The Scare Salon

Even though I’m absolutely not religious in any way, shape, or form, I’ve always found something very appealing about the religious horror films of the 60s and 70s, particularly classics like Rosemary’s Baby, The Devils, The Exorcist, and The Omen. One movie along those lines that doesn’t get brought up nearly as much, though, is 1977’s The Sentinel, which I admit I have a soft spot for, even though it’s not nearly on the level of the movies I previously mentioned.

This past Halloween night, I was scrolling through Netflix looking for another spooky movie to close out the evening’s marathon when I noticed The Sentinel just sitting there unobtrusively in the horror section. I had seen it a couple of times previously, the last time probably about four years ago, but something compelled me to rewatch it on this particular night, and I once again enjoyed it very much. After it was over, I remembered that it had been based on a novel that I hadn’t read—specifically a 1974 book of the same name by Jeffrey Konvitz—so I decided to give that a read and do a comparison since I hadn’t done a book vs. movie post in a while.

I will say that Konvitz himself co-wrote the screenplay with the director Michael Winner (of Death Wish fame), so the movie is pretty close to the book in most regards, though there were a few changes. Interestingly, the film got very mixed reviews at the time of its release, with some critics calling it “dull,” “grubby,” “dreadful,” “hysterical,” and “heavy-handed.” Even Chris Sarandon, who played Michael Lerman in the film (a role initially offered to Martin Sheen), felt the movie was “not a success on any level” and stated he didn’t have much fun making it (although he said he really liked the book).

Modern reviewers seem to be a bit more kind, but the movie is still only at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, so clearly audiences are evenly divided to this day. While I can see why some people might think the movie is vaguely incoherent or too derivative of other, better religious horror films, I personally find The Sentinel deliciously creepy and strange, albeit a little muddled plot-wise.

Since the book and movie are largely similar, it will probably make the most sense for me to break down the film and then add notes where the plot deviates from the source material. This should go without saying (though I’m going to say it anyway), but there will be heavy spoilers for both the novel and the film.

We’re introduced to our main character, Allison Parker (Cristina Raines), who lives in New York City and works as a model. There’s something of a montage showing her getting photographed and doing model-type things, and one of the photographers is played by Jeff Goldblum in one of his early film roles. (As an aside, Christopher Walken is also in this, playing a detective who has maybe two lines.)

The previously mentioned Chris Sarandon plays Allison’s boyfriend, Michael, who is a hotshot lawyer (by the way, Michael’s last name was Farmer in the book, but for some reason, it was changed to Lerman for the film). In the movie, he is very keen to marry Allison, but she seems tepid about it and wants her own space, which is why she starts looking for her own apartment instead of moving in with him as he wants. This is slightly different in the novel; Michael does ask her to move in with him but doesn’t press her about wanting to live alone, and he doesn’t seem as motivated to marry her as he does in the movie. In fact, he honestly seems to be gone a lot on business and sort of checked out of the relationship.

In the book, Allison starts looking for the apartment after she returns to New York City following her father’s death. She actually went back to her hometown (in the Midwest somewhere; maybe Ohio?) after her father died and wasn’t sure she would be returning, which is why she let her New York City apartment go and had to rent another when she got back. She ended up being gone for four months. The book actually starts here, with her coming back to the city after being away for a long time, whereas the film has her still living in the city from the jump.

Allison’s dad dies in the film too, but it happens later, after she’s already moved into her own place. It’s also revealed pretty early on in the movie that Allison had caught her father in bed with two women when she was a teenager, and her father had tried to strangle her. She attempted suicide shortly after this incident. The same thing happens in the book, but it doesn’t come out until about the halfway point after Michael has frequently harangued her about not telling him about the trauma that caused her to leave home. He actually hires a private investigator to find out what happened to her, and she finally admits it after he reveals this.

Anyway, in both the book and film, Allison sees an ad for a furnished apartment in an old brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and goes to look at it, accompanied by a real estate agent named Miss Logan (Ava Gardner). Their interaction is pretty much the same in both mediums, though it’s a bit longer in the book, and there’s a similar thing where Miss Logan initially offers the apartment for a higher price, but when Allison balks, she gives a lower price as if that was what she said the first time. It seems clearer in the movie that this is kind of weird and implies that Miss Logan really wants Allison to live in this building for some reason.

Miss Logan also tells Allison that there’s a blind priest named Father Halliran (John Carradine) who lives on the fifth floor, but that he’s a recluse and never even leaves his apartment. In both the novel and the film, Allison turns and sees him sitting eerily at the window when she’s outside the building. He’s always sitting there, even though he presumably can’t see anything.

