MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #130 The Sentinel 1977

THE SENTINEL 1977

Menagerie of the Damned: Friendships Blossom into Bliss… and the Terror of Hell.

For this piece on The Sentinel, I bent the rules a bit and dove deeper into this richly evocative ’70s horror classic.

When it comes to high-style, high-concept horror, Michael Winner’s The Sentinel (1977) stands as one of the most gloriously Gothic, unapologetically weird entries in the satanic-cinema boom of the late 1970s. Winner, already infamous for the brutal vigilante drama Death Wish 1974, here dials into a different kind of urban anxiety, adapting Jeffrey Konvitz’s 1974 novel into a feverish vision of damnation in New York. In Winner’s hands, the film’s Manhattan is shot by cinematographer Richard C. Kratina (Love Story 1970Hair 1979: as co-director of photography, he helped create the vibrant, kinetic look for Milos Forman’s celebrated musical) with a chilly, sinister glide, through an urban canvas looming, all painting the city as both cradle of activity and crucible for the unknowable. The camera cloaks the notable Brooklyn brownstone in a pall of urban eeriness, using cold, angled light and creeping shadows to transform ordinary spaces into sites of mounting supernatural dread. Through his lens, even the sunlit city feels haunted, every corridor, staircase, and window glows with an uneasy beauty, crafting an atmosphere where menace and melancholy seem to exist side by side in every frame.

At the threshold of every great horror story stands a question not merely of fear, but of meaning, of what darkness reveals when it seeps into the familiar cracks of ordinary life. I look at The Sentinel as a horror film that opens its doors with precisely this kind of haunted, contemplative invitation, conjuring a world where the elegant facades and quiet entranceways of a city brownstone conceal mysteries far older than brick and stone. Here, the boundaries between the mundane and the metaphysical are perilously thin; the resonance of New York is muted just enough for you to hear the anxious throb of something uncanny beneath the surface.

When we enter the film, we step into an atmosphere dense with ambiguity and unease, where each shadow seems charged with odd memories and carries the weight of unspeakable secrets. The brownstone breathes these infernal secrets. What greater terror, after all, than to find the gates to Hell nestled within the heart of the everyday, demanding the kind of solitary vigilance that feels less like heroism than existential punishment?

The Sentinel invites us to ponder the price of such knowledge, how being chosen as a guardian against darkness might not be about elevating the soul, but isolating and hollowing it out, leaving it beyond comparison and perpetually at the boundaries between worlds. The film echoes the panic and disbelief that defined 1970s horror cinema’s descent into urban circles of Hell.

Winner’s urban Gothic does more than deliver shocks, though there are plenty of them; it reflects a deep anxiety about our place in the universe, about the lives lived at the edge of community, sanity, and faith. So it could be said that The Sentinel isn’t only a story of supernatural terror, but a meditation on loneliness, duty, and the unending search for meaning when confronted with the void, and the threat of eternal torment. If every building carries a history, then some—like this one—harbor a kind of ancient sorrow, making every window (just as the blind Carradine’s vigil at the window suggests) the eyes to its soul and flickering light, a silent plea for understanding and redemption in a world forever poised between damnation and deliverance.

Liturgies for the Damned: Gil Mellé’s Sonic Gatekeeping: at the Threshhold of Perdition: the Liminal Soundworld of The Sentinel

What really sets the tone for me is Gil Mellé’s score, which seeps through the film like an unquiet spirit, part spectral lullaby, part urban siren song. Having been a fan of his for as long as I can remember, his music weaves a shimmering lattice of sound that perfectly mirrors the brownstone’s haunted facade and Alison Parker’s unraveling mind. Mellé’s music presses in at the edges. He has a particular affinity for unusual timbres and textures,  sometimes electronically, to produce tones that are at once mournful and ominous. Especially muted trumpets, and mellow French horns, and other horn-like voices, not in lush romantic arrangements, but in eerie, fragmented phrases that hang in the air or stab through the ambience with uncanny clarity.

For The Sentinel, Mellé created a soundscape in which brass instruments play a crucial role in setting the film’s unsettling mood. They echo through the brownstone and the cityscape, almost like fanfares from another world. The result is a mood both sacred and profane—a sonic invocation that swells and recedes like the tide between two worlds.

The cast delivers the sort of glorious ensemble only the ’70s could summon. Cristina Raines plays fashion model Alison Parker, whose performance is a blend of fragile resolve and underlying trauma, threading innocence with a raw, haunted intensity, centering the madness. But it’s the supporting gallery of characters that adds a sense of darkness, decadence, color, and slightly intoxicating; the whole vibe is a claret-soaked treat.

Every haunted house needs more than a single specter—it demands a cast of true oddities, and The Sentinel delivers a menagerie both bizarre and oddly magnetic. At the vortex of this strange apartment building is Burgess Meredith’s gleefully devilish Charles Chazen, the kind of neighbor whose first invitation (“Friendships blossom into bliss, Miss Parker!”) lands somewhere between sincere welcome and seductive threat. Chazen pirouettes through the brownstone like a satanic maître d’, orchestrating parties that are as uncanny as the company, spouting lines with twinkling cheer that somehow chill the blood as much as amuse. His presence infects every room with a puckish menace, turning a simple “blossoming friendship” into a prelude for something far darker.

Chazen is, by turns, ingratiating and menacing, flouncing through scenes in ice-cream suits and throwing parties where quips, cats, and the grotesque collide. Meredith’s Chazen is the brownstone’s gleeful corrupter, frosting dread with a cherry of gallows humor. Meredith is one of the film’s most exquisite threads of macabre humor; it is the source of the sly, devilish current pulsing beneath the growing menace. His offbeat charm and mischievously theatrical style punctuate the unease; he prances and preens through the film as the puckish, sprightly cat-lover who treats Alison like his favorite new plaything.

Charles Chazen, a neighbor whose devilish foppery makes him unforgettable. He’s arch, impish, and deeply unsettling; the kind of old man who throws a cat’s birthday party and seems genuinely delighted by all the mischief that would entail. When he speaks, his voice lilts, like music ringing through the building’s shadows.

But Meredith is not alone in shaping this brownstone’s macabre ecosystem. The Sentinel unleashes an entire carnival of cracked souls, each rendered in a key of high strangeness and giddy discomfort. So, let’s not forget the other great character actors who populate the film’s universe.

Flanking Meredith is Eli Wallach as the pragmatic, skeptical, and world-weary Detective Gatz, a bewildered police detective. Wallach, bristling with New York cop energy as Gatz, teams up with the ever-watchful Christopher Walken’s Lieutenant Rizzo. Walken has a turn as Wallach’s taciturn, observant partner. Their procedural banter and suspicion add noir edges to the supernatural fog, always a few steps behind the building’s sinister design.

Ava Gardner, old Hollywood glamour personified, a magnetic presence, striking green eyes, and a bold, free-spirited style, plays the elusive Miss Logan, the icy, fashionable real estate agent. Gardner’s Miss Logan glides through the film with eerie poise, peddling apartments and vague reassurances in equal measure.

Then there’s a parade of old Hollywood and character-actor royalty—Martin Balsam plays Professor Ruzinsky, the absent-minded classics professor and eccentric Latin translator. And Sylvia Miles. Miles and Beverly D’Angelo’s unsettling duo, Gerde and Sandra, flutter through scenes with a predatory languor. One coos, the other nearly silent, their presence hovering between comic farce and menacing opacity. Their uncomfortable, wordless seduction of Alison leaves us as off-balance as anyone in the apartment.

Arthur Kennedy shuffles in as the weary, pragmatic priest, offering cryptic counsel with the heavy-lidded wisdom of someone who’s seen too much. And then, orbiting at the peripheries, is Jeff Goldblum, still a few years shy of cult stardom, floating through scenes as a fashion photographer, providing dashes of urban absurdity amid the darkness. Michael Sarrazin, Alison’s love interest, plays a character who exudes a slick and slimy charm that masks a calculating, morally ambiguous nature. His suave demeanor conceals a manipulative edge, making him yet another compellingly unsettling figure, and we can’t forget Deborah Raffin as Alison’s loyal confidante.

Set far above the social whirl of Chazen’s gatherings, John Carradine, cinema’s pope of haunted, hollow-eyed solemnity, plays Father Halliran, the blind, spectral Sentinel presides over the brownstone with quiet gravity. Perched high above the city in a darkened upper floor, Carradine doesn’t utter a word; instead, his performance is rendered almost mythic in his silence and abject watchfulness. Sitting motionless amid shafts of sickly light, his hollow cheeks and perpetually searching gaze confer both pity and terror. He’s less a person than a living scarecrow.

Halliran is both Sentinel and sacrificial guardian—the final protection against the infernal tide and the hellish chaos threatening to spill into the world. Seated in perpetual twilight, his blindness is less a limitation than a sign of having seen more than any human should. He’s woven into the narrative as a sorrowful, solitary watcher, embodying the film’s core dread: the price of confronting hell isn’t survival, but transformation into something barely human, locked forever at the threshold.

