Retro-Movie Review: The Sentinel in 9 Easy Steps

As all three of my blog readers know, I sometimes like to devote a blog to old movies, and call them "retro movie reviews."  Usually the purpose of these reviews are to recommend movies that may have otherwise been forgotten or overlooked.  That is not the case here.  Here is a summary of The Sentinel in 9 easy steps:

1.  Show a few idyllic scenes to illustrate that fashion model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) and powerful attorney Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon) are deeply in love.  Confuse the issue by establishing that they live together already, but Alison wants to move into her own apartment.  But they're still in love.  Mixed signals!

2.  Throw in a couple of scenes of Alison at work for reasons that have nothing to do with plot or character development.  These scenes co-star a badly dubbed Jeff Goldblum.  Why was he dubbed?  Nobody seems to know.

3.  Show a flashback scene for back-story that really explains very little.  Shoot the flashback in a manner that is so confusing that it takes a while for us to even understand that it is a flashback.  When Alison was a kid she accidentally walked in on her elderly father while he was engaging in a naked orgy with several young women!  I'm all for pointless female nudity, but even this scene was so weird, it was not fun at all.

4.  Include a series of scenes in which Alison meets her new neighbors.  These neighbors include Burgess Meredith as charming Charles Chazen, who is a bit crazy, but in a benevolent, adorable sort of way, as he talks at length about (and to) his pets, delivers a monologue about various U.S. presidents (getting most of his facts wrong), and spouts nonsensical old-timer wisdom.  Another neighbor is played by a young Beverly D'Angelo, who, somewhat less charmingly, brazenly masturbates right in front of Alison when Alison comes to visit.  Why?  To shock the audience.  That's really the only reason.  The audience is neither shocked nor titillated.  We just feel really awkward.

5.  Establish that Alison is getting ill, both mentally and physically, and strongly imply that this has something to do with the new apartment, where creepy, unexplained things have been happening.  Is the apartment haunted?

6.  Oddly use Alison's illness as an excuse to completely replace her as a main character; she's in bed for most of the second half of the film, while the mysteries of her apartment building are investigated by her boyfriend, who graduates from supporting character to conventional hero.

7.  Now that Michael's the main character, introduce a subplot that has absolutely nothing to do with anything and never goes anywhere.  A couple of police detectives apparently suspect Michael of having murdered his first wife.  The film wastes a lot of time on this, considering that even the other cops in the precinct point out that it's a closed case that has no point of advancing any further (and they turn out to be right).  But hey, the cops are played by Eli Wallach and a young Christopher Walken!  Walken smiles silently a lot and ultimately has only about two or three lines.

8.  Michael shakes off the cops long enough to investigate the apartment.  The plot thickens!  And then thickens some more.  And more.  And more.  With ingredients like gateways to Hell, a Catholic Church cover-up, reincarnation, ghosts, and lesbian cannibals, this plot has a few too many plot-thickeners.  Really, with all of that, was the pointless "maybe Michael murdered his first wife, but we will never explain why the cops think that" subplot also necessary?

9.  Conclude with an ending that purports to tie up all the loose ends but doesn't really.  Add the plot twist that one of the heroic characters suddenly does an about-face for absolutely no reason at all.  And for good measure, throw in actual circus freaks and medical anomalies to depict the demons of Hell.  Nothing like exploiting real people's actual deformities when you don't want to use a part of your budget on inventive make-up, I guess.