Not long after moving in, an elderly man named Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith) comes to her door and says he’s her neighbor. He’s a chatty, eccentric old coot who has a parakeet named Mortimer on his shoulder and a black and white cat named Jezebel in his arms. He invites himself into Allison’s apartment and pokes around, prattling on about this and that, though Allison finds him oddly charming. He tells her about the other tenants of the building as well, and it’s obvious he doesn’t like the priest. After he leaves, Allison notices to her amusement that he’s left a framed photograph of himself in a tuxedo on her mantelpiece. This happens in the book too, but their interaction goes on much longer, with Charles staying for an hour and boring her to tears with his life story (though she still finds him endearing for all that). Also in the book, she is making a special dinner for Michael when Charles shows up, and it’s established that Michael is running really late as usual and didn’t bother to call to tell her. In general, Michael is a way bigger douche in the book than he is in the movie, and Allison is way more in love with him in the novel, despite him being a giant jackwad.

Shortly after this, Allison is returning from shopping one day and sees that one of the other apartment doors is ajar, so she decides to simply waltz in and introduce herself. At first, no one answers her summons, but then an older woman named Gerde (Sylvia Miles) pops out, clad in what looks like a leotard and ballet slippers. She’s a tad hostile at first, as you would be after some rando just wandered into your apartment, but after Allison explains that she’s their new neighbor, Gerde softens some and insists Allison stay for coffee. Accompanying Gerde is a younger woman named Sandra, wearing a red leotard and tights (Beverly D’Angelo, in what I believe was her film debut), who doesn’t speak and just stares at Allison disconcertingly.

They have a bit of small talk, but when Gerde goes into the kitchen to get the coffee, Sandra straight up masturbates herself to orgasm on the couch while looking Allison dead in the eye. Allison is wildly uncomfortable (again, as you would be) and is trying to look at anything but Sandra. When Gerde comes back, she puts her hand way up on Sandra’s thigh, and when Allison tries to normalize the situation by asking them what they do for a living, Gerde says, “We fondle each other.” Allison is freaked out and leaves.

This is similar to what happens in the book, but in that case, this incident goes on way longer and gets much more heated. Sandra does the whole masturbation thing and then Gerde comes back, but then Sandra kinda feels up Gerde and seems to have another orgasm. Allison is disgusted and directly confronts them about what perverts they are (she doesn’t do this in the movie, she just excuses herself awkwardly and gets the fuck out of there). Then Gerde excoriates her and grabs her arm; Allison digs her nails in to try and get away. The fight continues out into the hall, but abruptly stops when Gerde sees Charles Chazen on the staircase staring daggers at her. It’s made very plain in the book that Gerde is terrified of Charles, which mystifies Allison, since he seems like a harmless, silly little man. Charles tells her that the women are evil and that she should stay away from them, and Allison has terrible anxiety for a while, afraid that she’ll run into the women again. None of that happens in the movie.

Oh, and just a heads-up: the book was written in 1974, so it will probably not shock you to learn that it’s pretty homophobic. The women are hardly ever referred to by their names, but are almost always called “the lesbians,” and both Allison and Michael refer to Gerde as a “dyke” at various times (and once as a “bull dyke”). Allison also gets the ick later on, thinking about the women having sex. Although the behavior they exhibited in front of Allison is indeed perverse and obviously inappropriate, the book seems to imply that the women are perverts simply because they’re lesbians. The movie is much better in this regard, but still not fantastic.

Anyway, Allison has been working on her modeling gigs since moving to her new place, but she’s been having some strange physical symptoms, like migraines, fainting, and general malaise. It’s starting to affect her job, and Michael is trying to figure out what’s wrong with her. She goes to a doctor and gets some pills, but they don’t seem to be helping. It should be noted too that the suicide attempt after she discovered her father’s adultery was only the first; she actually also tried to kill herself after Michael’s first wife Karen committed suicide a couple of years previously. Allison had been having an affair with Michael, you see, although he hadn’t told her he was married, and when his wife died Allison felt horribly guilty.

Allison has also been having terrible nightmares about her father, and on a couple of occasions has awakened in the middle of the night to hear someone walking around in the apartment above hers, which is supposed to be unoccupied.

