Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

JoeB131 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!

MBunge This is a movie about Civil War vampires. Or maybe they were Civil War zombies. The filmmakers never seemed clear on what particular breed of undead horror they were dealing with, but that confusion is about the least wrong thing with Grey Knight.After Union soldiers are found massacred, some crucified upside down, Captain John Harling (Adrian Pasdar) is assigned to ferret out the forces responsible. Signs point to an infamous Confederate squad known as the Alabama 51st but those men were reported killed, with only their commanding officer Colonel Nehemiah Strayn (Corbin Bernsen) surviving. Harling, a student of Strayn's at West Point, gets his old instructor out of military prison to join the search. Teamed up with the extremely theatrical Colonel Thalman (Ray Wise) and a deaf-mute voodoo priestess named Rebecca (Cynda Williams), Harling and Strayn discover that the people responsible for the Union massacre and other killing sprees of both federal and rebel troops are a group of vampires. Or maybe they're zombies. I'm still not sure. After getting the backstory on the vampire/zombies, the backstory on Strayn and his original squad, the backstory on Harling and Strayn, Strayn sort-of-but-not-really becoming a vampire/zombie and a whole lot of extremely lame camera work, we finally get to the standard climactic battle between the forces of good and evil. Can you figure out who wins?Grey Knight is thoroughly crappy overall, but the very poor direction of the movie deserves its own notice. Think of the most uninteresting, unimaginative, boring and clichéd images and scenes you've ever seen in any film. You'll recognize all the same stuff here. George Hickenlooper doesn't appear to have had the slightest idea what did and didn't look good on screen when he made this. He uses a wide shot when he should use a close up. He uses a close up when he should use a wide shot. The camera is always either too close or too far away from what's going on and virtually none of the action is ever properly centered. Everything's in focus and you never see a boom mic slip into the shot but other than that, it's like the person directing this had never given any thought to how he was filming his story.There's also a plethora of bad performances on display here. Virtually every actor, except maybe Martin Sheen, has at least one scene where he goes completely off the rails. Billy Bob Thornton spouts much of his dialog in one of the least professional manners you'll ever witness. Watching him, you'd swear he got his role because he was the prop guy's cousin or something. Adrian Pasdar whispers most of his lines like a guy with a hearing aid that's been turned up way too loud. Cynda Williams has no dialog in the film and just repeats the same glare over and over at various characters. Corbin Bernsen, looking like he's been trapped on a desert island for 3 years, apparently thought adopting a bad Southern drawl was all the acting he needed to do. Matt LeBlanc has no lines and is only on screen for a few seconds as a crucified soldier, but he may have done the best job of anyone in the cast.There are two other things I have to note. First, the soundtrack of Grey Knight is absolutely, I-can't-believe-what-I'm-hearing horrible. The music played in the opening scenes as the slaughtered Union soldiers are discovered is arrestingly terrible, sounding like a bad rip-off of some of the theme music from Friday the 13th: The Television Series. Second, the vampire/zombies don't have fangs. They don't actually drink blood. In fact, there's nothing that distinguishes them as undead, except that they paint their faces red and white. I think the face paint is supposed to evoke primitive tribalism, but I imagine most people would think they were vampire/zombie clowns. For my part, I thought they resembled nothing so much as the Freebirds when they would paint their faces with the Confederate flag for their matches with the Road Warriors. That's a pro wrestling reference and don't worry, most of today's wrestling fans won't get it either.The version of this film that I watched was called Grey Knight: The Director's Cut. There's another, blessedly shorter version alternatively titled The Killing Box or Ghost Brigade. But as a rose, by any other name, still smells sweet...this movie, by any name, sucks ass.

lost-in-limbo 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.

BAS/NL What could have been a good horror-movie is infected by a often to weird and confusing story. The acting is good, the filming locations are beautiful. The film also has a special 'supernatural' sphere, the supernatural elements in the movie are in a good way connected to the story. The function of the narrator of the story is good. It's a pity that the story is a such a mess, but watching the movie is certainly recomended.