Alison Parker (Cristina Raines), a model with a suicidal past, moves into an apartment building secretly owned by the Catholic Church. She begins having visions and fainting spells, and her strange new neighbors, including a reclusive, blind priest (John Carradine), a cheerful old man who loves his cat (Burgess Meredith), and two overly-forward lesbians (Sylvia Miles and Beverly D’Angelo), aren’t helping.
Belonging to the Rosemary’s Baby school of filmmaking, The Sentinel is a slight religious horror tale, told slowly. It too follows a somewhat timid woman, surrounded by Satanic forces she hardly notices at first. It also tries that same blend of horror and eccentric characters. Also like Rosemary’s Baby, the climatic secret is no secret at all. I knew what was intended for Alison just a few moments into the film, just as I did with Rosemary (maybe they need to find less relevant titles for these films).
Director Michael Winner uses the same skill he demonstrated in the Death Wish series, with bland lighting and flat images. He does little better with his cast, who overact, except for Raines, who is beautiful, but little able to show believable grief or pain.
The surprise is that such a pedestrian effort should sport such an impressive cast. It’s a combination of old Hollywood on their way down, and the stars of the future. The supporting players include Burgess Meredith, Eva Gardner, José Ferrer, Sylvia Miles, Eli Wallach, John Carradine, Martin Balsam, Christopher Walkin, Chris Sarandon, Beverly D’Angelo, Tom Berenger, and Jeff Goldblum. They aren’t at their best, but it’s fun waiting for the next famous actor to appear.
It’s nice to find a bit of horror in my horror movies. Too bad The Sentinel is completely devoid of it. Three scenes try to unsettle the viewer, but none succeed. The silliest is the attempt at shock where D’Angelo’s lesbian masturbates in front of Alison. In theory that could do the trick, but the clothed squirming is neither sexy nor perverse, just childish. Winner tries for scares with the zombie of Alison’s father, but the make-up effects fail and it ends up comical. The last, and most famous has the hordes of Hell wandering the halls. About half the “devils” are people with actual deformities. This raised the ire of those who think the deformed shouldn’t have the right to get jobs. The problem wasn’t a moral one with hiring the disabled, but simply that there isn’t anything frightening about them. Winner was attempting to bring back the feeling of Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks, but forgot that the freaks were sympathetic characters, and the horror came from the humans.
Playing off of the success of many better films, The Sentinel has a mildly interesting premise and little else.