One evening when Allison is feeling particularly blah, Charles drops by and tells her he has a surprise for her. She tries to fend him off, but he insists that his surprise will make her feel much better. She accompanies him to his apartment, where he has set up an elaborate birthday party for his cat, Jezebel. All the neighbors are there, and Charles has a little party hat on the kitty and a cake for her and everything, and it’s pretty fucking adorable. He puts on some music and dances with Allison, and she has to admit that she is having a pretty good time after all, as weird as the whole situation is.

Notably, in the book, Gerde and Sandra are not at the birthday party, since Charles considered them “evil.” In the movie, since that whole exchange never took place, the women are at the party with the rest of the neighbors. These other residents include Malcolm and Rebecca Stinnett (Gary Allen and Tresa Hughes), who used to live in the building but have since moved away (in the book they never lived there but just came to visit friends), sisters named Lilian and Emma Clotkin (Jane Hoffman and Elaine Shore), and a cranky old bat called Mrs. Clark (Kate Harrington). At one point, Allison comments that she’s never seen a black and white cake before, after which Mrs. Clark says cryptically, “Black and white cat, black and white cake.” She says this in the book too, and in the movie, Allison even remembers the line later on. It seems like it’s set up to mean something specific, but it’s never explained in either the book or the movie why the line was treated with such significance.

As the story goes on, Allison’s health, both mental and physical, seems to be declining (in the book it’s made clear that her skin and eyes in particular are drying out, a detail which is not mentioned in the movie), and she’s still hearing someone walking around upstairs. She’s also getting kind of weirded out by the other tenants, so she decides to contact Miss Logan and see if there’s anything she can tell her about them. The pair meet at a coffee shop and Allison gives Miss Logan the rundown.

At this stage, in both the film and the book, there’s a massive plot twist: Miss Logan insists that other than Allison and the blind priest, no one else lives in the building at all. There haven’t been any other tenants for the past three years.

Allison is completely floored by this revelation, insisting that Miss Logan must be mistaken. Perhaps the people are squatters, she suggests. Miss Logan tells her that the landlord was just in there a month ago and there was no one there then; the other apartments, she says, haven’t even been renovated yet.

Allison is freaking out and demands that Miss Logan come to the building with her right then so she can show her that the other people do actually live there. Miss Logan is pretty annoyed, but finally relents. When they get to the brownstone, though, Allison discovers that Miss Logan is correct: all the other apartments are empty and have clearly not been lived in for a long time, judging by the layers of dust.

Allison tells Michael about all this, but of course, he doesn’t really believe her and thinks she’s heading for another mental breakdown. Allison is so insistent, however, that Michael decides to call in an old associate of his, a sleazy private investigator named Brenner (Hank Garrett), to look into the matter without Allison’s knowledge.

Not long after this, Allison wakes up in the middle of the night to footsteps upstairs again, and she decides she’s going to get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all. In the book, it’s stated much more overtly that she thinks whoever is in the apartment upstairs knows about the other tenants and is maybe trying to play a trick on her or drive her crazy (it’s also implied that she suspects Michael may be behind it, though this angle isn’t hammered on too much).

The next sequence in the film is the creepiest by far and even turned up on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments list (and rightfully so). Allison goes up to the empty apartment and sneaks around in the dark, with only a flashlight for illumination. She hears some shuffling in the room, and then there’s a shadow of a man behind her. Suddenly, the man walks forward toward the camera in a super freaky and weirdly unnatural way, and it turns out that the man is Allison’s naked father. Which you’d think would be impossible, since the dude died three weeks before. She also sees the two naked women she had caught her father in bed with years ago.

Her father grabs her and tries to strangle her again, specifically pulling on the crucifix she wears around her neck. The cross is significant because her father gave it to her when she was a girl, even though he wasn’t religious, and she just reclaimed it when she went home for her father’s funeral. Allison used to be a Catholic but is now presented as an atheist. With all the strange shit happening, though, Allison finds herself drawn back to the church, even going to confession at one point to make herself feel better. In the book, she goes to a lengthy confession, but in the movie, she just briefly talks to a priest in the church who later turns out not to be a sanctioned priest there, a plot point that will play somewhat into the narrative.

Anyway, when her dead dad grabs her, she starts stabbing him with the knife she brought with her, and then she panics, runs hysterically out into the street, and collapses. Neighbors call an ambulance and she’s taken to the hospital, where she tells the doctors and the police that she stabbed her father in the empty apartment. When the cops check, though, absolutely nothing in the apartment is disturbed, and there’s no blood and no body. Even the bit of blood on her nightgown is her own blood type.

