The Sentinel

With Halloween just around the corner, it's the perfect season for horror films. A terrific one that seems to get overlooked is 1977's The Sentinel.

A young, suicidal model, Cristina Raines, who needs some space from her lawyer boyfriend, Chris Sarandon, who's pressuring her to marry him, moves into what seems to be a nice, brownstone apartment complex. The other residents in the building are a rather odd lot with an eccentric ring leader, Burgess Meredith. After some weird run ins with the other dwellers, and some out of nowhere black outs, the model does some research on the building and it's inhabitants and discovers it's dark past.

There are a lot of comparisons to be made between this and Rosemary's Baby, but The Sentinel has so many WTF moments that it's able to stand on it's own. This is one odd and creepy film with great direction from legendary filmmaker Michael Winner and a top notch cast. A nice added bonus is that this has a lot of actors pop up in early, before they were famous roles. It's fun to see the likes of Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Beverly D'Angelo, Tom Berenger, and Jerry Orbach, to name a few, appear in cameos. Plus you have legends like John Carradine, Eli Wallach, Ava Gardner,and Martin Balsam filling out the cast list.

This is one strange little horror film that delivers some descent frights. It's available on dvd and blu ray.