If this house really does sit atop the entrance to Hell, I take it that Hell is.the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Yes, it's still there, and although shorn of its heavy coat of ivy and lacking a blind priest/nun at the top-floor window, looks much the same as it did in this picture. As the book 'DVD Delirium' puts it, 'any movie with Beverly D'Angelo and Sylvia Miles as topless cannibal lesbians in leotards can't be all bad'! On a side note, yesterday I walked over to 10 Montague Terrace in Brooklyn Heights to take a look at the Sentinel House. The picture builds to an effectively eerie conclusion, and although some plot points go unexplained, I was left feeling more than satisfied. Despite many critics' complaints regarding Raines' acting ability, I thought she was just fine, more than ably holding her own in scenes with Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Kennedy, Chris Sarandon and Eli Wallach. And as a tenant in this building, she suffers far worse conditions than leaky plumbing and the occasional water bug, to put it mildly! Indeed, the scene in which Alison encounters her noisy upstairs neighbor is truly terrifying, and should certainly send the ice water coursing down the spines of most viewers. In this one, she plays a fashion model, Alison Parker, who moves into a Brooklyn Heights brownstone that is (and I don't think I'm giving away too much at this late date) very close to the gateway of Hell.

***1/2 from ****īoasting an all-star cast so impressive that it almost seems like the 'Mad Mad Mad Mad World' of horror pictures, 'The Sentinel' (1977) is nevertheless an effectively creepy film centering on the relatively unknown actress Cristina Raines.

The movie is nearly a cross-pollination of 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Exorcist'-but what a combination! Based on the best-seller by Jeffrey Konvitz, 'The Sentinel' is entertainingly spooky, full of shocks brought off well by director Michael Winner, who mounts a thoughtfully downbeat ending with skill. The neighbors, including a fantastically wicked Burgess Meredith and kinky couple Sylvia Miles & Beverly D'Angelo, are a diabolical lot, and Eli Wallach is great fun as a wily police detective. Bizarre horror movie filled with famous faces but stolen by Cristina Raines (later of TV's 'Flamingo Road') as a pretty but somewhat unstable model with a gummy smile who is slated to pay for her attempted suicides by guarding the Gateway to Hell! The scenes with Raines modeling are very well captured, the mood music is perfect, Deborah Raffin is charming as Cristina's pal, but when Raines moves into a creepy Brooklyn Heights brownstone (inhabited by a blind priest on the top floor), things really start cooking.

The sentinel konvitz