It’s a role only Carradine could make both mournful and nightmarish, the decaying priest, eyes forever alight with unseen horrors at the very gates of damnation, a living warning as much as it is a benefiction to Alison Parker about the fate that waits for those chosen to stand against darkness. He becomes one of the tragic souls of The Sentinel, without a single showy speech, though scarcely seen, his quiet watchfulness echoing long after the menagerie from Hell disperses.

The source material springs from Jeffrey Konvitz, who spun the original novel, which was a provocative read back then, especially for a horror enthusiast like myself, when the genre was at its most electrifying. He also contributed to the screenplay. Konvitz is probably best known for writing The Sentinel. He wrote other works, like The Guardian—a follow-up to this story, but nothing he created ever captured the horror world’s imagination like this one involving the diabolical brownstone. Winner’s film remains the definitive adaptation, pressing every pulpy button and then some. Konvitz did write the screenplay for Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972.

Konvitz’s mythos of The Sentinel crafts a chilling system of the film’s universe where a seemingly ordinary Brooklyn brownstone conceals the literal gateway to Hell—its tenants are not just quirky eccentrics, but damned souls or figures trapped in a supernatural order that binds the worlds of the living and the dead. At the core of this mythology is the concept of the “Sentinel,” a chosen individual consigned to serve as the lone guardian at the threshold, whose solemn vigil prevents infernal forces from spilling into the world.

Each Sentinel is chosen not by random fate, but through a hauntingly tragic premise: all previous Sentinels, including Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) and Father Halliran (John Carradine), have attempted suicide. Rather than finding an end, those who survive their own deaths are selected by the secret Catholic order that maintains the gateway. Their failed escape from pain and despair results in a lifelong—and afterlife—duty: to stand as Hell’s gatekeeper. This dark ritual binds personal suffering and salvation into a single, sacrificial act. The new Sentinel is burdened with both penance and power, condemned to an eternal watch alone, blind to the living world but bearing witness to the torments of the damned.

From the outset, The Sentinel announces it won’t settle for subtlety. Winner wastes no time cranking up the dread: textural shots and nighttime creaks crescendo to invasions by Chazen’s menagerie. Burgess Meredith’s Charles Chazen insinuates himself into Alison’s new life, and suddenly her reality begins to unravel; all his lines land with both menace and perverse cheer.

The plot twists with the inevitability of a noose: Alison’s romantic partner, uncuous and urbane attorney Michael (Chris Sarandon), tries to shield her from the mounting terror, but is ensnared by both his own secrets and the building’s supernatural agenda. Key scenes throb with surreal intensity, Alison’s vision of her decomposing zombified father, the absurd “party” thrown by Chazen and his ghoulish crew, and her desperate visits to try and meet the reclusive, blind priest who sits in lonely vigil high above the city. The Sentinels’ cold, white eyes, pale and unblinking, convey an otherworldly vacancy, as if they have gazed too long into the abyss, their lifeless stare radiating a chill that feels both mournful and utterly inhuman.

As the web tightens, Alison uncovers the building’s true purpose: it stands as a literal gateway to Hell, with each Sentinel a doomed soul fated to hold back the tide of the damned for eternity. The confrontation on the top floor, where walls literally crawl with a hellish infestation, a grotesque parade of damned souls, and Winner’s penchant for shock reaches its final moment. Climaxing in a crucible of temptation and ritual, Alison faces the ultimate existential horror. By the bitter end, the cycle is complete: the building stands silent, and a new Sentinel, Allison, now Sister Theresa, is in her place, the city outside none the wiser.

Psychologically, The Sentinel weaves together themes of guilt, despair, and the longing for redemption. The connection between suicide attempts and being chosen as a Sentinel underscores a vision of spiritual purgatory: the tenants’ grief, trauma, and isolation turn them into liminal beings who stand between worlds. The role is both punishment and twisted grace—salvation for the soul who can no longer bear earthly suffering, but only if that soul accepts the ultimate sacrifice of their autonomy. The horror is as much internal as external; the threat is not just of demonic invasion, but of being trapped by one’s own unresolved anguish.

This shadowy mission is overseen by a clandestine secret society within the Catholic Church, depicted in the film as robed priests and ecclesiastical authorities who orchestrate the selection and installation of each new Sentinel. They operate with cold determination, aware of the stakes yet emotionally distant from the suffering they oversee. The society’s rituals are riddled with secrecy and symbolism, hinting at ancient traditions that blur the lines between sanctity and damnation, mercy and imprisonment.

Rather than a straightforward battle of good versus evil, the mythology behind The Sentinel invites us to see the truly hellish as personal: the wounds we bear, the lengths we might go to escape them, and the monastic, desolate duties that sometimes result. The secret society is both protector and jailer, its silence complicit, its doctrines leaving the new Sentinel alone in both penance and power. Every watchful figure in that high, cursed window is a survivor of trying to sabotage the life they’ve been given, now forced to confront not only the demonic, but their own shadow forever.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

This line, from Canto III of The Divine Comedy, marks the entrance to Hell in Dante’s epic poem and is frequently used in films and literature to evoke a portal to doom or damnation.

The brownstone at 10 Montague Terrace in Brooklyn Heights has become a notable landmark largely due to its prominent role in The Sentinel (1977). Renowned for its striking Neo-Greco architecture and grand, sweeping staircase, the building’s distinctive facade and meticulously preserved interior have cemented its place in horror cinema history, drawing fans eager to see the atmospheric setting.

The film opens in New York City, where beautiful fashion model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) searches for a new apartment to gain independence and space from her intense boyfriend, lawyer Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon). With the help of chic realtor Miss Logan (Ava Gardner), Alison selects a sprawling, beautifully situated Brooklyn Heights brownstone. Its rent is suspiciously low, but she’s won over by the charm, despite being told that the only other current resident is a blind priest, Father Halliran (John Carradine), who keeps a vigil in a top-floor window.

From her first night, Alison senses something is off. At night, she is disturbed by unnerving, loud footsteps above her head, even though the apartment above is supposed to be vacant. A chandelier over her bed sways eerily, rhythmically, and spiritedly as if responding to heavy movement. When she reports the noises, the realtor assures her there are no other tenants in the building but the blind priest, but the sounds persist, feeding Alison’s growing sense of unease.

Alison begins meeting the brownstone’s bizarre tenants. She is introduced to Charles Chazen (Meredith), a flamboyant, peculiarly friendly man who seems obsessed with his black-and-white cat Jezebel and his yellow canary Mortimer. He quickly invites her to a strange birthday party for the feline. Among the odd party guests are Gerde and Sandra, a mute and aggressively provocative lesbian couple (Sylvia Miles and Beverly D’Angelo) whose wordless advances leave Alison shocked and unsettled.

The party for Chazin’s beloved cat Jezebel is an impish ruse, a promise of festivity twisted into menace and madness. The invitation arrives with Chazen’s signature flourish: “Friendships blossom into bliss, Miss Parker!” he declares, urging her to join the gathering few could refuse, if only out of curiosity or polite resistance. Alison Parker, barely settled into her new brownstone, is swept into this surreal soiree at the insistence of the irrepressible Charles Chazen, whose puckish, gleaming eyes telegraph both courtly hospitality and impish threat.

Alison is drawn into this surreal celebration featuring dead murderers, a bizarre congregation of damned souls enacting eternal punishment and revelry in one delirious swirl. During the party, the lines between hospitality and threat blur after several subtly off-kilter details. This sequence unfurls like a weird reverie stitched from equal parts Grand Guignol and faded socialite whimsy.

Inside his parlor—cluttered, chintzy, alive with the scent of must and aging velvet—a small crowd assembles around the guest of honor, Jezebel: a black-and-white cat perched wearing a party hat, sits regally at the center of a table dressed for celebration. Her marked elegance is echoed, farcically, by the party centerpiece—a black-and-white cake.

Chazen presides in a dapper ice cream suit, his every gesture punctuated by theatrical delight and a sly turn of phrase. His guests, the infamous Miss Gerde Engstrom (Sylvia Miles), with her heavy, kohl-rimmed eyes and signature leotard, and the enigmatic, silent Sandra (Beverly D’Angelo), wavy blonde, loose, and flowing, softly tousled and falling freely around her shoulders, watch Alison with animal wariness and calculated interest. Others sit alert, each one odder than the last: Gary Allen as the wormy bespectacled Malcolm Stinnett, the Clotkin sisters, and Kate Harrington, playing Mrs. Clark, who croaks, “black and white cat, black and white cake.”

Alison confides in Michael about her neighbors’ bizarre behavior, but when police detectives (Eli Wallach and Christopher Walken) later investigate, they find that none of the tenants she speaks about—and whose photos she identifies—are alive; in fact, they are all notorious murderers who died years ago.

Alison’s own reality continues to unravel. She is stalked by splitting headaches and dizzy spells, and finds old Latin books that no one else seems able to read. Sometimes, she glimpses the world as though in a dream or fugue, unable to distinguish nightmare from waking life. Her previous trauma, her father’s abuse, begins to haunt her in visions. In a particularly visceral and terrifying sequence, her father’s decaying corpse appears like a phantasm, forcing Alison to defend herself by slashing him with a butcher knife. The scene still evokes a shudder in me with all its grotesque physicality, as though the apartment is both haunting her and trapping her in her darkest memories, and her visions becoming more volatile.