After Michael tells the cops that Allison couldn’t have killed her father because he died three weeks ago in another state, the police begin to suspect that she might be having a nervous breakdown. Things are complicated, though, by the fact that one of the cops working on the case, Detective Gatz (Eli Wallach), has a hate-on for Michael because he believes wholeheartedly that Michael actually murdered his first wife Karen and made it look like a suicide. Gatz is very salty that Michael supposedly got away with it, and is convinced that he might be trying to do the same thing to Allison.

Shortly afterward, the cops find Brenner’s dead body in a car in a vacant lot some distance away. He’s been stabbed multiple times, and Gatz can’t help but wonder if this was the dude Allison actually stabbed. If so, how the hell did he get way out here, though? Gatz questions Michael, knowing full well that Michael knew Brenner and had worked with him on some illegal dealings in the past, but Michael insists he has no idea who Brenner is and refuses to budge from his position, even though it’s obviously a lie.

And I can’t remember if a big deal was made of it in the film, but Miss Logan, the real estate agent, goes missing on the same night as Allison claimed she stabbed her father. It might have been mentioned in the movie that the cops couldn’t find her, but in the book, Allison even goes to her office later on and sees that she hasn’t been there in ten days, and has seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. There’s also no record of her anywhere except for her (legitimate) real estate license.

Another interesting thing the investigators discover is that all of the people Allison named as living in the building with her are well-known murderers from different eras. In the movie, the cops just find this out by researching the names she gave them in their files, but in the book, there’s an additional scene where Michael takes Allison for a long walk and they end up in a seedy wax museum. In the museum, Allison recognizes a wax figure of Anna Clark, a murderess, who is the same woman she met at the cat’s birthday party. The woman has been dead for many years. This incident, in particular, is what makes Allison suspect that Michael is trying to drive her insane because she thinks it’s too much of a coincidence that they happened to end up in this random wax museum that happened to have a figure of Anna Clark in it; she believes he took her there deliberately. I will admit that in the book, Michael is super shady (more so than in the film I mean) and it’s almost implied that he is up to something, but then again, several sequences are from his point of view and it really does seem as though he has Allison’s best interests at heart, no matter how shitty he is otherwise.

Because of one thing and another, Michael is now convinced that something bizarre is going on in Allison’s apartment building and vows to get to the bottom of it. In his lawyerly capacity, he pretends to be representing someone who left a bequest to Father Halliran, the blind priest (in the book, he pretends to be representing David Caruso, the owner of the building, and claims that Halliran’s rent isn’t being paid). Michael goes to the Archdiocese of New York to get some info on Halliran, since the priest won’t open the door to his knocks and never comes out of his apartment. He meets up with Monsignor Franchino (Arthur Kennedy), who is incidentally the same priest who Allison spoke to earlier, the one who technically wasn’t attached to the church that she was in.

Franchino seems helpful, but none of the information he gives about Halliran is particularly useful. Michael suspects that the dude knows more than he’s letting on, and plans to get the scuttlebutt in some other way.

After Allison is released from the hospital, Michael accompanies her back to her building, and in the empty apartment that she thought belonged to Charles Chazen, she idly pulls a series of books off the shelf. She hands one of the books to Michael, telling him it’s “for variety,” and when he asks what she means, she tells him that all the pages are the same and that they’re in Latin. Michael is confused because it’s just a regular book in English, but Allison is again very insistent that she sees what she sees. He asks her to write what’s in the book on a piece of paper, and she indeed writes out several phrases in Latin that have nothing to do with what’s actually in the book. Astounded, Michael vows to get the words translated.

It turns out that the Latin she wrote translates to “To thee thy course by Lot hath given/Charge and strict watch that to this happy Place/No evil thing approach or enter in,” which means precisely fuck-all to Michael.

Later on, Michael breaks into Franchino’s office at the Archdiocese and finds a series of troubling files in a locked drawer. The files go back centuries, and all of them consist of a picture of a person with all their information, a report when that person “disappeared,” and another picture of the same person, but now older and with a new name, having been made a priest or a nun. All the people have one thing in common: they’ve all attempted suicide at one time or another.

At the bottom of the pile, he finds a file labeled “Allison Parker/Sister Teresa” (it’s actually Terese in the book), and from this, he deduces that Allison is going to be essentially shanghaied by the church, given a new identity, and deposited in the fifth-floor apartment to replace Father Halliran, for some nefarious purpose. According to the file, this is going to happen on the following day.

Terrified, Michael tries to keep Allison safe by organizing a big dinner party at the apartment of her best friend Jennifer (Deborah Raffin) so that she’ll be surrounded by lots of people when the church minions presumably come to get her. After he’s dropped her off there, he proceeds to go back to Allison’s building to confront Father Halliran with everything he’s learned and try to put a stop to the church’s plan.

