Reign of the Gargoyles (2007 TV Movie)
Nice idea but botched execution
3 October 2007
Given the well documented interest of the Nazi party hierarchy in the occult -Hitler and Himmler especially -it is a minor pity that so few supernaturally themed movies or science fiction movies have taken this as a starting point ."The Keep" , a pretentious rambling Michael Mann movie and the altogether better if more modest Trancers apart it remains a relatively unexplored area for genre cinema.Reign of the Gargoyles does tackle this subject and makes a decent if somewhat undercooked stab at it Nazi scientists are able to resurrect stone demons and set them loose in an attempt to sabotage Allied attacks on the Central European heartland .An American aircrew is dispatched to try to discover what is going on ,and are brought down by an attack of these winged demons .They combine with a small local partisan band to destroy the creatures ,and this involves locating a sacred spear from the grave of a long dead knight who had originally imprisoned the demons some time in the Middle Ages The problem is a lack of quality in the special effects ,which are workmanlike rather than exceptional and a cast of unknowns whose talent is such they are likely to stay that way .The script is underpowered and allows for little or no character development The location photography is good however and makes good use of the bleak ,wintry landscape to give an eerie and edgy look to the picture

A bigger effects budget and sharper scripting would have made this a better movie .As it is ,what we have is an okay picture which just fails to do justice to its premise
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