Grey Knight (1993)

Who payed the critics

A Disappointing Continuation

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Okay, a better movie than I thought. Apparently, this has been released under a bunch of different titles, including "Ghost Brigade", "Lost Brigade" "Killing Box" and the one IMDb prefers to use, "Grey Knight".The plot is that a Confederate Regiment thought to be destroyed a year earlier is back as undead, and slaughtering Confederate and Union soldiers indiscriminately. A union troop seeks to hunt them down with the help of a captured Confederate Colonel who previously commanded the troops.Also along with this band of misfits is a mute slave girl who is part of a the tribe that imprisoned the evil spirits to start with.This movie is made with the help of a lot of Civil War recreation buffs, and overall it looks pretty good. It had a decent budget, and good actors.There's some choppy editing, and some things the characters do make no sense. (Such as why bring the mute girl along to start with if you don't know she can help? Why handcuff her to the POW Colonel and then forget about doing it again later when he escapes three times?) The battle at the end when they figure out that the zombies can be killed by silver, and they just happen to have a whole wagon-load of silver that was looted by some fleeing Rebels... Wow, that was convenient!

The creative initial idea of an unstoppable army of Union and Confederate resurrected dead soldiers, gets trampled under the weight of it's limited budget, heavy handed direction, and chop shop editing. Many scenes are way too dark for interpretation of the action, while quite a bit of lines are garbled and incomprehensible. Character development is rushed and not acceptable. Other than the fresh concept of supernatural - Civil War genre mixing, there is little here to like. Billy Bob Thornton is wasted in a very small role, and Martin Sheen seems to be doing out takes from Gettysburg. "Grey Knight" should be considered more a curiosity than anything else, because it is simply too muddled and cannot be recommended as entertainment. - MERK

I saw auteur George Hickenlooper's director's cut of this movie under the title "Grey Knight". Spooky, world-class, polished performances delivered by Cynda Williams (tremendous in "One False Move" and an ex-Mrs. Billy Bob Thornton), David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 8 Legged Freaks), Roger Wilson (Vampire Recruiter Extraodinaire), Matt LeBlanc ("Monsters: "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites", "Showdown", "Lost in Space") and Martin Sheen ("The West Wing", "The Departed"), with Adrian Pasdar ("Near Dark", "Desperate Houswives") and Corbin Bersen ("Star Trek: the Next Generation", "Tales from the Hood") at each other's throats. Intelligent treatment, killer script, eerie atmosphere, and eye candy actors. Encore!

In the 1860s, during the American civil war. A Confederate regiment is wiped out in a brutal massacre, but their bodies are possessed by voodoo forces from Africa that were harbouring in an underground cave. They form an army of vampire-like zombies that terrorises not just the north, but also the south. Investigating this matter happens to be Capt. John Harling. He and along with some men (and a mute slave) are appointed to go out and take care of the problem. Unknowingly to them they will face something greater than they would believe. Reading about this particular shoot, I can see that the post-production was quite a handful for director George Hickenlooper and the film that was released was drastically cut by the producers. All of that material turns up in the director's cut labelled, "Grey Knight". This just happens to be the title of the VHS I just recently bought. Although, I've seen "The Killing Box" on TV a couple times, and honestly I couldn't tell the difference between the two. So, I guess I unluckily picked up the original release, which used one of its many titles. That figures! Director Hickenlooper would be best known for his riveting documentary called Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which looked at the making of "Apocalypse Now". On this occasion the results aren't so rosy, but here he still spins up an admirable little supernatural civil war offering. There are some inspired touches to "Apocalypse Now" and even Sam Peckinpah's minor western classic "Major Dundee". Despite the stimulating and rather interesting premise with its crackling voice-over by Pasdar. It just seems to promise more than it actually does hand out and it can get rather blurry in its intentions. A lack of depth and unbelievable reasoning can also add to the real emptiness created. The idea of this African folklore and the flashback imagery set in this unique setting are strikingly filtered into the film, but it can get contrived. Maybe all of this would be better expressed in the director's cut? The grafting direction isn't much better, with a real lack of flair; guidance and the incompetently staged battle scenes come across like hokey enactments. It really does buckle under its limited budget and comes across like a made for TV feature. Although, Hickenlooper has he moments like effectively demonstrating solid period details and an underling eeriness surrounding the unusual situation. Professionally crisp and showman-like photography makes it seem larger than it is and gives it a bit more scope. Probably too much for this type of production. Now just looking at the names involved, you'd think well this is going to be great. Not so. Most of the big names didn't get up too much. Martin Sheen and Billy Bob Thornton are nothing more than background features. Ray Wise gracefully hams it up as the crabby Col. George Thalman. Adrian Pasdar is capably sound as Capt. John Harling and his co-star Corbin Bernsen is equally so as Col. Nehemiah Strayn. Cynda Williams is fine as the mysterious mute slave Rebecca. Turning up also are David Arquette, Alexis Arquette and a blink and you'll miss role from Matt LeBlanc. "Grey Knights" is a very flawed feature that's not very exciting and probably bites off more then it could chew. One thing that bothers me though, was that it seems to lose something each time I watch it. However, the context and atmosphere is what will keep you watching this real quirky opus.