action. Presumably then, Hull doesn't think much of the plays of Simon Gray or Tom Stop-pard, or of Michel Tremblay's intensely gripping Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, which is little but conversation. Other things are questionable: he says two-character plays tend to be monotonous. In fact, there are a very many good ones. I'd agree with him if he thought this about one-character plays, but he doesn't mention anything about them.

And his discussion of absurdist theatre is superficial. Another Hull nostrum: "If you are in doubt about any aspect of your play, trust the average spectator TV's Bloopers, Commericals and Practical Jokes, a variety series based on the popular TV Bloopers specials. The New Show, a comedyvariety series from the producer of Saturday Night Live. Riptide, an action series about a pair of beachfront detectives. Legmen, another action series about two college students who play private detective.

to a cultural champion The Master, about an American who has mastered the Oriental martial Tomorrow in Leisure arts of the Ninja. Night Court, a sit-com about an eccentric young judge presiding over a Manhattan night court. Rockin' Journal Scheduled for presentation on The Journal tonight (Ch. 2 at 10:20 p.m.) is a feature of Vancouver-based singer-song writer Bryan Adams. The segment was put together by producer journalist Russ Froese, who heads the Vancouver bureau for The Journal.

The piece will look at Adams's ca- reer, focussing on the past year when; he has spent 11 months on the road working towards his international, breakthrough. Froese filmed Adams at home in North Vancouver, and obtain-, ed footage of him performing in the Memorial services will be held Jan. 4 at 2 p.m. at the Vancouver Academy of Music to honor Iby Koerner, who died Monday in hospital. She was 84.

The widow of lumberman Otto Koerner, she was a self-styled "engineer" of the arts in Vancouver and throughout Canada. Iby Koerner acted as founder, board member or advisor to almost every significant cultural group in Vancouver, including the Vancouver International Festival, the UBC Museum of Anthropology, the Vancouver Foundation, the Van- She founded the Vancouver Academy of Music and worked on its campaign for new facilities. Her support for the arts was felt across Canada. She was for several years governor of the National School of Theatre in Montreal, and also served as a trustee of the National Gallery of Canada, honorary vice-president of the Canadian Handicraft Guild and a member of the art selection committee for the Charlottetown Confederation Memorial Art Gallery. Iby Koerner was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1972.

"I was at a Community Arts Council board meeting a month ago at her home," says Leila Getz, founder of the Recital Concerts series. "She came down to the meeting, and you could see she wasn't going to live more than three or four weeks. Her courage and determination bowled us all over. "She was a dedicated supporter of the arts. I don't think anything culturally happened in Vancouver that she didn't have a part in." THE HUMAN CONDITION '83: One day people will look back and remember 1983 as the year Nancy Reagan kissed Mr.

the year John McDannell tore the head off his girlfriend's parakeet during an argument. These and many more milestones have been compiled by the Leisure staff. ARTLESS INCOME TAX: Marke Andrews examines the battle between Revenue Canada and the country artists who claim they are being treated as if they were widget manufacturers. AND MUCH MORE: Our rock, jazz and classical record reviewers look back at the best of 1983. Barbara Pertit discusses the marriage of architecture and computer technology.

Anne Templeman-Kluit tours the art galleries. And, as usual, we tease your brain with our crossword puzzle. What Wadhams should have done was focus on Orwell's works, but instead, he has tried to retell Orwell's life. Friends recall snippets of information about him was long, thin, and lugubrious," and someone "who was rather agin' but because they are only snippets, they are incomplete. Much is said about Orwell's complex character, but the complexities aren't sorted out only pointed out.

But if it is superficial listening, it is also easy listening and a pleasant look back on times past. Many of the in- IBY KOERNER couver School of Art, the Vancouver Symphony, Vancouver Opera Association, the Community Arts Council and the Vancouver Art Gallery. United States and Japan..