The jarring sequence, perhaps one of the defining moments in 1970s horror cinema, begins when, from behind the cracked shadowing doorway, her father materializes, an apparition draped in cold, spectral light, first just a suggestion, a blue-lit wraith emerging silently from the gloom. His form hangs in the air, in an unseeing trance, cast in a cold, unnatural glow, with movements that are rigid, mechanical, and quickening, each step charged with the emptiness of a sleepwalker or specter, limbs skeletal and flesh waning, worn thin by time and vulgar memories. His hollow eyes gloss over her presence, a disquieting echo of the bastard he once was, now crumbling at the edges like ancient stone. His decaying presence, ghoulish yet strangely fragile, hovers in the doorway, unseeing, as if summoned from memory rather than from life, while the blue light washes all humanity from his features, leaving only the hollow echo of a man lost between worlds. It is only when her own tempest breaks free that the spell shatters, lashing out to wake the fading specter from his haunted stupor, she strikes out at him and runs.

Throughout these scenes, Father Halliran, the blind priest, is glimpsed wordlessly sitting in the window above, an ominous, unresolved presence. Alison tries to understand his role by seeking answers at the local cathedral, where she encounters the elusive Monsignor and from Michael, who becomes increasingly obsessed with protecting her.

Michael investigates the brownstone’s mysterious history, uncovering that every previous Sentinel—each a supposed “guardian”- was a suicide survivor, chosen by a secret Catholic order to watch over the gateway between Hell and Earth. Michael’s own past comes under scrutiny, as his involvement in his wife’s murder is revealed, mirroring the building’s legacy of violence and guilt.

As supernatural forces gather strength, within the brownstone, now revealed as the gateway to Hell, Chazen, who’s shed all traces of whimsy and now slips into a more devilish, dangerously sinister tone, orchestrates a nightmarish gathering. It all culminates in the film’s infamous hellscape finale, where a phantasmagoria of physically striking “damned souls” portrayed by real individuals with remarkable appearances fills the screen in a parade of shock and awe. These characters, all wordless, become the living architecture of the film’s horror, transforming the building into a grotesque gallery of the lost, the punished, and the peculiar.

As The Sentinel reaches its feverish climax, Alison Parker is drawn into the brownstone’s ghost-lit upper floors, terror mounting with every step. The air thickens with silent terror as Chazen, in full satanic maestro mode, summons his legions: the room seems to warp and bulge as his minions, those strange, spectral party guests from the cat gathering and beyond, emerge from the shadows and stairwells, shuffling and urgent.

Now lured to the top floor where Father Haliran sits guarding with blank eyes, Chazen and his surreal, nightmarish party guests, damned souls representing the dead murderers who now inhabit the building, reveal themselves to Alison in a scene that erupts into an inferno of horror and madness. Hell’s gate cracks open, and she faces their onslaught.

They are an unforgettable procession: figures both familiar and newly horrifying, some bearing wounds from their past crimes, others twisted with the marks of damnation. Faces once glimpsed at Chazen’s parties now leer with demonic intent, their eyes glittering with a hunger that is neither fully human nor wholly monstrous. The air shudders with their collective presence as they advance, a phantasmagoria of the lost who once murdered, betrayed, or despaired into oblivion, all brought back to serve as Hell’s foot soldiers.

Alison stands alone in Father Halliran’s apartment as the minions close in. They reach for her with clawed hands, mouths slack with anticipation, not simply to harm her, but to drive her to the edge of despair, to force her into the final act that would damn her soul forever. The walls seem to pulse, crawling with the damned as Chazen, his grin wide and voice lilting, orchestrates the onslaught like an unholy master of ceremonies.

The entire sequence is rendered with a surreal, nightmarish vividness: misshapen limbs, scarred bodies, lamentable rising into a hellish choir as the brownstone itself becomes a crucible for Alison’s soul. The minions’ descent is relentless, suffocating, and inescapable, pushing Alison toward the ultimate revelation of the Sentinel’s purpose and her own fate as the next unwilling guardian against eternal darkness.

Chazen seeks to prevent Alison from taking up the mantle of Sentinel, he hands her a knife and whispers to her sweetly like a lovesong or a prayer, or like a dark covenant, its cold weight pressing upon her unwillingness and fear. He tries to seduce her into killing herself. The exchange symbolizes a testing of will, Alison’s fragile grip on reality tightening as Chazen’s sinister intentions loom.

While the spiritual forces, including the presence of the Monsignor and Father Haliran, remain watchers at first, rather than active interveners in that tense instant, until they hand over a cross as Alison resists Hell and endures, fulfilling her unwitting destiny. Michael, now damned for his own sins, tries to stop her but is killed. As Chazen’s sinister scheme unravels, the demonic horde recoils, wailing shadows retreating in a swirling, suffocating vacuum, their twisted forms dissolving into the abyss. On screen, the air seems to convulse and contract as a spectral dissolve sweeps through the room, engulfing the monstrous presences until only silence remains, while Chazen’s furious glare seethes with bitter rage, powerless against his defeat. Alison’s attempt to escape her ultimate path either way is futile; after Monsignor arrives and the cross is passed, she succumbs to her fate.

This sequence captures The Sentinel’s creepy ride from psychological dread to supernatural horror, with an escalating blend of bizarre encounters, unnerving set pieces, and a finale that fuses Catholic mythology with urban paranoia and bleak, cyclical fate.

The final scene returns to the apartment building. Time has passed. Miss Logan, now showing the apartment to a new tenant, passes the top floor, where the blind priest once sat. The camera lingers: Alison Parker, now blind and dressed in her simple nun’s habit, sits vigil in the window, an unmoving presence and the building’s latest eternal guardian.

The film ends with an air of tragic inevitability; the gateway to Hell is held at bay once again, but only at the cost of Alison’s life, eternal soul, and selfhood, as her friends and the world outside remain oblivious to the darkness contained within the quiet brownstone.

The film’s impact was felt squarely in the post-Exorcist, post-Rosemary’s Baby wave of satanic cinema, fitting effortlessly alongside The Omen in its fascination with urban damnation and the breakdown between the physical world and infernal forces. The Sentinel pushes the envelope with its blend of grindhouse sensationalism, savage cinema, transgressive, as much as an old-fashioned Gothic spook show, deploying both prosthetic make-up and the parade of real, physically distinctive actors in Hell’s finale that remains controversial and unforgettable. Dick Smith, known for groundbreaking work on The Exorcist, contributed several memorable effects. While most of the physical deformities on screen are real, some are enhanced or wholly created by Smith’s prosthetic artistry.

And Gil Mellé’s evocative music pours sinister, beautiful dread across the film like spilled red wine over the sacrificial altar.

Critical reaction at the time was mixed, as befits a film so shamelessly baroque: Robert Bookbinder, a noted film scholar, wrote in his 1982 book The Films of the Seventies: “It is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying interludes in seventies cinema.”

While The New York Times hailed its “Chilling, stylish atmosphere, like a demonic fairy tale for adults.” For all the controversy over its parade of grotesques, its lurid jolts, and its freewheeling collage of acting styles, The Sentinel lingers, smoky, nightmarish, and resolutely unclassifiable, a bridge in both narrative and spirit between classic Hollywood Gothic and the unapologetic depravity of late-70s horror.

For those of you who appreciate their demonic cinema with a side of high-art camp, haunted cityscapes, and a who’s who of vintage screen legends, The Sentinel is a delicious descent, with Burgess Meredith, perched midway between Mephistopheles and Catskills emcee, poised at the center, grinning into the abyss.

#130 down, 20 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

 

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Halloween A-Z

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Terror is a Man 1959

Terror Is a Man is a 1959 film directed by Gerardo de León and Eddie Romero. The film is a loose adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” Set on a remote island in the Philippines, a shipwrecked survivor William Fitzgerald (Richard Derr) finds himself washed ashore, marooned on an island where the population on the island has been driven away by irrational fears surrounding the reclusive Dr. Charles Girard an enigmatic scientist played by Francis Lederer.

Now, the sole inhabitants of the island are Fitzerald, Dr. Girard, his alluring wife (Greta Thyssen), his dubious assistant, his servant, and her young son. But there is someone else lurking. Dr. Girard has been experimenting with transforming a panther into a violent human being.

As Fitzgerald gets settled he begins to suspect that  Girard is conducting these gruesome experiments, to turn animals into human-like creatures through surgical procedures and genetic manipulation. These humanoid hybrids are the result of his obsession with pushing the boundaries of science and evolution.

Torture Garden 1967

The carnival sideshow is the perfect tableaux for a portmanteau film, both offer the opportunity to explore a variety of oddities, strange narratives, and macabre fables. In the case of Amicus Productions’ Torture Garden (1967), director Freddie Francis and screenplay by writer Robert Bloch (Psycho) curate a sideshow that offers just such astonishments. Torture Garden also features a wonderful ensemble of mostly British actors -  Jack Palance, Peter Cushing, Niall MacGinnis, John Standing, Beverly Adams, Michael Bryant, Barbara Ewing, Nicole Shelby, Catherine Finn, Bernard Kay, Ursula Howells, Michael Ripper, and Maurice Denham.

