I just watched The Sentinel (1977)

I watched this back in the 70s when I was a kid...why are her eyes like that in the final scene? I remember she ends up being the guardian to some portal.

R1 Yup, she turns into a guardian whose sole mission is to sit by the gates of hell and prevent the evil from escaping out into the world. In other words - she turns into Muriel.

Scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Saw it a couple years ago and it was still fun.

One of my favorites from the 70s!

OP, this will help you. A probable DL'er added a laugh track to the scene and it improved it immeasurably.

R5 That's the funniest thing I've seen in quite some time. Thanks for sharing it.

I also realized why the image a creepy blind nun seemed so familiar - something similar was used in French thriller The Crimson Rivers. I'm pretty sure the look of Dominique Sanda's character in that film was inspired by final shot of The Sentinel.

I remember seeing this film decades ago and really disliking it. It's such an artless horror movie. And it's really silly - a Brooklyn townhouse is the gateway to hell. (How can you not laugh at that concept.) Wes Craven's no-budget early cheap movies had more style & were infinitely scarier than this.

In fact director Michael Winner also made the original Death Wish, The Mechanic, Won Ton Ton and The Big Sleep remake with Robert Mitchum - and I hated those as well.

I don't know how I saw this as a kid - must have been shown on a late, late movie.

Between this movie and the television series "Batman", I intensely disliked Burgess Meredith. I didn't warm to him until the Smuckers commercials.

Don't ask about Ruth Gordon after "Rosemary's Baby". Even "Any Which Way But Loose" did nothing for me.

R7 Well, it may not be high art, but it's definitely unintentional campy entertainment at its best. How can you not like a movie where a bunch of ghosts throw a huge birthday party for A CAT?

I wonder how Cristina Raines got along with John Carradine on the set - she was still dating Keith at the time which would make John her father-in-law.

Doesn't some old man get his nose cut off near the end of the film?

Freaked me out as a kid

I saw this as a kid too, which never should’ve happened. The Beverly D’Angelo scene was disturbing to me as a child as well. Why in the world did all those old stars appear in it? It’s so low budget they couldn’t have been paid much.

Black and white cat. Black and white cat.

That has always stuck in my mind for some reason.

OMG, I live right near the brooklyn brownstone where this takes place. I had no idea.

That Brooklyn house was gorgeous (Satan sure picked a nice spot for his portal). They actually filmed many of the interior scenes inside the building.

Here are photos of a pricey apartment inside the house that went on sale a few years ago. There's also a picture of the grand staircase that was used in the film.

The book was pretty scary.

I read the book, too. I was in school and wanted a diversion from school work and picked it a up a bookstore. I think the cover picture of the old priest looking out the window, was what caught my eye. That a movie of it came out not too long after, was intriguing. I never saw it until it showed on television. By then, I’d forgotten about the book version.

The commentaries on the recent Blu-ray are pretty dishy.

Who did the commentary, R17? What was the dishiest story told?

If all the building residents were actually killers condemned to hell, then who did the cat kill?

R19 Burgess Meredith's pet canary:

My mom took me to see this at a drive in theater when I was 8, I had nightmares for weeks afterwards.

[quote]Why in the world did all those old stars appear in it? It’s so low budget they couldn’t have been paid much.

It wasn't a low budget picture. It was a major production from Universal Studios based on a best selling book. Think "The Excorcist"

[quote]It wasn't a low budget picture. It was a major production from Universal Studios based on a best selling book. Think "The Excorcist"

No, think again.

The Sentinel cost $4 million in 1977; The Exorcist cost $12 million in 1972.

Using an inflation calculator, that translates in 2017 dollars as The Sentinel costing about $16 million and The Exorcist costing about $70 million.

Vee fondle eeeach other...

I never understood why the woman becomes a nun and goes blind at the end.

Isn't Deborah Raffin in that too?

[quote]Using an inflation calculator, that translates in 2017 dollars as The Sentinel costing about $16 million and The Exorcist costing about $70 million.

"The Exorcist" cost more various reasons, special effects, refrigerating the set so you could see the breath, make-up effects. "The Sentinel" saved money by hiring extras will real deformities. Plus the set burned down during production of "The Exorcist" and had to be re-built and production had to wait, all not cheap.

I love it, it's so trashy and weird. I remember the ads for it when I was a kid and thought it must be really scary. I never got to see it until a few years ago when I got the DVD. This is one of my "hangover" movies. I will just put the movie on and take some Advil and fall asleep, wake up and repeat.

My memory is that it was a tawdry mess.

I love this movie! It's genuinely creepy. The scene in the middle of the movie where the lead sees her father in the apartment is really scary.

Cristina Raines gives a killer commentary on the Blu-Ray. It's really delicious and she spares no punches. The director was apparently a total ass hole.

What did she about having to watch Bev masturbate in front of her like that. I wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face.

Cristina Raines was such an awful actress. She was like a low-rent Kate Jackson--which makes total sense given they wanted Kate Jackson for the lead. She had a terrible Midwestern accent, which was all the stranger given that she was of Colombian ancestry and then born in Manila.

The whole film is like a cheap-ass Rosemary's Baby. But it's worth it for the hilarious Sylvia Miles cameo.

The film has about the worst sound dubbing ever.

All the deformed "demons" in final scene were just that; actors/persons chosen due to a physical deformity; freaks if you will.

As to why Allison becomes a blind nun as a "Sentinel" guess it is to show like the others before her she has redeemed her sins (in this case two suicide attempts), and gone onto either martyrdom or sainthood status. Blind because none of the Sentinels are "living" in a true sense. How could they be? Sitting at that window guarding the gates of Hell 24/7 with no sleep, eating, drinking, or even going to the loo. This goes on for years or decades until they finally "die" as it were; but that could just mean whatever is left of their "living" moving onto another world (heaven).

Also being blind is a wonderful aid to custody of the eyes. Since they cannot see anything nor can the Sentinels be distracted from their duty/job; guarding the gates of Hell.

[quote] All the deformed "demons" in final scene were just that; actors/persons chosen due to a physical deformity; freaks if you will.

That was a tasteful choice!

Thanks for giving the ending away the ending with the offsite image OP.

[quote] All the deformed "demons" in final scene were just that; actors/persons chosen due to a physical deformity; freaks if you will.

At the time a few of the critics found that tasteless (for r35).

[quote]director Michael Winner

There's your red flag right there. The Donald Trump of cinema.

A reviewer of David Thomson's brilliant 'Biographical Dictionary of Cinema' wrote, 'What sort of cinema dictionary omits Michael Winner? Answer, a very good one indeed.'

Fuck have not thought of that in years, were some good chills and the real deformities at the end are intense