Entry 84: The Sentinel (1977)

The Sentinel (1977)

Dir: Michael Winner

"She is young, she is beautiful, she is next."

 

Classy, prestige horror pictures had become a big business by the late 70s, thanks in no small part to the overwhelming critical and commercial success of Paramount's Rosemary's Baby, Warner Brothers' The Exorcist and Fox's The Omen.  Universal was no doubt hoping for their own slice of the pie when they greenlit this big-budget adaptation of a best-selling novel, however, by entrusting to the hands of sleazemeister (and possible real-life sadist) Winner, they got...something else...

Depressed fashion model Christina Raines (The Duelists, Nightmares), who is recovering from a recent suicide attempt, decides to move into a peculiar old brownstone apartment complex, despite the protestations of her hotshot lawyer beau, Chris Sarandon (Fright Night, the voice of Jack Skellington).  She is charmed by garrulous old vaudevillian neighbor Burgess Meredith (Rocky, Magic), but is disturbed when mute lesbian neighbor Beverley D'Angelo finger blasts the shit out of herself to a quivering orgasm during their first meeting.  After seeing visions of her dead father, she contacts her real estate agent to complain about her new abode and, wouldn't you know it?  The house has been abandoned for years; she's the only tenant!  Sarandon does some amateur sleuthwork and it turns out that the apartment is situated on a GODDAMN DOORWAY TO HELL; the "tenants" are all damned souls trying to escape, held back only by old blind priest John Carradine (Shock Waves, The Howling; a real favorite here in the basement!).  This decrepit old sentinel is nearing the end of his life and wants Raines to take his place...With no turning back, our heroine is forced to choose: give up her high-fashion existence for a life of solitude as a holy bastion against the forces of darkness, or give in to the temptation of suicide and join her neighbors in a wild party of eternal damnation!

Alright, let's get this out of the way: this movie is a goddamn MESS!  The script is filled with a number of scenes that never add up/coalesce/add anything to the narrative.  Subplots about Raines' traumatic childhood and first suicide attampt, Sarandon's shady business dealings and investigation by the police and the death by suicide of Sarandon's first wife are either never resolved or don't contribute a fucking thing to the narrative...Despite all that, the movie's just over 90 minutes long!  I've never read the book, but I suspect that either a) great chunks of the novel were cut out of the screenplay but the writers felt they had to keep hints of them in there to please the author/readers or b) the film was original MUCH longer and was cut to shit in post-production.  That said, The Sentinel is still a helluva lot of fun to watch for two reasons.  First of all, Winner slathers the whole production with a veneer of absolute sleaze (unnecessary nudity, a heaping helping of blood and gore, plenty of seedy downtown locations, real-life physically deformed actors used as the denizens of hell in the concluding moments) and manages to wring a few genuinely effective and affecting moments of horror out of the proceedings (Raines' dead, bleeding father appearing out of nowhere, the comatose Carradine moving and speaking for the first time during a quiet moment from a blurred corner of the frame, the final assault on Raines' by her satanically changed "neighbors").  Second, and most importantly, it has an AMAZING MOTHERFUCKING CAST!  In addition to the aforementioned actors, you've got Martin Balsam (Psycho, Tora! Tora! Tora!) as a doctor, Jose Ferrer (Lawrence of Arabia, Dune) and Arthur Kennedy (Fantastic Voyage, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) as priests, Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy, The Funhouse) as D'Angelo's lover, Deborah Raffin (God Told Me To, Scanners II) as Raines' best friend, William Hickey (One Crazy Summer, My Blue Heaven) as an informant, Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather) and Christopher Walken (the year before The Deer Hunter made him a star) as cops, Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Inserts) and Tom Berenger (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Substitute) as neighbors, Jerry Orbach (Universal Soldier, TV's Law and Order) as a sleazy mustachioed photographer and, best of all, Jeff motherfucking Goldblum (The Fly, Jurassic Park) as a swinging, smooth-talking commercial director!  Phew...did you get all that?!