Dr. Diablo, portrayed with gleeful malevolence by Burgess Meredith, assumes the role of an eccentric ringmaster of a mystifyingly peculiar and kitschy carnival sideshow – a role Meredith gushes with relish as the master of ceremonies for this devilish pageantry. With an unapologetic zeal, he adorns himself with oversized gloves, a dastardly cartoonish moustache and goatee, and a generous smear of theatrical eyeliner. Amid his sideshow, the majority of attractions revolve around cliché-ridden waxworks showcasing a macabre array of torture devices and modes of death and execution.

After the main spectacle, hewing to the old tradition of carnival mystique, Dr. Diablo presents a captivating offer to only five of his patrons.

For a trifling sum of £5, he entices them with the chance to see something ‘truly terrifying.’ As their curiosity deepens they follow toward the back of the ceremonial tent, where Dr. Diablo sheds his dramatic facade, setting their admittance on fire as it vanishes into thin air and so begins the clandestine twist to his captivating carnival act.

Once inside Diablo reveals an uncannily lifelike statue of Atropos, the Goddess of Destiny brought to life by British actress actress Clytie Jessop. Atropos holds the sharp golden shears. Atropos is most frequently represented with scales, a sundial, or a cutting instrument, described by John Milton in Lycidas as the "abhorred shears" with which she "slits the thin spun life."

Dr. Diablo mesmerizes these five captive listeners with the moral about the Goddess who has the power to reveal the true nature of evil within each person- their inner-secret horrors and the grim fate that awaits them. At first, they are all skeptical yet, one by one they are beguiled as they gaze into the gleaming shears beckoned by the statue of Atropos, delivered to prophetic visions of what lies ahead"”a glimpse into the hidden abyss of their own malevolence, and the bleak fates awaiting should they neglect to change course.

In the narrative of Enoch’s story, Colin Williams (portrayed by Michael Bryant) cunningly engineers the downfall of his affluent Uncle Roger (Maurice Denham) with the aim of securing access to his curious fortune. Yet, his elation turns to dread when he unearths that this fortune comes with a stipulation of servitude to a mystical feline deity, conceivably a witch’s trusted familiar. Now, he stands face-to-face with horrors far more formidable than the specter of destitution.

Within the narrative of “Terror Over Hollywood,” Carla Hayes (Beverly Adams), an up-and-coming starlet, resorts to sabotaging her roommate Millie’s (Nicole Shelby) rendezvous with Hollywood producer Mike Charles (David Bauer) in a bid to ensure her own romantic liaison with him. This maneuver propels her into the exclusive inner sanctum of Hollywood’s elite, known as the Top Ten, where like others, Carla is fascinated by actors like Bruce Benton (Robert Hutton) who never seem to age. However, Carla’s journey swiftly unravels the shocking truth.

In “Mr. Steinway,” Dorothy Endicott (Barbara Ewing) is involved with a concert pianist Leon Winston (John Standing), but makes the tragic mistake of trying to drive a wedge between his love affair with his ‘grand’ piano.

In this truly macabre tale, “The Man Who Collected Poe” Jack Palance plays Ronald Wyatt, an obsessive collector of Edgar Allan Poe memorabilia who hunts down Lancelot Canning (Peter Cushing) who is the foremost collector of Poe ephemera. But Wyatt will stop at nothing to get his hands on Canning’s most prized possession and ultimately brings him to a shocking revelation.

When the fifth and final player in this fateful excursion  Gordon Roberts (Michael Ripper), faces the imminent unveiling by Dame Fortune, it takes an unexpected turn and defies Dr. Diablo’s initial expectations, is there an unforeseen twist of fate that changes the course of things

When I saw it during its theatrical release in 1967, the gimmick was to hand out seeds to each moviegoer, so you could grow your own torture garden! Now that’s worth going to the movies for…

Terror at the Red Wolf Inn 1972

They’d love to have you for dinner!

The American Horror- Terror at Red Wolf Inn, aka Terror House suggests an adult fairytale. Released in 1972 and directed by Bud Townsend (Nightmare in Wax 1969 starring Cameron Mitchell and Anne Helm), It winks at us with its homey touches yet this darkly humorous film is a delirious and claustrophobic horror story that creates a sense of unease. Especially the use of the song “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover” is a popular World War II song composed in 1941 by Walter Kent to lyrics by Nat Burton. It is used as a satirical motif in the film, eventually coming full circle when Regina sings it to Baby John.

The film features Linda Gillen, John Neilson, Mary Jackson, and Arthur Space. A college student unexpectedly wins a vacation to a secluded countryside retreat managed by an elderly couple. Unbeknownst to her, the hosts have a gruesome secret – they serve meals made from human flesh. While the movie incorporates significant horror elements, into the horror genre, marked by its “tongue-in-cheek" humor. Interesting tidbit- David Soul, Bruno Kirby, and Richard Dreyfuss all auditioned for the role of Baby John.

Regina (Linda Gillen) is a solitary college student who gets a strange letter telling her that she has unexpectedly won a free vacation to a quaint seaside bed and breakfast called the Red Wolf Inn. What's even stranger is she has a private plane waiting at the airport to take her to her destination. When she arrives at the remote island, she is met by a curious guy who tells her his name is Baby John Smith. (John Neilson). He takes Regina on a joy ride speeding through town outrunning the police Jonathan the Deputy on his tail. Instead of being frightened by Baby John, she is thrilled by the excitement and this pleases him a lot.

They get to the Red Wolf Inn she is greeted by Baby John's grandparents Henry and Grandma Evelyn Smith (Arthur Space and Mary Jackson), the nice old couple who own the little resort home. There are two other guests staying there – Pamela (Janet Wood) and Edwina (Margaret Avery). When Regina asks to use the phone to call her mom and let her know where she is, she finds it's out of order. First red flag at the Red Wolf Inn. As if invited to a glorious meal set out like a feast that includes finger-licking good barbecue. the seemingly kind old grandma and grandpa enjoy pampering their guests with good food, encouraging them to eat more.

 

Regina: It’s really good. What is it?

Evelyn: Filet, dear. Filet.

 

Henry: A butcher’s work is never done.

Fattening them up we’d expect. After that delicious meal, Regina goes in search of something to calm her stomach and stumbles on Baby John in the kitchen coming out of a large walk-in fridge, he seems like a butcher holding his large carving knife. Seeing Baby John startles her and she screams waking everyone up. Regina admits to Edwina that she and Baby John are drawn to each other and that she finds him attractive. We they awaken in the morning they are told by Henry and Evelyn that their other guest Pamela has moved on, yet Regina has found the girl's beautiful black dress that she loved, hanging in the closet of the carriage house behind the Smith's mansion. A sweet romance begins to blossom between Regina and Baby John. But he exhibits the oddest behavior, while on the beach where they share a kiss, Baby John reels in a small shark and proceeds to bash its head in against the rocks screaming Shark! In a panic. Afterwards, he exclaims to Regina that he's in love with her then he runs away.

Baby John -[reeling a small shark in on his fishing line] SHARK! SHARK! SHARRRRK

[picks it up by the tail and repeatedly bashes it against a rock]

Baby John: SHARRRK! SHARRRRK! SHARRRRRK! SHARRRK! SHARRRRK!

[calms down and turns to Regina]

Baby John {says to Regina then runs off}: I think I love you.

That night, a party is thrown to celebrate Edwina’s upcoming departure. Following a lavish dinner, as everyone retires to bed, the Smiths enter Edwina’s room, incapacitating her with a cloth soaked in chloroform. They then deliver her to a chilling fate – inside a meat locker the sounds within confirm their gruesome motives.

The next day, Regina becomes alarmed when Evelyn informs her that Edwina has left without saying goodbye. Regina attempts to contact her mother but is abruptly disconnected by Evelyn. A police car arrives at the mansion, and Regina rushes outside for help, only to discover that the officer is another Smith family member, portrayed by producer Michael MacReady.

Regina now realizes that she is captive yet does not realize the extent to which this insane family is actually cannibals. The Smiths leave Baby John in charge of guarding Regina to make sure she doesn't escape, while they go into town. This is an opportunity to go explore that creepy off-limits fridge. But horrified she finds Edwina and Pamela's heads, and that's where they store their "˜meat', the same human meat she has been consuming for days. She tries to make a desperate run for it, but Baby John follows after her. The two have fallen in love. But It is too late, Evelyn and Henry get home and grab her before she can escape. Now it's inevitable that Regina will become their next meal, but Baby John like a true child, is depending on his grandparents (who aren't really kin) to welcome Regina into the family.

Theater of Blood 1973

Theater of Blood is a 1973 British horror-drollery starring Vincent Price who of course is perfect in the role of  Edward Lionheart, a tour-de-force for Price in a stylish, irresistible horror angle. It was the tenth film Vincent Price made in Britain since 1964, and director Douglas Hickox’s first horror film, having mastered his dark comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane in 1970. He considered this to be his personal favorite of all of his films, followed closely by Dr. Phibes in 1971 directed by Robert Fuest who was originally asked to helm this film. ”I think that was the best feeling of achievement and satisfaction that I ever had from a film.” Early on Vincent Price”s greatest desire was to be a proficient Shakespearean actor on stage in England.

