Grey Knight

Plot synopsis:
Slave traders bring back an evil voodoo entity that is accidentally freed by the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The entity possesses the bodies of the dead soldiers to create an army of its own bent on conquest, using the corpses of both the North and South. When both Union and Confederate soldiers are mysteriously murdered by the entity during the Civil War, the opposing troops must overcome their differences and band together to investigate the gruesome deaths. It soon becomes apparent that these killers are anything but human. Instead, they are a maniacal regiment of supernatural forces, and it is solely up to these united American soldiers to fight the slaughterous evil of the Ghost Brigade.
The film centers around Captain John Harling, a Union army man that has been awaiting the end of his parole; it is cut short when there are unusual murders of Union troops. To discover the culprits behind this Harling seeks Colonel Nehemiah Strayn, a former Confederate regiment commander, now sitting in a Union prison at Bowling Green, who was once Harling's teacher. The two officers, along with Colonel George Thalman supervising, set out with a small detachment of troops and a runaway slave named Rebecca. When they reach the site where several Union troops were murdered, Strayn tells about what happened to his regiment, whose gruesome end happened at the same place where the Union corpses were found.
After leaving the site and wandering deeper into Tennessee, they come across a group of Confederate soldiers, who quickly surrender, much to the surprise of the Union troops. The Confederate in charge tells Thalman that their group was attacked by a band of undead troops who took many of his men away, yet he was unaware of why he and his people were taken. Thalman, deciding that they require reinforcements, takes off leaving Harling in charge. But during the night, while Strayn and Rebecca are talking just a few yards away from the camp, they are assaulted by Stayn's old regiment, now a bunch of walking zombies. His former second-in-command, Major Josiah Elkins, tells him to lead this new regiment. Strayn refuses the offer, however, and escapes with Rebecca to the camp. Strayn warns everyone at the camp and they all hide behind the carts that the Confederates had with them and wait until the zombie soldiers approach them. After holding them off, they are surprised to see Thalman reappear again, but he has been changed. After being burned by Rebecca he returns to his former self, But before he dies, he puts Harling in charge, in hopes that Harling will see the men out.
The next day, since they don't have time to leave the area, they set a trap for the Ghost Brigade. Using Strayn to lure them back to the Union camp, he surprises them by picking up a pistol and killing one of them with a silver bullet which was created from the silver that the Confederates were carrying. The Ghost Brigade goes into a fury and attacks the joint Union/Confederate troops, who are positioned behind a trench filled with water and wagons turned into barricades. Strayn personally fights with Elkins in hand-to-hand combat before Elkins stabs him. Before he can finish Strayn, Rebecca leaps on top of him. The short struggle continues until Rebecca shoots Elkins by aiming at her chest when he was behind her. While barely alive, Harling realizes that she is infected and has to be shot. Strayn tries to intervene but Rebecca is shot. The last remaining zombie soldier cries over Elkin's corpse before he is shot by Harling. With the Ghost Brigade defeated, they head back for Union territory, where Strayn is sent back to Bowling Green prison for a short period, before he escapes and rejoins the Confederate Army. He fights with distinction during the battles of Gettysburg and other major Civil War battles, but his unusual stand against slavery alienates many of his countrymen. While Strayn is fighting in the Confederate Army, Harling decides to not take his parole and stays with the Union Army for duration of the war, serving under General U.S. Grant for the remainder of the Civil War.
The film ends with Harling telling the story of Strayn going back to the creek where his regiment was murdered, where he is never seen again.

