This year I signed up for the Waxwork Records annual subscription. It’s only the second year I’ve done it, but this year the titles are so great – George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, Tobe Hooper’s THE FUNHOUSE, Micheal Winner’s THE SENTINEL, Brian De Palma’s BODY DOUBLE, Guillermo del Toro’s CRIMSON PEAK and David Fincher’s SE7EN – I couldn’t pass it up. It’s expensive, but for five double-LPs and one triple-LP (plus a load of other bumf like a hoodie, a t-shirt, a beanie, a slipmat and a calendar), it works out pretty good for value for money.
Weirdly, this year, some of my retro cinema screenings have started to sync with Waxwork’s subscription titles. In February, I caught DAWN OF THE DEAD on a double-bill with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (one of the other Romero titles that Waxwork have released in the past), a few weeks later I saw a welcome rewatch of SE7EN on a Friday night, followed by THE SENTINEL on the following Monday night. It’s not out of the question that I might get to see BODY DOUBLE and CRIMSON PEAK projected before the year is out. Fingers crossed for the De Palma!
Despite having THE SENTINEL in my ever-rapidly-growing watchlist of movies to watch at home, I’ve never managed to get around to it, so, as always, it was great to experience it for the first time on the big screen.
And…like a lot of Michael Winner films, it’s a solid, yet mostly unremarkable watch.
Funny goings-on in a Manhattan brownstone, and it plays out like a mixture of THE EXORCIST and Polanski’s THE TENANT. The soundtrack score by Gil Mellé is a nice mixture of creepy percussion and choir, with a central theme on the oboe that fits the mystery aspect of the film well.
The film is mostly notable though for a couple of appearances by actors that went on to bigger and brighter things in the following decade: Jeff Goldblum (working with Winner again after DEATH WISH), Christopher Walken, a topless Beverly D’Angelo (is there a film where D’Angelo doesn’t get her tits out?), and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Tom Berenger.
Hit: The Sentinel – Main Title
Hidden Gem: Prospective Tenant
Vinyl Stylus 