Frustrated by how his film career had ultimately pigeonholed him into horror film roles, he relished the chance to quote Shakespearean prose in this film and jumped at the chance when approached. He was also very pleased to be cast opposite so many well-known Briitish character actors, several of which had the experience of previously being in the RSC.

It was also considered by Dame Diana Rigg who plays Price’s daughter Edwina, to be her best film. Theater of Blood includes an ensemble of the best British actors cast with the most marvelous personas, including Jack Hawkin, in what would be his last role, as Solomon Psaltery, Ian Hendry as Peregrine Devlin, Harry Andrews as Trevor Dickman, Coral Browne as Chloe Moon, Robert Coote as Oliver Larding, Michael Hordern as George Maxwell, Arthur Lowe as Harris Sprout, Robert Morley as Meredith Merridew, Dennis Price as Hector Snipe, Milo O’Shea as Inspector Boot, Eric Sykes as Sgt. Dogge, Madeline Smith as Rosemary, Joan Hickson as Mrs. Sprout, and Diana Dors as Maisie Psaltery.

Robert Morley starred five years later in Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? 1978 a film with a very similar topic in which he also played a gourmet. Oddly enough, Robert Morley played a gourmet in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV episode “Specialty of the House” (1959) where he was not only the lover of food who frequented an exclusive restaurant but he was also the main course for a secret society of cannibals.

A once-respected Shakespearean who has spent twenty glorious years on the British stage is now a fallen actor -Edward Lionheart believes himself to be one of the greatest thespians of his time. But the ultimate betrayal and humiliation come when he is passed over for the Critics Circle Actor of the Year Award, losing it to a mumble-mouth method actor!

Lionheart has been consistently panned by the critics for his performances, but this was the bitter end. His ego is shattered when this group of critics consistently berates his performances publically, ultimately leading to his apparent suicide. This despair and humiliation set the stage for his descent into madness and vengeance.

However, Lionheart manages to survive, and aided by Diana Rigg and a band of seamy homeless folk, initiates a theatrical and grisly quest to exact his vengeance against the critics who heartlessly maligned him.

Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry): You begin to resent an actor if you always have to give him bad notices. Ian Hendry and Dame Diana Rigg appeared together on The Avengers in 1961.

However, Lionheart survives and, with the help of a group of homeless people, begins a gruesome and elaborately staged campaign of revenge against the critics who wronged him. Each murder is styled after a death from a Shakespearean play, with Lionheart delivering lines from the Bard’s works before committing the murders. Lionheart’s transformation from a broken artist to a vengeful and diabolical figure is central to the flamboyant story of vengeance. He fakes his own death and embarks on a twisted mission to exact revenge on the critics who drove him to the brink

As Lionheart’s hit list grows, Inspector Boot (Milo O’Shea) takes on the case, and he becomes determined to catch the dramatic executioner.

In Theater of Blood, Vincent Price delivers one of his most over-the-top and unforgettable performances as Edward Lionheart. Lionheart is a character who embodies the quintessential Vincent Price role"”a charismatic and tormented figure with a flair for the dramatic.

The cast included a remarkable array of actors including future wife Coral Browne, who initially had turned down the film twice. “No, no I can’t be doing that, one of those scary pictures with Vincent Price – don’t be ridiculous.” However, after Robert Morley called her up and said, “We haven’t been together since The Man Who Came to DInner (on stage in 1941). I’ll do Theater of Blood if you’ll be in the Theater of Blood.”  Vincent Price and Coral Browne insist that they met in a graveyard, when the critics gather to bury the first of the victims executed by Lionheart. “As the gravedigger, Price was kitted up in muddy Wellies, sleeves rolled up, a battered hat on his head, face smeared with grime. The elegant Miss Browne eyed him askance: And I though, ‘Oh, this man, oh, this dirty-looking old creature,’ and took absolutely no notice a’tol.” But coexecutive producer and longtime friend Sam Jaffe remembers that the two artists were quickly ‘very friendly.” (source: The Complet Films of Vincent Price by Lucy Chase Williams.

This campy horror flick is a thing of grandeur, and Vincent Price’s portrayal of Lionheart is characterized by his theatricality and grandiose delivery. Price fully embraces the character’s melodramatic flair and relishes the opportunity to recite Shakespearean lines while dispatching his victims. Lionheart’s appearance is also noteworthy, as Price undergoes a transformation to embody the character’s flamboyance. He wears extravagant costumes, dons theatrical makeup, and adopts various disguises, all of which contribute to the character’s larger-than-life presence. Dame Diana Rigg as Edwina Lionheart also cloaks herself in theatrical affectations in order to sidekick Lionheart’s plot.

Once Peregrine Devlin suspects that someone is killing the theatre critics of London, he confronts Edwina who denies the implication it’s her thespian father and assures him that the great actor died of a broken heart.

Vincent Price’s performance as Edward Lionheart in Theater of Blood remains one of the highlights of his illustrious career. His ability to balance the character’s tragic backstory with his increasingly unhinged and malevolent actions creates a character that is both unforgettable and emblematic of Price’s status as a legendary figure in the world of horror cinema.

In “Theater of Blood” (1973), each of the murders is meticulously staged to resemble a death from a different Shakespearean play. These theatrical killings add a unique and darkly comedic element to the film. Here are some of the scenarios of death in the movie:

  1. Julius Caesar: Lionheart murders one of the critics by recreating the famous death of Julius Caesar from Shakespeare’s play. The victim is stabbed to death by a group of people wearing Roman attire.
  2. Cymbeline: Another critic meets his demise in a bathtub filled with wine, mirroring the death of the queen in Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.”
  3. Titus Andronicus: A critic is fed a pie made from his own pet dogs, reminiscent of the gruesome events in Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”
  4. Henry VI, Part 1: A critic is drowned in a barrel of wine, inspired by a death in “Henry VI, Part 1.”
  5. The Merchant of Venice: One critic faces a punishment similar to Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” by having his pound of flesh extracted.
  6. Othello: Another critic is smothered to death, echoing the tragic fate of Desdemona in “Othello.”
  7. Romeo and Juliet: In a twist on the famous balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet,” one critic is killed by a group of hooligans.
  8. Hamlet: A critic meets his end in a fencing match, referencing the duel in “Hamlet.”

Tidbits:

This film was shot entirely on location in and around London. No scenes from it were shot in a studio.
Price fell in love with and married Coral Browne following the film’s production, which lasted from July 10 to August 17, 1972. This film was released after Price’s March 18, 1973 appearance as the subject of “This is Your Life”, his last public appearance with his second wife Mary, who knew nothing yet about his affair with Coral, set up by Dame Diana Rigg who noticed the chemistry between the two.

The name of Dame Diana Rigg's character in the film was derived from that of Edwina Booth, daughter of Edwin Booth (1833-1893), considered by many to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day, and the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the most infamous actor of his day. When this film was adapted for the London stage in 2005, Dame Diana Rigg’s role was filled by her real-life daughter Rachael Stirling.

Edward Kendal Sheridan Lionheart's Vincent Price's theater hideout was the Putney Hippodrome, built in 1906. It had been boarded up for 14 years when it was chosen as a location for this film. The filmmakers rented it for $127.00 a week and set parts of it on fire for the film’s ending. The building was demolished in 1975 and housing was erected on the site.

Due to Jack Hawkins’ speech loss from laryngeal cancer (he could only speak through an artificial voice box), his voice in the role of theatre critic Solomon Psaltery in the film was dubbed by Charles Gray.

Vincent Price said this was one of the best scripts he had ever read and jumped at the chance to make the film. He was excited by the Shakespearean theme to the film and loved the black comedy in it. He was also pleased that the film was going to get a mainstream theatrical release in the UK and Europe (via United Artists) rather than the drive-thru theaters and B movie theaters that many of his US made horror films had been having in the US for several years.

Renēe Asherson and Eric Sykes appeared in The Others 2001

“Some of the do-ins are funnily horrible as director Douglas Hickox uses his DeLuxe color cinematography to emphasize Robert Morley’s outrageously blonde hairdo as well as all the blood flowing… If you know the Shakespeare plots, you’ll get some fun trying to guess how scripter Anthony Greville-Belle has adapted them for each murder.” – Deirdre Mack, Films in Review, Volume XXIV, Number 6, June-July 1973.

“Few horror films are written with English majors in mind, but… Theatre of Blood surely can make such a claim… Director Douglas Hickox skillfully handels the material, allowing his camera to bear witness as Price steals the show, gliding between delightfully over the top camp and sheer irony… But what is most interiguing about Theatre of Blood is the extent to which it can be said to have influenced some of the best modern offerings.” Gina McIntyre, Wicked, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2001.

 

To the Devil a Daughter 1976

To the Devil a Daughter is a 1976 British-German horror film directed by Peter Sykes and Don Sharp. The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Wheatley with a screenplay by Christopher Wicking and John Peacock. The film stars Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Honor Blackman, Denholm Elliot, and Nastassja Kinski as Catherine Beddows.

The story follows an American expatriate and occult novelist named John Verney, portrayed by Richard Widmark. Verney is asked by his friend, Henry Beddows, played by Denholm Elliott, to help rescue Beddows’ daughter, Catherine (Nastassja Kinski), from the clutches of a sinister and demonic cult led by the charismatic and enigmatic Father Michael Raynor, portrayed by Christopher Lee.

