Directed by William Friedkin
Phil and Kate select the winsome young Camilla as a live-in nanny for their newborn child, but the seemingly lovely Camilla is not what she appears to be...
守让神, Das dreizehnte Jahr, O fylakas tou skotous, Страж, Дух-хранитель, Anděl strážný, Das Kindermädchen, Dadı, La Nurse, O Anjo das Sombras, La tutora, L'albero del male, Strażnik, Chůva, A vérszomjas dada, A Árvore da Maldição, 魔鬼保姆, 가디안, Опікун, Djävulens barnvakt
ItalyVM14 Festival di Spoleto 
USAR 
Brazil16 ItalyVM14 
UK18 
Ireland18 
Turkey Brazil Ireland Italy Turkey UK USA 
Has the seeds of something truly nuts, but ultimately there's more bark than bite, and it's full of wooden performances. I'm stumped by Friedkin's seeming inability to branch out a little. Too bad, always rooting for him.
73
Almost completely nonsensical, but William Friedkin's sensibilities are so loud and intoxicating that I was won over by the end. Druid tree horror! If it wasn't obvious that Sam Raimi worked on this before moving on to direct Darkman, just wait until the protagonist pulls out a chainsaw at the end! Gnarly, surreal, totally batshit. In many ways, this is Friedkin's Argento picture.
Action!: Friedkin, The Realist
For a film so despiseful as this, I was expecting the worst. And, like, where does all the hatred come from? Ebert, my man, who hurt you in 1990? And like, Friedkin, bro, is okay with having his name in all those silly films—including that spoof with Chevy Chase—but this is the one you choose to use the Alan von Smithee card for?
Now, granted, in the case of Will, it makes a little more sense, as apparently the production was a big headache for him with so many rewrites and whatnot. And yes, it does feel like three films were mashed together to make this one. There's the whole "crazy sexy nanny comes out of…
The Guardian is a non stop rollercoaster of the wacky and whimsical. Friedkin delivers a twisted fairy tale filled with supernatural evil, ancient druids, baby sacrifices, and one hellbent tree demon temptress of a nanny!
A couple is in search of a new nanny and have interviewed just about everyone. Well except for Mrs Doubtfire. They land on Camilla, a beautiful and unassuming nanny. The couple soon finds out that Camilla is too good to be true as her mysterious identity slowly reveals her deadly intentions.
There is a lot of random stuff that happens in this film but I loved all of it. Freak wolf attacks, giant tree monsters, flying nannies, people getting slapped and lots of windy rainy…
I’ve loved this crazy film since I was a teenager and never got all the indifference folks felt towards it. Sexed up tree carnage that moves! It wasn’t until this viewing that I realized it’s wild tone is like a Hong King horror film. Only makes me dig it even more.
Billy Friedkin, in his jaw-dropping schlock phase, with a heavy assist from Dan Greenburg, the writer of my beloved Private Lessons and Private School. Closer to Rampage and Jailbreakers in Friedkin's wilder, less polished outings. This is retro drive-in night material, best enjoyed with buds, while cracking a few cold ones on a windy night. Citing The Exorcist makes perfect sense from a marketing stand; however, an honest trailer would actually be more like: "Hey, didja love the tree assault from The Evil Dead? Then, you gotta see this shit!"
I found this while looking over the works of “Alan Smithee”, who you probably already know is the name used by real directors to disassociate themselves from a movie they did, typically because they did not approve of the final product. The Guardian is one such movie, whose cable television release was credited to “Alan Von Smithee”. Most compelling though, is that the actual director is the great William Friedkin, best known for his work on The French Connection and The Exorcist. Was this such a huge step down? I HAD to find out.
All anyone is ever going to remember about this movie is THE TREE. The tree makes this movie unique because everything else you see here you’ve…
decidedly sleazy folk horror jam from Friedkin trades in a similar domestic paranoia to The Exorcist but cheapens the thrills, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — often functions more like a 90s yuppies in peril thriller (Hand That Rocks the Cradle especially) but it’s the moments that abandon the home for forest (complete with tree sex and flying women) that push this out of Friedkin’s comfort zone and into something more idiosyncratic and defiant of genre conventions and, contrary to popular opinion, more fun than you’d expect
"The Guardian" is a 1990 supernatural horror film directed by William Friedkin. The film is based on a book entitled "The Nanny" by Dan Greenburg, who has a vast array of writing acclimations under his belt, ranging for bestselling novels to children's books and even stage plays. The list was actually quite expansive, and naturally as one can cross compare the works with potential adaptations, it did appear a little humorously strange. His film inclusions, to quickly remark on things, mainly consisted with one Elvis Prestly movie at the beginning, "The Guardian" primarily at the end, and a whole lot of 70's and 80's sex comedies mashed in the middle. This really is no sentiment of discount, just something I…
There’s nothing quite like a movie that feels like the director mainlined Fulci films and then made their own crazy horror shit. There’s Carpenter and Prince of Darkness, Nakashima and It Comes, and now I can add William Friedkin’s The Guardian to that list.
The 1990 horror flick had one hell of a messy production, considering it began as evil-nanny domestic horror directed by Raimi and ended as evil-tree-demon-druid-nanny fantasy horror directed by Friedkin. Somewhere in that transition, some director DNA must’ve been interspliced because The Guardian sure seems incredibly Raimi at times.
Grisly practical effects, snarling dog POV attacks, a blood splattered chainsaw finale, folktale horror logic and lurid atmosphere invading suburban normalcy. It all comes across as a…
Somewhat inexplicable supernatural oddity with a wacko production history. Abandoned by Sam Raimi (so he could do DARKMAN), Universal called in William Friedkin to see it to the bitter end. Then the movie went through so many rewrites that original scribe Steven Volk suffered a nervous breakdown, leaving Friedkin to finish the script himself. As is, it’s a WTF bit of ‘90s witchery with a Skinemax sheen, in which a Druid nanny kidnaps and sacrifices babies to a massive tree monster. During THE GUARDIAN’s breathless 90-minute runtime, we’re treated to copious splatter (including the dismemberment of three rapists by the aforementioned oak demon), uncomfortable nudity, animal attacks, a Xander Berkeley cameo, and a climax in which daddy takes a chainsaw to the pagan God, causing it to erupt in geysers of blood. So, while I can’t in good conscience call it “good”, THE GUARDIAN is certainly never dull.
While we are laying on the couch watching… well, probably a tv series, outside, in the dark, a huge, evil presence is about to take possession of our children. In “The Exorcist”, the devil (or an Assyrian demon) targets a sweet and submissive teenager to transform her into a sort of agitated person, a dirty, homicidal beast… the most common obsession of parents after 1968 and the dissolution of familial values. “The Guardian” represents the years in which it was filmed too, the paranoic terror in “Satanic Panic” in which a chaotic mess of alternative religions, new age, heavy music, and videogames seemed to generate technological/reactionary monsters. I do not think that Friedkin was particularly interested in a violent lecture…
