It’s a weeknight and you’re bored of watching the same things over and over. You’re going through all the recommended movies and shows when something finally stands out. You click on the 1977 Catholic horror movie The Sentinel because the cast is absolutely stacked; you stick with it because the movie is completely and totally bug fuck bonkers.
Yes, this movie has everyone from Prince Humperdinck to Christopher Walken (who despite plenty of screentime has exactly two lines. One is “Okay.”). It opens with Jeff Goldblum grinning on screen nearly a decade before The Fly. Hell, even Ava Gardner1 is in this thing. Did I mention John Carradine as a creepy priest? Burgess Meredith as the friendly neighborhood welcome wagon? How about a young Beverly D’Angelo? But even as you’re pointing at the screen like that DiCaprio meme, the movie is well on its way to completely off the fucking rails.
We quickly learn two things about our protagonist, Allison (Cristina Raines): She is a super successful model, and she is looking for an apartment. She is explaining to her boyfriend, played by Chris Sarandon, why she needs to move out and prove she can live on her own as she receives a phone call informing her that her father has died. This happens in the first ten minutes or so and is the last moment of sanity The Sentinel allows for.
We are whisked away to Baltimore where, after the funeral, we accompany Allison to a flashback where she finds her father laughing as he entertains a threesome with two women gleefully shoving cake in their mouths. Just as quickly, she is back home in New York City, moving into a furnished apartment and meeting her kooky neighbors who invite her to a birthday party for a cat (in between there is a scene with Beverly D’Angelo that you will not want to miss). Yes, you read that correctly: This is a horror film featuring a cake orgy and a cat birthday party.
We’re going to have to spoil the plot a tiny bit because the movie is having so much fun being insane, it kind of forgets it’s supposed to have a point until it shoves it in all at once at the end. We eventually discover the neighbors are actually demon reincarnations of murderers intent on getting Allison to kill herself. I don’t want to nit-pick their tactics, but if someone invited me to a party for a cat wearing a little gold hat and a red scarf, it would not only not make me want to kill myself, but perhaps fuel my will to live for upwards of a decade. Though, later, they show her some really fucked up shit and she runs directly into a table that falls over and splays razor blades all over the floor around her. So we go from cat-birthday to a complete lack of subtlety pretty quickly.
Everyone is incredibly concerned about Allison’s headaches and fainting spells, but shockingly totally fine with the discovery that she hallucinated all of these neighbors and their shenanigans. The only neighbor she really has is the creepy old priest that sits in front of his window 24/7, blind but still staring. Usually, a woman in a horror film has to deal with everyone telling her she’s crazy for up to 90 minutes before they take action. But, when her boyfriend finds out she hallucinated murdering her own dead dad, he believes her right away. This should be refreshing, except, he has literally no reason to believe this. She’s been popping anxiety pills like candy, she was found shrieking in the street in the middle of the night, she’s just been through the trauma of her father’s death, and oh by the way, she has a history of suicide attempts. She’s showing him around an empty, dusty apartment building describing cat parties and reading Latin in books that are clearly in English and he’s kind of just … not in a hurry to get her psychological help.
As all this unfolds, we find out that her boyfriend is a real piece of work. He might be ride-or-die for Allison but he’s got his own set of sins to answer for. Unfortunately, the Catholic church isn’t offering him absolution for all his sins, just Allison. Remember, there’s a plot now! It’s about the gates of Hell!
We’re not going to spoil the ending because you owe it to yourself to see what Beverly D’Angelo’s character does upon meeting Allison and all the other wild hijinks this movie shoves into its one hour and 32 minute run time. It may have forgotten to have a plot, relied too heavily on you giving a shit about Catholicism, and had some real leaps in logic—but remember—it has a cake orgy AND a cat birthday party! It was my new favorite movie within 30 minutes of the start time. It’s as weird, wonderful, and full of tits as you could ask for outside of a Video Nasty so go check it out!
