The Sentinel
 (1977)
review by Head Cheeze

Any film that has a young Beverly D'Angelo masturbating with extreme vigor in front of another beautiful woman can't be all bad, and The Sentinel, a low key thriller from action/exploitation king Michael Winner (The Mechanic/Death Wish 3) has that and a lot more, including a star-studded cast that makes you wonder just what sort of dirty secrets the film's casting director had over these people. Burgess Meredith, Eva Gardner, Christopher Walkin, Chris Sarandon, Jose Ferrer, Sylvia Miles, Eli Wallach, John Carradine, Martin Balsam, and a host of other familiar faces fill up the screen, making one think they were watching a television mini-series event rather than a pedestrian theological popcorn flick.

Alison Parker (Raines), a highly successful model with a history of depression and suicide attempts, moves into an old brownstone in Manhatten, where she is instantly introduced to a host of bizarre neighbors, including the annoying Mr.Chazen (Meredith), the extroverted lesbian couple Gerde and Sandra (Miles and D'Angelo), and the mysterious blind priest in apartment 5 A (Carradine). When Alison is awoken in the night by a disturbance in the vacant apartment above her she complains to the real estate woman who sold her the property (Gardner) who then hits Alison with the whammy that besides the old reclusive priest, she is the ONLY other tenant in the apartment. Alison begins to fall violently ill, and as her fiance (Sarandon) attempts to piece together the mystery of her new apartment and it's connection to the Catholic church, he discovers that Alison's lease may be for life!

The Sentinel is one of those 70's shlockers that attemtped to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, which is probably why the film attracted such a large number of both rising and falling stars. Based on the best selling novel, the film borrows liberally from almost every source, from the aformentioned classic to Todd Browning's Freaks, and combines them all into a horror tonic that is hit or miss but nonetheless entertaining, especially given the fact that the DVD from Goodtimes Home Video can be had for less than $10 bucks or purchased as part of a double-feature with Tobe Hooper's Funhouse for a coupla' dollars more! While the film transfer is less than stellar and there is only a trailer and a "quiz" included as extras, one can hardly fault the price to entertainment ratio!!

The Sentinel won't rock your world, but it won't put you to sleep either. There's some creepy moments, a decent amount of T&A, and a few gore scenes that would make Fulci proud, all of this adding up to a nice cheap night of entertainment.