Watching and waiting... The Sentinel (1977)

 

It’s 10, Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights…

When I walked along the Promenade that runs along the edge of Brooklyn Heights affording a spectacular view of lower Manhattan across the Hudson, it felt so familiar. Little did I know then that this wasn’t so much the constant exposure of the city on British screens but that I had spent a fairly intense couple of hours there watching this film in the old ABC Cinema in Lime Street, Liverpool. I remember going into town on my own to watch the latest horror film and would have gone record shopping in Probe Records as well before watching a film which was recommended by friends as in the same mould as The Exorcist and The Omen. The seventies was a golden era for modern horror in which the veneer of American civilisation was rudely compromised by demonic invasions.

On my first trip to New York ten years later, I’d again find the city familiar and, as I walked from my friends’ apartment where we were staying, I thought of Scott Walker’s song as we walked along Montague Terrace and on to the Boardwalk where I was filmed by a passing Japanese TV crew even after telling them I was English and wearing a Liverpool Football Club top. Now, almost 38 years later, I re-watched this film and finally connected the dots and have to say that, if nothing else, Michael Winner’s film is a superb record of Brooklyn Heights in all its brownstone glory as well as that particular view of the Twin Towers both of which I went up on later visits. Time moves on and not everything stays the same.

The Sentinel remains an unsettling film although it doesn’t hit me now with the same visceral force as in my teens when it was one of the first horror films I watched. It does feel very much like a “cash in” on the vogue for demonic horror following in the footsteps of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen but there’s an unhinged style all of its own. This you would expect from a film directed by Mr Winner, who also co-scripted with the author of the 1974 source novel, Jeffrey Konvitz. It has the pace and brashness you’d associate with his work – including the crass - something very much of it’s time as much as the flares and tight-fitting dresses of the discotheque Seventies.

We start off, Exorcist-style, visiting some senior Catholic priests in Northern Italy with Arthur Kennedy as Monsignor Franchino discussing the most serious of matters with José Ferrer credited as “robed figure”… the first of a number of high-end cameos in the film. The action shifts to New York’s Central Park and we’re in the world of high fashion with model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) being photographed by an impossibly young Jeff Goldblum in the comfortably-shallow world of beachwear and slacks. Surely nothing could be less demonic?

Alison is going through a difficult time with her seriously ill father passing away and as she returns to the familial home after the funeral she has visions of herself as a schoolgirl discovering him in bed with two older women, nearly as great a shock for her as it was to me in 1977. Winner plays his first unsettling cards as we begin to understand why our heroine has had such a history of mental illness and even attempted suicides.

Her lawyer boyfriend, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon) couldn’t be more reassuring and is a smart take-charge kind of guy who not only has her best interests at heart but also is a voice of reason not unwilling to face whatever “demons” she may encounter. Metaphorically speaking… he doesn’t know what’s coming…

Alison rents a smart apartment on Montague Terrace – a gorbeous brownstone that is still there if you want to visit – from Miss Logan, an estate agent played by the fabulous Ava Gardner who, as in Roddy MacDowall’s Tam Lynn, conveys depths only true movie stars can, she’s still magnetic and still deep… a far better actor than she gave herself credit for. She looks like she knows more than she lets on but she also looks like she’s selling real estate.

Alison explores her new home and meets another great star, Burgess Meredith who plays Charles Chazen a likeable but eccentric old man with a budgie on his shoulder and a welcoming smile. Then she comes across a strange couple of women in leotards, Gerde Engstrom (the ever unsettling Sylvia Miles) and her younger lover Sandra (Beverly D'Angelo) who whilst Gerde gets them drinks masturbates in front of Alison… Winner again using sex to unsettle. 

Alison makes her excuses and leaves but is delighted when Charles calls her into a party to celebrate his cat’s birthday or something. The whole crowd seem friendly and not in the least odd… well somewhat. That night Alison has vivid dreams of the party and wakes to hear footsteps from the room above with her chandelier shaking with the force of someone pacing relentlessly up and down.

