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.

Lovely and shallow… The Deep (1977)

I remember this being viewed as some kind of follow up to the wide-screen horror of Jaws… same writer (Peter Benchley), same sea-sensibilities and advanced sub-aquatic film techniques… the same Robert Shaw. I didn’t see it at the time – I was too young to have seen Jaws but I sneaked in anyway – and have somehow avoided it over the ensuing decades put off by its lukewarm reputation. Did I miss much?

There are some obvious highlights and I’ll get to Jacqueline Bisset’s wet t-shirt in a minute… but, viewed on a modern big screen TV the film looks superb, huge wide-angled shots of Bermuda blue sea and white sand mixed with some genuinely stunning underwater footage: 70’s cinematography of the highest order from Christopher Challis and director Peter Yates.

You feel placed into the centre of these beautiful vistas and the colours are vibrant and richly-textured creating a hyper-reality you know from your best holidays. But there’s also vulnerability from this sensorial over-loading and Yates does well in maintaining unease throughout the film. It’s not quite the fear of sudden shark attack but there are human monsters at work even if they do move in mysterious and unfathomable ways…

Bermuda as far as the eye can see...

The underwater shots offer the highest levels of this sub-acute (submerged) anxiety as the characters exist in a state of danger from the outset… weighed down by tonnes of water, impeded in their movement and reliant on a flimsy supply of oxygen. In ordinary circumstances it’s a thrill but when you know there will be danger it’s… uncomfortable.

Bisset and Nolte go deep

So it proves from the long opening sea-section which shows us something like nine minutes of vacationing treasure hunters Gail Berke (Jacqueline Bisset) and David Sanders’  (Nick Nolte) exploration of the wreck of The Goliath a Second World War freighter. The setting is idyllic as the couple play with fish and octopus, relaxing in this warm blue world of near silence as they prod the ground for anything unusual. Jacqueline Bisset wears a skimpy white t-shirt and one the film’s producer credits with accounting for a large proportion of The Deep’s box office returns. It was the 70s and well this is hardly less blatant a device than say Baywatch…

With John Barry’s sumptuous lines sound-tracking the dive you are truly lulled into a false sense of relaxation in spite of the fact you know something’s going to happen…  And, shortly after uncovering a mysterious glass vial Gail reaches for another under part of the wreck with a wooden paddle and, with Jaws-like speed, is pulled by an unknown force towards the upturned hull. She struggles to escape, the paddle is on a strap wound tight on her wrist, but is slammed again and again onto the wood…

By the time she’s raised the alarm, by sending oxygen bubbles up to alert David, she breaks free and kicking his attentive arms away heads as quickly as she can for the surface to clamber exhausted onto their boat: there’s something down there but it’s soon forgotten – Gail is unnaturally resilient throughout the film – when they examine their small haul, the vial and something altogether more intriguing, an old Spanish medallion that would pre-date the ship they’d been investigating by over two hundred years.

Initial investigations back on land suggest the medallion’s possible origin whilst no one has a clue about the vial. Questioning does however bring a visit from a local crime lord, Henri Cloche (Louis Gossett, Jr.) – no one can keep a secret for long round these parts. The couple deny all knowledge but that doesn’t cut any ice with Cloche…    

There’s one man who may know about the area’s wrecks and he’s a grumpy seafarer living in a converted Lighthouse by the name of Romer Treece (Robert Shaw).  Gail and David go to visit him and he feigns interest in the medallion in order to palm the vial… he knows what it is a swell as Cloche but his motivations are not clear at this point. He offers to investigate the medallion further and fobs the couple off.

Robert Shaw

Cloche has tracked their every move and the next day forces their motor-scooters off the road and kidnaps them. He threatens them and forces Gails to strip in order to show there’s no hiding place for the vial… gratuitous and uncomfortable.

Treece and David dive to the wreckage where they uncover hundreds more of the vials as well as falling through the hull to an older wreck which contains more of the mysterious Spanish artefacts…

On their return  they encounter some of Cloche’s men whom David engages on the beach lift at the same time as Gail is being terrorised by voodoo in another gratuitous and bloody way – chicken feet and random off-cuts of poultry… Cloche is going to a lot of effort to put them off or at least to get his way.

But Gail recovers quickly from her grisly humiliation and starts to draw connections between what they have found and the real treasure down below whilst Treece has now established that the Goliath is carrying a fortune in medicinal morphine worth millions on the open drug market. Cloche was obviously there well before and wants a piece of the action.

Louis Gossett, Jr and Robert Shaw

Treece claims he has wired the wreck with explosives and strikes a deal with the gangster to allow them time to find the Spanish treasure and establish the provenance needed for David and Gail to be recognised as finders of genuine lost treasyre.

It’s a race against time especially as Treece’s weak-willed pal Adam Coffin (Eli Wallach) – a survivor of the Goliath – is still open to other offers…

Can they make the discovery before Cloche’s men lose patience and dive after them and is there anyway they can prevent the bad guys getting their hands on the drugs? The pace hots up for an explosive closing section…

Dusty verdict: The Deep has many fine qualities and is a good-looking ride or should I say dive. It feels a little lose and lacks the unexpected terrors of Jaws whilst the plot lines are a tad convoluted as can happen in adaptations of complex book plots for films.

Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset are individually very good but I don’t sense much chemistry between them: she’s just too sophisticated for him and for an archaeologist he looks like he’d make a great truck driver.

Jacqueline and Nick

Robert Shaw is likeably intense and gets an “ahargh Jim lad!” award for that accent (he was Lancastrian) whilst Mr Wallach does what Eli does…

It’s now available on Blu-ray which will enhance the visual treat no end – not just the Bisset bumps* – and is available from Amazon as usual.               

Just saying...

 *Yes I know…  but the film uses her assets as a considerable selling point so you have to make comment especially as such fore-fronting is hardly a technique left back in the saucy seventies is it? At least Jacqueline Bisset can act unlike so many others who have followed: Pam, Kelly et al…