 |
| The Sentinel (1977) |
Alison Parker (Christina Raines) is a young model who rents a suspiciously cheap apartment in an old Brooklyn brownstone. The brownstone has only one other tenant, a blind Catholic priest named Father Halliran (John Carradine) who lives alone on the building's top floor. We ultimately discover this brownstone is a gateway to Hell, and Father Halliran is responsible for keeping Hell's minions from storming the gate. His tenure is nearly over, though, and it's time to pick his successor. Could that be why Alison got such a great deal on that apartment?
The Sentinel (1977) is cut from the same cloth as films like
Rosemary's Baby (1968),
The Exorcist (1973), and
The Omen (1976), but it possesses a quality its predecessor's lack. It's skeevy. Universal was clearly aiming to get some of that supernatural box office mojo for itself, but
The Sentinel simply couldn't generate the same level of prestige and box office success enjoyed by its forebears. Based on a popular novel of the same name by Jeffrey Konvitz, blessed with a then huge production budget of $3.7 million dollars, and loaded with more famous faces past and future than you can shake a crucifix at,
The Sentinel somehow still manages to play out like a copycat Italian exploitation picture with a more anglicized cast and better production values. That exploitative quality is simultaneously the movie's curse as well as its saving grace.
 |
| Beverly D'Angelo paying her dues in The Sentinel. |
Director Michael Winner populated the movie's finale with deformed people and circus freaks to represent the minions of Hell, even though a similar casting choice made by Tod Browning for
Freaks in 1932 effectively ended the director's career. Winner also doesn't shy away from truly bizarro moments like the scene in which a spandex clad Beverly D'Angelo masturbates furiously in front of a mortified Christina Raines for no apparent reason save shock value. If that doesn't do it for you, how about the scene in which a room full of dead murderers throw a birthday party for Burgess Meredith's dispeptic cat?
The Sentinel is often an incoherent, exploitative hot mess, but it never fails to hold one's attention.
If none of these admittedly dubious charms does it for you, though, you can always just marvel at how many recognizable faces
The Sentinel serves up. The jaw-dropping cast - from the leads all the way down to the supporting players - make
The Sentinel a cinematic who's who of fading names and rising stars. In addition to the previously mentioned actors and actresses, you'll also see Chris Sarandon, Jose Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Ava Gardner, Arthur Kennedy, Sylvia Miles, Deborah Raffin, Eli Wallach, Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, Jeff Goldblum, and Tom Berenger. How's that for a star studded cast?
 |
| Burgess Meredith and the deformed minions of Hell. |
The Sentinel isn't as good as the movies it emulates, but it's compulsively watchable and criminally underrated. Even Universal is still presumably a little embarrassed by it, as evidenced by the no-frills DVD release and lack of availability on Blu-ray. Hell, even movies as bad as
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) get the hi-def treatment now, so why no love for this also ran of the seventies satanic sweepstakes? Obviously, then,
The Sentinel makes a fine choice for the fourth and final 100% Guilt-Free Movie Pick for Movies At Dog Farm III.