When she mentions all this to Miss Logan she’s told that the house is empty save for her and the mysterious priest who sits alone looking out of the top-floor window. She shows the model the other rooms and they are indeed empty. Concerned at Alison’s growing obsession with the place, Michael employs a PI, James Brenner (Hank Garrett) to investigate. That night things take an alarming turn as unable to sleep, Alison goes upstairs to find out what the noise is and armed with a knife, encounters her dead father and other ghouls. She lashes out with a knife and flees into the street and collapses.

I saw my father. I stabbed him and he’s already dead… it makes me feel like I should take my life again!

Alison is distraught in hospital but I’m reminded of Harrison Ford’s comment to George Lucas – you can type this shit but you sure as hell can’t say it! – and some aspects are unintentionally jarring in the wrong way but Winner is playing this almost for laughs counterpointing the film’s sometimes repulsive visual shocks.

A body of a man is found the next day but it’s investigator Brenner, stabbed in the very places on the chest that Alison thought she had hit her father. This is getting stranger and Michael soon establishes that everyone of the people Alison has met is not only dead but in life were murderers.

The police are called and we have the pleasure of Eli Wallach as Detective Gatz accompanied by baby-faced Christopher Walken as Detective Rizzo who suspect more earthly motives even casting doubt on Michael. Another juxtaposition of “reliable” human weakness with the most unlikely of demonic appearances. Meanwhile Alison seeks spiritual counsel and encounters Monsignor Franchino in the local church who urges her to seek answers from God…

But, can the Lord, the police or Michael save Alison from what is coming?

Dusty Verdict: There’s a lot packed into The Sentinel and it’s an entertaining if jumbled ride with the audience having to join a variety of dots from among the dead herrings. It has some truly unsettling moments and with a touch of Ken Russell Winner even uses deformed people from side-shows and elsewhere to play hoards of demons at one point, something which hits you in unpleasant ways on so many levels.

A one ulcer man in a two ulcer job…

There are some good lines of dialogue, such as Michael’s description of Detective Gatz and then the moments when he realises that Alison is only seeing the same latin passage in every book he shows her. It’s Milton, Paradise Lost of course and there’s a biblical ending that still leaves you shaken still. 

Sometimes even Good is as terrifying as Evil.

Got it taped… The Anderson Tapes (1971)

This film shows that already by 1971 and a highly-prescient two years before Watergate, there was a healthy preoccupation with surveillance technology.

Throughout the characters are recorded, listened into and followed around by third parties who may or may not use the ensuing data. Interestingly and in an uncanny echo of British intelligence recent exposure for “monitoring” internet behaviour with the key rider that they wouldn’t actually use it, much of the recorded material proves to be unusable: compromised by the same civil liberties that still get in the way of over-protective snooping.

Dyan Cannon and Sean Connery: class acts

Directed by Sidney Lumet, The Anderson Tapes raises these questions although I’m not sure if it ends up making whatever point he had in mind. Civil liberties are in question as is the nature of freedom: a number of the characters come out of long-term incarceration and at least one of them wants to return to the (high) security of that situation whilst others are temperamentally unsuited to straight society. But is surveillance the way to deal with recidivism?

Sean's bored...

Sean Connery’s character, Mr Anderson (how about that, Matrix fans?) is one such repeat offender but as his opening interview with the prison psychologist – videotaped of course… shows: he doesn’t recognise the difference between his “crime” and the tolerated behaviours of bankers, the police and even married people. He’s a complete XYY Man: highly-intelligent, highly socialised and yet seemingly incapable of moral alignment with the Norm…

Lumet confronting the nature of “criminal” intelligence as he was to do again in Dog Day Afternoon, rather more successfully it has to be said.

