The Ninth Configuration (1980) review

As the war in Vietnam is coming to a conclusion, several soldiers - including astronaut Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), theatre director Lieutenant Frankie Reno (Jason Miller) and physician Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders) - are detained at a castle (that sort of resembles Neuschwanstein) to be treated for severe mental illness and get a new resident, Colonel Hudson Kane (Stacy Keach), who's supposed to help treat the men and their conditions yet has recurring nightmares of his own.  Many of the one-liners from the off-kilter cast are appealing on the surface ("Show me a Catholic, and I'll show you a junkie," "The atoms in the water have manners") but those antics grow thin well after an hour in when it becomes clear that Blatty (in his directorial debut) doesn't have anything meaningful to offer regarding either faith or insanity and there isn't much resembling a "plot": Kane's "true identity" is revealed, Cutshaw darts away to the local bar and then Kane has to go and rescue him from bikers who look like they should be in a hair metal band.  This daft setup can be pulled off - it reminds me a little of Peter Medak's The Ruling Class - but it required a proper voice of reason (or two).  I personally could have done without the Freudian explanation of Kane's "condition" ... although I would pay serious cash to watch Shakespeare performed by canines.