My name is Stéphane Piter, I’m a special effects make-up artist and plastic art specialist in France. You can peruse my work on the Lionel Allorge lunerouge.com website and in "Cinema Special Effects/ Art section/ Press Section" pages of this website. My other interests include filmmaking, professional studies and education, as well as visual creation.

I have a particular weak spot for a certain enigmatic and entrancing film from 1983 called ‘The Keep’. Ever since I first saw this film I have been collecting articles and interviews with the cast and crew involved, in order to find the film’s weaknesses, successes and failures to reveal the true story behind it.

Michael Mann has fired my imagination since the beginning. His technique of filming, editing and stylising his characters gives an impression of greatness, depth and suspense.

Not to mention the importance he places on the music. The ‘Mann sound’ is instantly recognisable, as the background music for this site illustrates (‘Deadly Silver Crosses’ by Tangerine Dream). It contains a single long and deep base note.

The Keep is anything but a mediocre film as the critics thought at the time. Despite several renowned actors, the film was plagued with problems. Paramount refused to provide the budget required to finish the film and rejected Mann’s first cut (more than three hours long). The current version remains seriously incomplete at 1 hour 33 minutes.

I highly recommend reading the novel ‘Le Donjon’ (the Dungeon/The Keep) by F Paul Wilson in order to fill in the gaps caused by the deleted scenes.

In my career, I have always expressed my wish to show ‘The Keep’ in its best light. I am still working towards this, in particular by gathering together as many related documents as possible in order to persuade Paramount USA to release a ‘collector’s edition’ DVD containing the full Director’s cut.

I also rely on the help and support of another big fan of the film who appreciate my sincere devotion and meticulous searchs to rebirth day of "THE KEEP": Laurent Bouzereau.

You will find my collection of articles on this site. I do not pretend to have made an ‘ultimate’ site, simply to have attempted to incite interest in this film which has been forgotten for more than 20 years.

This site will expand with time and I am always ready to welcome like-minded people who wish to join me in my quest for the maximum amount of information to make this site as complete as possible. In the future, I hope to gather even more information and interviews with people who worked on the film.

Finally, I would like to thank Odette Guendouz, Pierre Clément, Yves Delassus and Thierry Derre for their devotion and precious help in the development of this site. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you find any mistakes, inaccurate information or dead links.

Stéphane Piter. August 2003

Thank you to contact me if you note mistakes, imprecision information, dead links.