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The Sentinel

THIS 1977 film is weirdly rich in impressive actors, including Eli Wallach, Ava Gardner, Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, Jeff Goldblum, Burgess Meredith, Martin Balsam, Beverly D’Angelo, Sylvia Miles, Arthur Kennedy, John Carradine and Jose Ferrer.

The bad news: it was directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish) and mainly fixates on a hilariously awful Cristina Raines. She plays Alison, a New York fashion model who finds herself compelled to live in a mysterious Brooklyn Heights brownstone. Her decision is looked on with suspicion by her lawyer boyfriend (Chris Sarandon), a guy who has raised his own suspicions surrounding the questionable suicide of his last wife.

Alison meets some weird fellow tenants (Meredith, Miles and D’Angelo), whom we are invited to distrust because… they’re gay. (It was not all that uncommon in ’70s cinema to equate homosexuality with moral depravity.) A scene in which a Danskin-clad D’Angelo spontaneously masturbates during Alison’s friendly meet-the-neighbours visit is another indicator of Winner’s exploitation sensibility, which maxes out at the conclusion when he casts various real-life disfigured people as denizens of hell.

The film was one of a series of movies made after The Exorcist that took advantage of the licence given studio horror films. (There are even some impressive gory effects courtesy of Exorcist makeup maven Dick Smith.) But content-wise, it’s more beholden to another movie about Manhattan Satanists, and is thus chiefly useful to answer the speculative question: What would Rosemary’s Baby have been like had it been directed by an exploitative hack? *

 

The Legacy

BEFORE director Richard Marquand became a geek demi-god for directing Return of the Jedi, he made this oddball 1978 thriller set in a rambling English mansion, where a gang of miscellaneous reprobates assemble for the impending death of master of the house Jason Mountolive (John Standing).

The interloper in this bunch is L.A. architect Margaret Walsh (Katharine Ross), duped by an invitation that came with a $50,000 cheque. Margaret’s macho lover-partner Pete (Ross’s real-life macho partner Sam Elliott) tags along, only to face a series of deadly encounters, including a scalding shower and a pack of ravenous, guest-eating dogs.

Scripted by Hammer horror workhorse Jimmy Sangster, the film is a goofy, old-timey shocker. Witness the scene in which rock impresario Clive (played by the Who’s Roger Daltrey) chokes on a chicken bone and fails to survive the emergency tracheotomy administered by the sinister Nurse Adams (Margaret Tyzack). The movie makes a big deal out of the subsequent revelation: at the buffet, Clive only ate the ham!

The movie is also notable for robbing the usually unflappable Elliott of his dignity. Almost invariably seen in escalating states of annoyance, his face is a medley of vexation that warrants frequent use of the freeze frame for maximum hilarity on this Shout Factory Blu-ray. **

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca