In one of the weirdest Second World War movies ever made, a bunch of German soldiers bivouac in an old Romanian castle and get gruesomely decimated by some unseen, supernatural force. By turns chilling, stylish, portentous and just plain silly, Michael Mann's second feature was a box-office bomb that temporarily wrecked his cinema career. (He went back to television and created Miami Vice.) Gabriel Byrne as an SS officer with a serious haircut, and Ian McKellen as a mad professor, are worth the price of admission alone, however.

Set during World War II, a German army garrison is sent to guard a mountain pass in a village in Romania's Carpathian mountains and sets up barracks in an ancient stone fortress. Two of the soldiers unwittingly release a mysterious entity that kills or corrupts those within its influence, drawing the attention of a Gestapo commander, a Jewish scholar, and a mysterious traveller.