

Reviewed by BrandtSponseller 8 / 10 If you think this film is an "F", you're watching the wrong genreĪfter a brief Van Helsing-styled prologue establishing gargoyles in historical Romania and implying that they've been trapped under the ground, Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness (the title given by the film as well as the video box) takes us to modern day Romania, where Ty Griffin (Michael Paré) and Jennifer Wells (Sandra Hess) are working on the kidnapping of a public official's son. He should've been drained & ripped on screen.

Check Cage in the LA Convention Center in FACE OFF. He turned out to play his part in the story twist but he didn't come off as a believable clergyman for a second nevertheless. Releasing a cloud of gargoyles'd have been more interesting anyway. 'Soren' turning into the bad guy in order to release hell on Earth didn't work no more than that blatant Alien rip-off of a breeding chamber. THE BAD The murders simply suck, limited to swift snappings of the victims (with a horribly fake decapitation & a bucket of tomato blood ) and mutilated dummies. As for as a climax is concerned, this movie has both an assassination squad with large guns & a crossbow! Finally, the Romanian settings are gorgeous. 'Lex' was also entertaining: pity he didn't get a bigger part. The acting is good enough, with 'Father Soren' standing out as the second most important character, namely the Sympathetic Conspirator, who knows precisely what's behind a series of mysterious murders, has the means to bring them to an end and is willing to collaborate with the Hero, an outsider which is distrusted by the other conspirators. As a matter of fact that scene took away a lot of the creature's charisma. The CGI is good, although naturally more convincing when combined with darkness & fog than when chasing a car in broad daylight. THE GOOD That apart, it's still a decent piece of direct-to-video SF. In practical terms, an 'OK way to kill 90 minutes". That apart, it's still a decent piece of direct-to-video SF. Luckily i didn't run into anything more than another piece of formula: have a cop chase a criminal with climbing skills and have the monster kill the latter to warm up the audience. Dropping into the movie during a chase and a subsequent killing, it looked like the climax. I don't have those lined out, but GARGOYLE(billed over here as Revenge of the Gargoyle) clearly falls under the Mythology & Conspiracy In Order to Protect the World categories, an approach to the monster flick which I'm particularly fond of. One does not have to watch an incredible amount of creature features to realize that the majority of them is virtually the same, dividable into a few major categories. Reviewed by PeterKurten911 6 / 10 Ardeth Bay is missing