As Verney delves deeper into the investigation, he discovers that Catherine is being prepared to serve as the vessel for a demonic entity. The cult believes that this entity will grant them immense power and immortality. Verney must race against time to save Catherine and thwart the cult’s diabolical plans.

Christopher Lee’s performance as the charismatic and sinister cult leader is a standout, and the film’s themes of satanic cults and demonic possession were in line with the occult and horror trends of the 1970s.

Tentacles 1977

Tentacles 1977 is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis (produced and directed Beyond the Door 1974 with Juliet Mills)

Set in a coastal town in California, (although this was an entirely Italian production, it was shot in California) people have vanished mysteriously in the water their remains were discovered stripped down to the bone.

Then it turns up as a series of mysterious and deadly accidents that occur in the waters off the coast. When boats and swimmers go missing, a determined Dr. Ned Turner (John Huston) who is married to Tillie (Shelley Winters) starts digging for answers. He begins to suspect that the deaths are related to a giant, octopus-like creature, a monstrous threat lurking in the ocean depths. As the death toll rises and panic grips the community, Ned joins forces with marine biologist Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) to track down this aquatic menace and they embark on a perilous mission to stop the giant creature before it claims more victims.

Dr. Turner begins to suspect this beast has been created by the company building a tunnel beneath the bay which has most likely contaminated the water causing this mutation to occur. While all this is unfolding Turner's nephew Tommy is taking part in a sailing regatta which puts the kids at risk of becoming appetizers for the colossal killer octopus.

The cast also included: Henry Fonda as Mr., Whitehead, Claude Akins as Robards, Cesare Danova, Delia Boccardo, and Sherry Buchanan. While truly a schlocky B movie entry into nature vs. humans in the 1970s horror subgenre like many horror films of that decade, Tentacles features prominent Hollywood actors.

The production spent nearly $1 million on a life-sized replica of a giant octopus, which promptly sank when it was put in the water.

Trailer narrated by Percy Rodrigues. The movie was sold as an alternate take on Jaws, and bringing in Rodriguez, most famous for narrating all Jaws trailers, was part of this campaign

Terror Train 1980

Terror Train is a 1980s slasher film starring Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis. The film is set in the dark and eerie atmosphere of a New Year’s Eve costume party on a moving train.

A group of college students decided to celebrate the holiday by hosting a costume party aboard a chartered train. Little do they know that their festive evening will take a gruesome turn. A masked killer begins stalking and murdering the partygoers one by one, using various disguises and costumes to conceal their identity.

As the body count rises and paranoia spreads among the passengers, Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, Alana, becomes a central figure in the fight for survival. Alana must use her wits and courage to uncover the identity of the killer and put an end to the bloodshed before it’s too late.

In this 1980s slasher film, the killer’s motivation for seeking revenge on the victims is revealed as a result of a traumatic event that occurred several years prior to the events of the film.

The killer, who eventually takes on various disguises throughout the movie, seeks revenge on a group of college students because of a horrifying prank they played on him during a previous New Year’s Eve party. During that earlier celebration, a cruel and dangerous prank orchestrated by the students goes horribly wrong, resulting in severe emotional and physical trauma to the individual who would later become the vengeful 80s stalker. He holds the group responsible for the pain and suffering he endured due to their thoughtless prank.

Terror Train is a notable entry in the 1980s slasher genre, and possesses several stylistic and campy elements that were characteristic of many films in this era:

One of the film’s distinctive elements is the use of costumes and disguises. Since the story is set during a New Year’s Eve costume party on a train, characters frequently change outfits, leading to an air of mystery and confusion about the killer’s identity. This creates a sense of unpredictability and tension, adding to the film’s campy atmosphere.

There are also a number of creative kills and staged murder scenes. The killer employs various props and methods associated with their disguises and costumes to carry out his revenge. These deaths often involve a combination of surprise, gore, and dark humor. Terror Train also stars Ben Johnson, Hart Bochner, magician David Copperfield, Sandee Currie, and Timothy Webber.

This is your EverLovin’ Joey Sayin’ T is a Terrifying letter but U… haven’t seen nothin’ yet! The Letter U is coming for U!

Postcards from Shadowland no. 17 🌀 The Twilight Zone edition

“Five Characters in Search of an Exit” Season 3 Episode 14-Stars William Windom, Susan Harrison, Murray Matheson, Kelton Garwood aired December 22, 1961 Teleplay by Rod Serling.
“The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” Season 1 episode 4 aired October 23rd 1959-stars Ida Lupino and Martin Balsam, Jerome Cowan, Ted de Corsia and Alice Frost as Sally. Written by Rod Serling
“Black Leather Jackets” Season 5 Episode 18 aired January 31st 1964-stars Lee Kinsolving, Shelley Fabares, Michael Forest, Denver Pyle, Tom Gilleran, Michael Conrad and Irene Hervey.
“Elegy” Season 1 Episode 20 aired on February 19th, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Charles Beaumont. Stars Cecil Kellaway, Jeff Morrow, Don Dubbins and Kevin Hagen
“Eye of the Beholder” Season 2 Episode 6 aired on November 11th, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Rod Serling. Stars Maxine Stuart, William D. Gordon, Jennifer Howard, George Keymas, Joanna Heyes, and Donna Douglas -revealed
NOVEMBER 11: Twilight Zone episode ‘Eye of the Beholder’, written by Rod Serling. makeup by William Tuttle. Originally broadcast on November 11, 1960. Season 2, episode 6. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)
“Nothing in the Darkness” Season 3, Episode 16 aired January 5th, 1962. Stars Gladys Cooper Robert Redford and R.G. Armstrong
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” Season 5 Episode 3 aired October 11th, 1963 directed by Richard Donner written by Richard Matheson, Starring William Shatner, and Christine White

“The Howling Man” Season 2 Episode 5 aired November 4, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars John Carradine, H.M. Wynant, and Robin Hughes

“It’s a Good Life” Season 3 Episode 8 aired aired November 3rd, 1961. teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Jerome Bixby. Stars John Larch, Cloris Leachman, Don Keefer, Bill Mumy as Anthony, Alice Frost as Aunt Amy, Max Showalter, Jeanne Bates, Lenore Kingston and Tom Hatcher.

“A Most Unusual Camera” Season 2 Episode 10 aired December 16, 1960. Starring Jean Carson, Fred Clark and Adam Williams written by Rod Serling
“Little Girl Lost” Season 3 Episode 26 aired March 16, 1962 directed by Paul Stewart and written by Richard Matheson. Stars Sarah Marshall, Robert Sampson and Charles Aidman
“Living Doll’ Season 5 Episode 6 aired November 1, 1963 written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars Telly Savalas, Mary LaRoche and Tracy Stratford

“The Midnight Sun” Season 3 Episode 10 aired November 17, 1961 Written by Rod Serling. Stars Lois Nettleton, and Betty Garde
“Mirror Image” Season 1 Episode 21 directed by John Brahm written by Rod Serling. Stars Vera Miles, Martin Milner, Joseph Hamilton and Naomi Stevens
“Mr. Garrity and the Graves” Season 5 Episode 32. Aired May 8th, 1964 directed by Ted Post, with a teleplay by Rod Serling. Stars John Dehner, Stanley Adams, J. Pat O’Malley, Norman Leavitt, Percy Helton and John Mitchum
“Mr. Denton on Doomsday” Season 1 Episode 3 aired October 16th 1959 written by Rod Serling Stars Dan Duryea, Martin Landau, Jeanne Cooper, Malcolm Atterbury, Ken Lynch, Arthur Batanides, Robert Burton and Doug McClure
“A Stop at Willoughby” Season 1 Episode 30 aired May 6, 1960 directed by Robert Parrish written by Rod Serling. Stars James Daly, Howard Smith and Patricia Donahue, Jason Wingreen, and Mavis Neal Palmer.
“Nick of Time” Season 2 Episode 3 aired November 18, 1960 Written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling Stars William Shatner and Patricia Breslin
“Night Call’ Season 5 Episode 19 aired February 7, 1964 Directed by Jacques Tourneur written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling. Stars the great Gladys Cooper, Nora Marlowe and Martine Bartlett.
“Nightmare as a Child” Season 1 Episode 29 aired April 29, 1960 written by Rod Serling. Stars Janice Rule, Sheppard Strudwick and Terry Burnham as Markie
“Twenty Two” Season 2 Episode 17 aired February 10, 1961 Directed by Jack Smight written by Rod Serling from Famous Ghost Stories- Stars Barbara Nichols, Jonathon Harris, and Fredd Wayne
“One for the Angels” Season 1 Episode 2 aired October 9, 1959 Written by Rod Serling. Stars Ed Wynn, Murray Hamilton as death, Dana Dillaway as Maggie
“A Penny for your Thoughts” Season 2 Episode 16 aired February 3, 1961 Written by George Clayton Johnson and Rod Serling. Stars Dick York, June Dayton, Dan Tobin, Cyril Delevanti, and Hayden Rorke
“People are Alike All Over” Season 1 Episode 25 aired March 25, 1960 Stars Roddy McDowall, Susan Oliver and Paul Comi
“Long Live Walter Jameson” Season 1 Episode 24 aired March 18, 1960 Written by Charles Beaumont. Stars Kevin McCarthy, Edgar Stehli, Estelle Winwood and Dodie Heath
“Queen of the Nile” Season 5 Episode 23 aired March 6, 1964 directed by John Brahm written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Starring Ann Blyth, Lee Phillips, and Celia Lovsky

