The Sentinel (1977).
I'm not sure how Michael Winner got away with this but somehow he assembled probably the greatest cast ever for a horror movie - Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, Arthur Kennedy, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Beverley D'Angelo, Eli Wallach, Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam, Sylvia Miles and Tom Berenger. Unfortunately with such a fine cast the majority of them are underused in a ninety minute film, especially as the lead role of the model is given to Cristina Raines, and it is through her eyes that we meet everyone else who come and go at regular intervals.
The film, about a model who moves into a new appartment in New York only to find it is the gateway to hell, is derivitive in the very least. It borrows all over the place from The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Freaks and The Omen, but clearly influenced Lucio Fulci when he came to make The Beyond. Taken as a whole The Sentinel is an entertaining movie, yet for all the gory shocks and typical Winner moments, the film does drag during the opening third. Winner pulls off his usual trick of being able to shock his viewers and critics alike with with brutal stabbings, Beverley D'Angelo's masturbation scene and the use of real deformed people during the final reels, and the make up used for John Carradine is now practically an iconic image from horror cinema.
As a second time viewing i enjoyed The Sentinel much more than when i first saw it a year ago. In truth, whilst being enjoyable, its a bit of a mess with its pace and structure, however the scenes of madness and violence carried me along to its still shocking conclusion with a lot more interest this time around
|