At the party, Allison looks like death warmed over, and eventually has some kind of fit and escapes out the window. In the book, she actually kills the friend who was watching over her, photographer Jack (played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie), before she escapes, but in the film, she just slips out without hurting anyone.

Meanwhile, Michael is at the building and finds a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost (the one about “abandon hope all ye who enter here”) behind some newer paneling. Father Halliran then appears behind him big as life and basically tells Michael that this building is the entrance to Hell. Michael chases him back up to his apartment and attempts to kill him.

Allison arrives at the building a bit later and sees the cat, Jezebel, eating Mortimer the bird. She runs into Michael, who tells her about the whole gateway to Hell deal before revealing to her that he is actually dead, having been killed by Franchino earlier when he was trying to murder Father Halliran. Michael tells Allison that he’s now condemned to Hell because he did indeed hire Brenner to kill his wife Karen and make it look like a suicide.

Charles Chazen, the other tenants, and a bunch of real-life freak show performers crowd into the apartment, trying to convince Allison to kill herself rather than take over the job as the new Sentinel. These are all condemned souls and demons, you see, hence why only Allison could see them. There’s a bit of a struggle where it looks like Allison might actually do herself in, but then Father Halliran steps in with a big gold cross, Franchino behind him, and fights his way through the demon horde. Allison touches the cross, accepting her destiny as the guardian of the gateway, and the demons scuttle out of the room.

In a short coda, Miss Logan is shown giving a young couple a tour of the new apartment building that’s been constructed on the grounds of the former brownstone. She tells them that the only other tenants are a man who plays violin for a symphony, and a reclusive nun named Sister Teresa who lives on the fifth floor and never comes out of her apartment. We then close in on a much older Allison clad in a nun’s habit, her eyes white with cataracts, sitting in the chair and gazing out the window. Cue end credits.

There were a few more minor differences between the novel and the film that I neglected to mention. In the book, for example, it’s actually made much more overt that Miss Logan was working with Franchino to maneuver Allison into the building. There was also a bit in the book that wasn’t in the film, where Michael found out that the initial newspaper ad Allison saw offering the apartment had in reality never run at all, which meant that things were somehow engineered supernaturally so that only she saw it (much the same way only she saw the Latin in the book). It’s also explained much more clearly that being chosen as the Sentinel is something like a penance for your sin of attempting suicide.

Obviously, the book also clarified a lot of things that were left somewhat ambiguous in the film, like the part Miss Logan played in the whole conspiracy and the longtime criminal relationship between Michael and Brenner. It’s also spelled out that Allison absolutely did stab Brenner, thinking it was her father; Brenner had been in the building that night in the course of his investigation into Allison’s claims. It’s also stated outright that Michael was the one who moved Brenner’s body and cleaned up the scene because he hadn’t actually expected Allison to kill the guy, even if only accidentally/in self-defense, and had to do some fast damage control.

There are also a few odd and seemingly irrelevant asides about Allison being “frigid,” and Michael specifying that they’ve “solved the problem physically” but that she still had mental blocks that were bothering him, hence why he hired Brenner to dig into her past when she wouldn’t tell him about her fraught history with her father.

As I said, this was a very faithful adaptation, which I suppose is not surprising since the book’s author also co-wrote the screenplay. The largest structural difference was probably the timing of the father’s death and the earlier reveal of Allison’s childhood trauma, but other than that, the differences were fairly minor.

I’m not sure if I liked the book or the movie better; they were so similar that the question is probably moot anyway. The book is adequately written, not great literature by any means, but it gets the job done and has some spooky sequences. The same can also be said for the film, which is rather decent: it features an awesomely stacked cast, and boasts a really unsettling atmosphere where you’re not entirely sure what exactly is going on for much of the runtime.

As of this writing in November of 2024, the film is available to stream on Netflix, and I purchased the ebook on Amazon for $5.99. Check them out if you’re into 70s religious horror and let me know if you thought the book or the movie was better.

Oh, and FYI, Jeffrey Konvitz wrote a sequel to The Sentinel in 1979, called The Guardian (which was never adapted to film). The first few pages of it were featured at the end of The Sentinel ebook, and they were set in a gay bar, which made me suspect that the whole thing might potentially be going in a homophobic direction again, but since I haven’t read it, I can’t say for sure. If any of y’all have, let me know if it’s worth reading.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.