“Spur of the Moment” Season 5 Episode 21 aired February 21, 1964 directed by Eliot Silverstein written by Richard Matheson. Stars Diana Hyland, Marsha Hunt, Philip Ober and Roger Davis.
“The After Hours” Season 1 Episode 34 aired June 10, 1960 directed by Douglas Heyes written by Rod Serling. Stars Anne Francis and Elizabeth Allen
“The Dummy” Season 3 Episode 33 aired May 4, 1962 directed by Abner Biberman teleplay by Rod Serling. Stars Cliff Robertson, Frank Sutton, George Murdock, John Harmon and Sandra Warner.
“The Fear” Season 5 Episode 35 aired May 29, 1964 directed by Ted Post written by Rod Serling. Stars Hazel Court and Peter Mark Richman
“The Grave” Season 3 Episode 7 aired October 27, 1961 Written and Directed by Montgomery Pittman Stars Lee Marvin, James Best, and Strother Martin, Elen Willard and Lee Van Cleef
“The Hitch-Hiker” Season 1 Episode 16 aired January 22, 1960 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a radio play by Lucille Fletcher. Stars Inger Stevens, Adam Williams, Lew Gallo and Leonard Strong as The Hitch-Hiker
“The Invaders” Season 2 Episode 15 aired January 27, 1961 Directed by Douglas Heyes written by Richard Matheson. Stars Agnes Moorehead in a completely dialogue-less performance.
“The Lonely” Season 1 Episode 7 aired November 13, 1959 Directed by Jack Smight written by Rod Serling. Stars Jack Warden, John Dehner, Jean Marsh and Ted Knight
“The Man in the Bottle” Season 2 Episode 2 aired October 7, 1960 directed by Don Medford written by Rod Serling. Stars Luther Adler, Vivi Janiss, and Joseph Ruskin
“The Masks” Season 5 Episode 25 aired March 20, 1964 Directed by Ida Lupino written by Rod Serling. Stars Robert Keith, Milton Seltzer, Virginia Gregg, Brooke Hayward and Willis Bouchey
“The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” Season 1 Episode 22 aired March 4, 1960. Written by Rod Serling. Stars Claude Akins, Barry Atwater, Jack Weston, Jan Handzlik, Amzie Strickland, Burt Metcalfe, Mary Gregory, Anne Barton
“The New Exhibit” Season 4 Episode 14 aired April 4 1963 Directed by John Brahm written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling. Stars Martin Balsam, Will Kuluva, Margaret Field William Mims
“The Shelter” Season 3 Episode 3 aired September 29, 1961 directed by Lamont Johnson written by Rod Serling. Stars Larry Gates, Joseph Bernard, Jack Albertson, Peggy Stewart, Sandy Kenyon, Michael Burns, Jo Helton, Moria Turner, and Mary Gregory
“Time Enough At Last” Season 1 Episode 8 aired November 20, 1959 Directed by John Brahm and teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Lynn Venable. Stars Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis
“To Serve Man” Season 3 Episode 24 aired March 2, 1962 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a short story by Damon Knight. Stars Lloyd Bochner, Susan Cummings and Richard Kiel
“A Passage for Trumpet” Season 1 Episode 32 aired May 20, 1960 Directed by Don Medford written by Rod Serling. Stars Jack Klugman and John Anderson
“Walking Distance” Season 1 Episode 5 aired October 30th, 1959 directed by Robert Stevens and written by Rod Serling. Stars Gig Young, Frank Overton and Irene Tedrow and a young Ronny Howard
“Two” Season 3 Episode 1 aired September 15, 1961 directed by Montgomery Pittman written by Montgomery Pittman and Rod Serling. Stars Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson
“Third from the Sun” Season 1 Episode 14 aired January 8, 1960 Teleplay by Rod Serling based on a story by Richard Matheson. Stars Fritz Weaver, Edward Andrews, Joe Maross, Denise Alexander and Lori March
“What You Need” Season 1 Episode 12 aired Deccember 25, 1959 Stars Steve Cochran, Ernest Truex, Read Morgan and Alrene Martel
Season 1 Episode 1 aired October 2nd 1959. Written by Rod Serling. Stars Earl Holliman, James Gregory, and Paul Langton,
“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Season 2 Episode 28 aired May 26, 1961. Directed by Montgomery Pittman written by Rod Serling. Stars John Hoyt, Jean Willes, Jack Elam, Barney Phillips, John Archer, William Kendis, Morgan Jones, Gertrude Flynn, Bill Irwin, Jill Ellis and Ron Kipling

Your EverLovin’ Joey saying The Last Drive In is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge!

Witness Mr. Burgess Meredith, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers.

“I was born a character actor. I was never really a leading man type.” –Burgess Meredith

Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith

WHAT A CHARACTER! BLOGATHON 2014

what-a-character-2014-02

It’s here again! The most fabulous blogathon honoring those unsung stars that add that certain singular glimmer to either the cinematic sphere or the small screen sky–The character actors we’ve grown to love and follow adoringly. Thanks so much to Aurora at Once Upon A Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula’s Cinema Club for hosting such a marvelous tribute once again!

This post’s title comes from the opening narrative for Rod Serling’s favorite Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough At Last.”  ‘Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers’ From Season 1 episode 8 which aired on November 20th, 1959.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE “TIME ENOUGH AT LAST”

Directed by John Brahm, “Time Enough At Last” tells the story of a little bespectacled bibliophile bank teller named Henry Bemis, a bookworm, a slave to the iron-fisted hand of time and all its dreary inescapable obligatory scars and yearnings.

Burgess Meredith Twilight Zone still

Browbeaten by his wife, boss, and even the public at large who see him as an outcast because of his ravenous appetite to read books! Henry can’t even sneak away to read a newspaper during work hours. He’s forced to resort to studying the labels on condiment bottles. She won’t even let him read the ketchup. His harpy of a wife Helen ( Jacqueline deWit) even blackens in the lines of his books at home, calling it “doggerel“– One day as fate would have it, he steals away to the basement vault of the bank to catch up on his beloved preoccupation, when –as many Twilight Zone episodes had been infused with a dose of Rod Serling’s nihilism (as much as there is his hopeful message), the feared 50’s bomb annihilates our vision of the world that was swarming just a few moments before. Suddenly poor Henry seems to be the last man on earth. But wait… perhaps not poor Henry.

Henry Bemis still

As he stumbles through the debris and carefully placed set pieces– the remnants of man’s destructive force, Henry comes upon the city’s public library filled with BOOKS!!! Glorious books…

While he must struggle against the approaching loneliness of the bleak future ahead, he begins to see the possibility of a new world where he could dream, and wander through so many scrawled worlds. Already an outsider he could finally live a life free to be as his boss rebuked him, a “reader.’

Henry starts to amass various piles of selected readings. There was time now. Time enough, at last, to read every word on the written page without interruption, interference, or judgment.

Yet…fate once again waves her fickle finger via The Twilight Zone and leaves bewildered Henry without his much-needed glasses, now they have fallen on the great stone steps, crushed by Henry’s own feet. As with every role Meredith brings to life the character of Henry Bemis with so much mirth and pathos.

He’s always just a bit peculiar, idiosyncratic, eccentric, lyrical, salty, sometimes irascible, but always captivating and distinctive, His voice, his persona, his look, his style… Burgess Meredith could always play the Henry Bemises of the world and grab our hearts because he has that rare quality of being so damn genuine.

twilight-zone-time-enough-burgess-meredith-

Let’s face it even when the prolific Burgess Meredith is playing a cackling penguin– nemesis to the caped crusader Batman or the devil himself (alias the dapper and eccentric Charles Chazen with Mortimer the canary and his black and white cat Jezebel in tow) in The Sentinel 1977 based on the novel by Jeffrey Konvitz and directed by Michael Winner–he’s lovable!

Burgess as Charles Chazin

He always manages to just light me up. Ebullient, mischievous, and intellectually charming, a little impish, a dash of irresolute cynicism wavering between lyrical sentimentalism. He’s got this way of reaching in and grabbing the thinking person’s heart by the head and spinning it around in dazzling circles with his marvelously characteristic voice. A mellifluous tone was used often to narrate throughout his career. (I smile even at the simplest nostalgic memory like his work on television commercials, as a kid growing up in the 60s and early 70s I fondly remember his voice for Skippy Peanut Butter. Meredith has a solicitous tone and a whimsical, mirthful manner. Here’s a clip from a precious vintage commercial showcasing Meredith’s delightfully fleecy voice.

And his puckish demeanor hasn’t been missed considering he’s actually played Old Nick at least three times as I have counted. In The Sentinel 1977, The Twilight Zone and Torture Garden! While in Freddie Francis' production, he is the more carnivalesque Dr. Diabolo–a facsimile of the devil given the severely theatrical make-up, goatee, and surrounding flames"¦ he is far more menacing in Michael Winner's 70s gem as the spiffy Charles Chazin.