Tags: paranormal

Review:
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.
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".
Although, I've seen "The Killing Box" on TV a couple times, and honestly I couldn't tell the difference between the two.
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.
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.
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.
Now just looking at the names involved, you'd think well this is going to be great.
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..
Great civil war tale.
It is a civil war tale mixed by supernatural tones (with a sort of demonic unit, made up by deceased Union and confederate soldiers possessed by a demonic entity that had reached America a couple of century before on a slaver ship), with a very good cast (Adrian Pasdar, Corbin Bernsen and even a cameo by Martin Sheen - that in the same year was General Lee in Turner Television masterpiece Gettysburg) and a script that is better than you may think for such a low budget production.
Director Hickenlooper was able to get all the horrors of the real war (in particular during the first minutes of the movie, when you see the atrocity of the Union field hospital) and mix them with the demonic ones.
All in all, a very good movie that is, as usual, mostly unknown to the masses of horror fans out there.
The Director's Cut is Much Better.
I wrote the alternate versions section, and I'll add here that the director's cut (GHOST BRIGADE on laserdisc, I don't know if you can get it anywhere else) is much better than the version called THE KILLING BOX, which I've seen on cable.I don't much care for the shorter version because it tries to make the "good guy" better (by skipping his drug habit) and the "bad guys" worse (by not developing them as characters).
All it really does is make the whole thing much more flat and the ending less interesting.See if you can track down the longer version if the idea of a Civil War horror movie, or even another spin on HEART OF DARKNESS / APOCALYPSE NOW appeals to you.
The other version's probably not worth your time..
Surprisingly effective Civil War supernatural thriller..
I didn't expect all that much watching 'The Killing Box', but was surprised at just how involving and interesting this Civil War zombie tale turned out to be.
Corbin Bernsen ('L.A. Law') and Adrian Pasdar ('Near Dark') co-star as former friends turned enemies who have to join together to hunt down a mysterious group of renegade soldiers.
Ray Wise ('Twin Peaks') is fine as a hard-ass Colonel, and the supporting cast includes Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton and a couple of Arquettes.
The film is not without a few flaws, which presumably are from post-production editing (a director's cut under the title 'Ghost Brigade' is apparently available), but overall this is an effective and atmospheric thriller that is well worth tracking down..
An interesting war/horror hybrid which ultimately fails to hit the mark.
Set during the American civil war, The Killing Box tells the tale of a Union expedition sent to discover the fate of a group of Union soldiers slaughtered in bizarre circumstances.
As the film progresses, it becomes evident that this slaughter isn't just an isolated incident, but rather a series of mass murders of both Union and Confederate soldiers.
To complicate the expedition, the Union soldiers have to rely on the aid of a captured Union defector to help investigate the incident.
The Killing Box takes a fairly well-worn horror/supernatural concept, but turns the concept around by putting the film in the unique setting of the American civil war.
The film and its concept had me hooked for the first fifteen minutes, although my attention began to slip away a bit from that point on once the "enemy" was revealed.
Quite frankly, the "enemy" were very hokey, and didn't instill any real fear or suspense into the story.
I've seen actors at a horror-themed dinner theatre inspire more terror than what the Union soldiers faced in The Killing Box.Overall The Killing Box tried to be an interesting war/horror hybrid, but fell short of the mark.5/10.
A strange mixture of horror elements that works on most levels.
What at first seems like a civil war flick turns into a reasonably good horror/supernatural film with better than average production values.
The strange mix of Vampire folklore, Voodoo and Zombie elements aside, The Killing Box manages to rise above many horror films and put forth a powerful anti slavery message for good measure.
Odd mix of supernatural and Civil War ..............
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.
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.
Corman's 'Uncivil' War Vampires.
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.
George Hickenlooper failed most miserably here on all accounts - casting, music, scenery, action, probability, depth and morale.
Nothing worked in this mesh-mash of Civil War, thriller, horror flick, erotica, mystical realm exploitation, quasi-psychology, drama and romance.
Not a single actor shines here, even such heavyweights as Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton or David Arquette do a very mediocre job here, at least slightly convincing, but generally very disturbing and even embarrassing.
The very idea of this ghost brigade immediately slides into sleazy banality and deep clichés start appearing one after another.
All those silver bullets, dark scenes, strange dreams, very vapid dialogs and laughable battle scenes make this film a real flop and a bomb.
Ghostly Horrors of the Civil War. The version I saw of this film, was called "The Killing Box" and this film had a whole damn lot of potential, but sadly isn't as great as it could've been.
A civil-war movie mixed with a supernatural theme and a most peculiar cast (Adrian Pasdar, Corbin Bernsen, Ray Wise, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, David Arquette, Matt LeBlanc,...).
It's also hard to pinpoint where exactly the movie comes short.
Apparently a lot of the movie ended on the cutting room floor in post-production, so that could explain quite a bit.
But there seems to be a director's cut with a much longer running time out there, under the name "Ghost Brigade".
In this version the main characters have a lot more depth and should be more interesting.
Even the unstoppable ghost brigade should have much more screen time and background-story in this longer version.
So someone release this director's cut version on DVD, and I just might pick it up..
I missed the immediate start but too late to see Martin Sheen (The West Wing) in the role of a Union General (Holsworth?), he must have walked straight off the set of Gettysburg (with Jeff Daniels).Martin is favourite for me and Adrian Pasdar I had never heard of.
In fact I thought Adrian was Jeff Fahey (Lawnmower Man) because of the distinct voice and beard.
And Corbin Bernsen whom I haven't seen on screen for ages plays his role very, very well.For a very different horror movie with the Union and Confederate army both being on the same team this is an enjoyable movie.
You could do a lot worse than The Killing Box (some sort of tactical field manouver)..
A beast attacks soldiers in the civil war.
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..
A pitiful effort by George Hickenlooper.
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.
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.
George Hickenlooper doesn't appear to have had the slightest idea what did and didn't look good on screen when he made this.
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.
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..
It Killed Me........
I love historical pieces, and this one took what could have been a good premise, and it went south in a hurry.
It was just too weird to follow, or enjoy past the first 20 minutes.
The acting wasn't so bad, but the script suffered in the editing.
The Civil War has so many interesting TRUE stories on both the Union, and Confederate battlefields.
(With brother sometimes fighting brother, and whole families torn apart by the fight.) Also, although slavery was the big issue, the issue of "state's rights," and the Kansas-Nebraska Act tore the south in half.
In Texas, many people such as Sam Houston preached against succession from the Union in the Texas Senate.
His Governorship was stripped away from him, and he was branded a "Unionist" the rest of his life.
Many counties voted against succession, but when the final vote was taken, then militias were raised to meet the call for war.
Now there are many stories just right there that would be worth telling, instead of some weird voodoo tale that blames slavery on the south that had a good majority that were against slavery.
So let us try to do better stories worth telling, instead of a bunch of weird mess that stirs up a bunch of hatred, and misunderstanding of a great part of American history....
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...