Sadly Over-hyped

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

What can one say? Other than this is a film that should be seen just so you can say to yourself "I saw that - what was I thinking!?!" So much of Winner's oeuvre is pure hackery with all the directorial style of TV of the same era just with a much bigger budget and more nudity, sex, gore and violence. And that's the case here as a young women snags a suspiciously, cheap apartment in a town house full of strange neighbours. I'll say no more about the story but will mention the music score by Gil Melle which is a tremendous, full blown bombastic affair worthy of Bernard Hermann or Pino Donaggio. I didn't recognise the name but he also worked on varied genre fare such as The Andromeda Strain, Blood Beach, the Ultimate Warrior and loads of TV work including Killdozer, Questor Tapes, Frankenstein:The True Story, The Six Million Dollar Man pilot and many more all coming after a fine jazz career on the renowned Blue Note label. The other thing I'll mention is Winners amazing ability to assemble a cast which is clearly far too good for the lowbrow material that he has signed them up for. The Sentinel is typical of this - packed with spot the veteran actor and spot the future star names from the first few minutes to the very moment. Even in the smallest roles you'll go "goodness I never knew he/she was in this". So if nothing else Winner did give plenty of young actors a high profile break - he's not all bad!

"The Sentinel" is a ridiculous, tiresome exercise in repetitive shock tactics that are never anything more than laughable.It's one of those tiresome "woman moves into apartment, woman goes crazy" movies that was done so much better in "Rosemary's Baby" and "Repulsion".There are two main problems: one, the lead actress just doesn't really work, has no presence and blends into the screen, and two, the movie is just boring shock tactics that are never shocking in the least.Aside from that, the movie is teeming with characters and character actors, including John Carradine, Ava Gardner, Eli Wallach, Christopher Walken, Beverley D'Angelo, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berenger...There is so much pointless exposition from these actors about nothing in particular, adding nothing at all to a central story that didn't need these complications.

There's not many actors who epitomize the '70s more than Chris Sarandon, Christina Raines, and Deborah Raffin and seeing the two gals together as NYC fashion models in a slickly made horror film from the "Me Decade" was both "of its time" eye candy and a nostalgic rush. Christina, fresh out of the clinic after another suicide attempt, rents a too-good-to-be- true apartment in Brooklyn Heights with a closely "guarded" secret of apocalyptic proportions... THE SENTINEL's from an era when religious-themed Armageddon was in fashion and the film has more than a bit of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE OMEN in its pedigree. The cast has "more stars than there are in heaven" what with Ava Gardner, Arthur Kennedy, Sylvia Miles, Jose Ferrer, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D'Angelo, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Walken popping in and out. Look quickly for Tom Berenger and Richard Dreyfuss, too. It's a fun movie (based on a popular beach read) that's a bit better than it's initial reception would suggest and it made me nostalgic for movies like THE EYES OF LAURA MARS and THE LEGACY before I came to my senses.

There were three masters of horror at the time driven by vision, Hooper, Argento, Carpenter, perhaps two films each.Then the bulk of horror, either studio or gonzo. This is studio, pretty awful in its basic gears. Story and acting are wooden, editing is artless. I can feel a workmanlike hand in the story, a hack in control, always some narrative noise going on and cut to someone talking with hardly a moment of quiet. But for whatever reason it's also shrill, crazy, nonsensical. Unusual. I'll take this over polished horror like The Omen. If we make nonsense after all, it hurts no one and may open a few doors of the imagination. This lack of finesse is funneled here into a kind of demented energy, I would describe it overall as a hellish mix between Fulci and Raimi. A young TV model moves into a New York apartment with a creepy blind old man staring out the window in the floor above, soon hell is unleashed. I will keep with me all the scenes that show a snooping around in dark corridors and up the stairs to the old man, they are perhaps no more than 2-3 of them but hacked raw from the walls of nightmare. So a strange thing, silly and yet disturbing as another reviewer said.