Torture Garden 1967
Burgess Meredith as Dr. Diabolo in Torture Garden 1967

And while I resist even the notion of redoing Ira Levin/William Castle and Roman Polanski’s masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby if, and I’m only saying if… I could envision anyone else playing alongside Ruth Gordon as the quirky and roguish Roman Castevet it could only be Burgess Meredith who could pull that off!

burgess & ruth

Also being a HUGE fan of Peter Falk’s inimitable Columbo– I ask why why WHY?! Was Burgess Meredith never cast as a sympathetic murderer for that relentless and lovable detective in the rumpled raincoat to pursue? Could you imagine the chemistry between these two marvelous actors?

columbo & burgess

Burgess Meredith all of 5′ 5″ tall was born in Cleveland Ohio in 1907. His father was a doctor, and his mother a Methodist revivalist. We lost him in 1997 at the age of 89. That’s when he took his “dirt nap…” the line and that memorable scene from Grumpier Old Men 1993 that still makes me burst out laughing from the outlandish joy of it all!… because as Grandpa Gustafson (Meredith) tells John Gustafson (Jack Lemmon) about how he’s managed to live so long eating bacon, smoking and drinking his dinner–what’s the point…? “I just like that story!”

Meredith, Burgess Street of Chance 1942
Leading man material… Street of Chance 1942.

Burgess Meredith said himself, that he wasn’t born to be a leading man, yet somehow he always managed to create a magnetic draw toward any performance of his. As if where ever his presence in the story was, it had the same effect as looking in a side view mirror of the car “Objects are closer than they appear”–What I mean by that is how I relate his contribution becoming larger than the part might have been, had it been a different actor. Like the illusion of the mirrored reflection, he always grew larger in significance within the story–because his charisma can’t help but consume the space.

He took over the landscape and planted himself there like a little metaphysical essence, animating the narrative to a higher level of reality.

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Meredith started out working with the wonderful Eva Le Gallienne joining her stage company in New York City in 1933. His first film role was that of Mio Romagna in playwright Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset 1936 where Meredith plays the son of an immigrant wrongfully executed for a crime he did not commit. He also joined the ranks of those in Hollywood who were named as “unfriendly witnesses’ by the House Un-American Activities Committee finding no work, being blacklisted in the 1950s.  

During the 1960s Meredith found his way back in various television roles that gave us all a chance to see and hear his incredible spectrum of performances. One of my personal favorites, dramatically potent and vigorously absorbing was his portrayal of Duncan Kleist in the Naked City television series episode directed by Walter Grauman (Lady in A Cage 1964)  Hold For Gloria Christmas.

The groundbreaking crime and human interest series NAKED CITY– cast Meredith as a 60s beat poet & derelict Dunan Kleist who is literally dying to leave the legacy of his words to a kindred spirit.

A powerful performance told through flashback sequences that recollect his murder as he storms through the gritty streets and alleyways of New York City a volatile alcoholic Greenwich Village poet trying to get back his precious manuscript of poems that were stolen as he bartered them away bit by bit for booze -he has bequeathed his work to the anonymous Gloria Christmas. The chemistry between Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart who plays his estranged wife is magnificent exuding years of anguish and disappointment. Heckart is another character actor who deserves a spotlight.

 

BURNT OFFERINGS 1976Dan Curtis’ priceless treasure of creepy camp featuring Karen Black, Oliver Reed, and once again uniting the incredible Eileen Heckart with our beloved Burgess Meredith as the ominous Roz and Arnold Allardyce.

Eileen Heckart and Burgess in Burnt Offerings-Dan Curtis
Roz & Arnold… charming… creepy!

Another memorable role for me is his spirited performance as Charles Chazin alias The Devil in one of my all-time favorite horror classics The Sentinel. “Friendships often blossom into bliss.” – Charles Chazin. Ooh, that line still gives me chills…

Many people will probably love him for his iconic character study of a crusty cantankerous washed-up boxing trainer named Mickey in the Rocky series of films. Or perhaps, for his colorful cackling or should I say quacking villain in the television series Batman -his iconic malefactor — The Penguin!

IMDb fact-His character, the Penguin, was so popular as a villain on the television series Batman (1966), the producers always had a Penguin script ready in case Meredith wanted to appear as a guest star.

Burgess Meredith will always remain one of the greatest, most versatile & prolific actors, a character in fact… beloved and eternal…

BURGESS MEREDITH TELEVISION & FILMOGRAPHY ON IMBD HERE

BURGESS MEREDITH

 

“Like the seasons of the year, life changes frequently and drastically. You enjoy it or endure it as it comes and goes, as it ebbs and flows.”- Burgess Meredith

“I’ll just take amusement at being a paradox.”- Burgess Meredith

[on his childhood] “All my life, to this day, the memory of my childhood remains grim and incoherent. If I close my eyes and think back, I see little except violence and fear. In those early years, I somehow came to understand I would have to draw from within myself whatever emotional resources I needed to go wherever I was headed. As a result, for years, I became a boy who lived almost totally within himself.”- Burgess Meredith

 

Continue reading “Witness Mr. Burgess Meredith, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers.”

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! 2 Tales of Matrimony On the Treacherous Rocks!

“An Absolute Ball”

X, Y and ZEE  1972

XYandZee poster

Elizabeth Taylor wears the role of Zee Blakeley, a Machiavellian temptress, who is married to the wealthy yet miserly, miserable, and misogynistic architect Robert, played deftly by Michael Caine who partakes every bit in the nasty psycho-sexual game playing their afflicted marriage has manifested over the years.

Zee is wild, possessive, and cunning, and Robert is melancholy, brutish, and at times downright violent. Longing for a change he pursues the lovely Stella played by Susannah York, who he meets at a party given by a friend, the bird-like, arty, jet-setting, gold Lamé, pink fluffy-haired Gladys (Margaret Leighton) who collects people and things for her ‘cocktail parties’ strewn with beautiful types, fags, artists and anyone with a title attached to their name.

Gladys and Stella and Robert

Zee and Stella

Life and love are cutthroat in this film, and Taylor’s portrayal of Zee is unnerving and difficult to watch at times, as she fluctuates between venomous seductress and wounded little girl. York as always is like a fawn from the eldritch woods with those dreamy eyes. But talk about eyes, no one has a pair that arrests you quite like Elizabeth Taylor.

Liz Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor as the beautiful, tumultuous Zee Blakeley…

Once Robert decides to play house with Stella and leave Zee to wallow in her jealous vitriol, Zee goes on an orchestrated rampage to try and destroy their burgeoning romance, uncovering the shell of sweet Stella exposing that she has some secrets of her own. Written by Edna O’Brien, and directed by Brian G. Hutton who also directed Taylor in the thriller, Night Watch 1973, another equally disturbing film about the deep-rooted ugliness and danger of an ill-fated marriage.

With fabulous Costume designs by Beatrice Dawson.

Next up…

SUCH GOOD FRIENDS 1971

Such Good Friends film poster
Such Good Friends title design by Saul Bass

“The little black book that became a national bestseller.”

Based on the novel by Lois Gould, with a screenplay by Elaine May using her pen name Esther Dale, and an uncredited  Joan Didion (A Star is Born 1976, Panic In Needle Park 1971) Directed by the omnipotent Otto Preminger.

The Great Otto
The Great Otto Preminger

Dyan Cannon is Julie Messinger a New York housewife who finds out that her husband magazine editor Richard (Laurence Luckinbill Boys In the Band 1970) has been cheating on her because he ‘doesn’t like her feet.’ She stumbles onto his little black book with the names of several ‘women.’

Nina Foch, plays Julie’s mother an annihilating, narcissistic harpy who criticizes her about everything.

Nina Foch

Such Good Friends

When Richard winds up in a coma from complications stemming from a simple mole removal, Julie’s good friends gather around her for support. Including an impromptu cocktail gathering in the blood donor ward of the hospital…

It’s a biting, black comedic sexual romp through the self-explorative 70s, with a fabulous cast of characters.

Cannon and O'Neill

CapturFiles

James Coco as

Dyan Cannon

Howard and Cannon

Co-starring the wonderful  James Coco as Dr. Timothy Spector, Jennifer O’Neill, as Miranda, Ken Howard as photographer Cal Whiting, Louise Lasser, Burgess Meredith, Sam Levene, William Redfield, James Beard, Rita Gam, Lawrence Tierney, and Doris Roberts. And an uncredited Salome Jens as a Blood Donor at the hospital and Joseph Papp and his Shakespeare Theatre.

Nurse-“Have you ever had venereal disease?”

Blood Donor-“No I was never even in the tropics!”

It’s been a ball-MG

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away! Magic (1978)

Nothing is creepier than ventriloquists and their faithful dummies. Here is director Richard Attenborough’s taut thriller starring the ever brilliant Anthony Hopkins as Corky Withers and the voice of Fats his ruthless wooden pal, the sexy Ann -Margret and the always wonderfully droll Burgess Meredith. Based on the novel by William Goldman

A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart.

“A Terrifying love story!”

Happy Trailers! MonsterGirl