On the outside

That’s not to say that The Anderson Tapes isn’t a very interesting movie. There’s a superb performance from Sean Connery which famously helped free him of the James Bond casting whilst we also have the screen debut of one Christopher Walken. Oh and Dyan Cannon’s in it as well although she isn’t really given enough to do.

The soundtrack from Quincy Jones is also worth a mention as it skilfully combines electronica with the soulful modern jazz composition you’d expect: a giant of modern music who worked with everyone from Duke Ellington to Michael Jackson with Frank Sinatra and New Order in between.

A welcoming Dyan Cannon

 Connery is John "Duke" Anderson who is released on the same day as “the Kid” (Walken) and William "Pop" Myer (Stan Gottlieb) who is so desperate to go back. If the Kid has plans to go straight, Duke’s objectives are to stay outside the law.

But his immediate concern is to renew acquaintance with his old girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) who is being kept in a very fine apartment by her sugar daddy Richard B. Shull. After a few days Duke hatches a plan to burgle the entire building which is crammed full of wealth and possessions.

Young Chris Walken

He enlists the aid of the Kid as well as Pop and some old friends, including antiques expert Tommy Haskins (Martin Balsam giving a superbly camp turn: easy to forget how out of bounds homosexuality still was at this time).

Martin Balsam

But to get funding Duke needs to call in favours from the local mob and goes cap in hand to Pat Angelo (Alan King) who owes him a favour after he took the time for someone else’s crime… but there are strings attached, Duke needs to add a character called "Socks" Parelli (Val Avery) to his crew and then he needs to “dispose” of him at the caper’s close…

There are the traditional stirring sequences of the job being set up, Tommy knocking up the varied residents in order to assess their valuables and the finer details being argued over.

Also at this time, Duke loses the upper hand with Ingrid as her boyfriend has recorded all of their conversations and, rather generously, offers Duke a free run at the apartment block just so long as he gets the girl. Left with little choice, Ingrid follows the money and leaves her risk-laden lover adrift… Further proof if Duke would only heed it of the cards being stacked against him.

The job kicks off and Duke seems to have all the angles covered as each apartment unveils its loot and a rich assortment of New York’s wealth elite: outraged upper middle class professionals, a man who won’t even give up his safe’s combination in exchange for his wife’s safety and an elderly woman who claps her hands in glee: “a robbery!”

But the men fail to secure the room of an asthmatic boy who has a ham radio – those electronic gadgets just get everywhere… He contacts other "good buddies" who manage to relay his call for help to the police (in those heady days of private radio broadcasting, it wasn’t so easy to target your messaging: a bit like posting a comment online waiting for a response…is there anybody out there?).

Duke is undone but he doesn’t know it yet and the robbery proceeds as the police amass in the surrounding streets. It’s quite chilling to see the quiet streets around the apartment over-loaded with hundreds of armed police, fire trucks and cars: Lumet offers a sardonic view of the forces of order. Would even a fraction of this army be mobilised for a corner shop hold-up on the Lower East Side?

Officer in charge Captain Delaney (Ralph Meeker) orders a squad to climb onto the building from the neighbouring one and the camera follows their efforts, mirroring the efficiency of Duke’s operation: all this effort and for what?

The officers work their way down the interior stairs of the house and Duke finally hears their voices. Lumet darts back and forth from the aftermath as the victims are interviewed and taken care off. It’s an interesting technique which not only reveals elements of the narrative but also reinforces the inevitability of Duke’s defeat.

No way out?

But there are twists and turns and this chopping in sequence and time underscores the drama and the desperation of Duke’s struggle to grab what he can from life.

The Quincy Jones soundtrack is superb and not what you’d expect perhaps but he was a man of very broad talent!

Sean Connery

Dusty verdict: Sean Connery gives a Bond-busting performance that helped move him on from gadgets if not guns and girls.

The Anderson Tapes has more going for it than a simple heist movie even if all the surveillance motifs are ultimately almost tangential. Then again, we were watching too… and taping. What do we do with all this recorded information? Delete or keep? Delete or keep? Delete…