The Sentinel (1977)

I watched this film last night, it's another of those horror films from the 1970s that stars some actors who go on to become massive, thinking here of Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum - both of whom hardly have any lines. The main part is played by Cristina Raines. She is a model moving to New York and who finds a cheap apartment with a good view of the Manhattan skyline and only 20 minutes from the centre of New York. She starts to rent the apartment and hopes it will help her recovery from an attempted suicide. Unfortunately, she starts to experience physical neuropathic episodes causing her to feint. She meets the other residents of the apartments, all of whom seem very odd. There are two ladies downstairs who exhibit some strange sexual behaviour. An older man looks after a cat and a bird. Upstairs there is a priest who sits at the window. She is in contact with her ex-boyfriend who becomes worried for her as her health declines. He is a legal man and becomes interested in the history of the apartment. When he is present, he tries to make logical sense of what is happening to her. The apartment is apparently owned by the Catholic church. He decides to break into the Catholic Diocese offices and finds a file on the people who have previously lived at the property. They have all attempted suicide and then became priests or nuns. In the file he also finds a page with a photograph of the model but there is a blank next to where she would be a nun, of the pattern were to be followed.
This was an interesting film, very much in the same vein as other 70 horror movies, I found it similar in tone to a film like Phantasm but making a bit more sense. It's not in the same league as The Exorcist or The Omen, so don't go in expecting that level of scare. Infact, the effects are okay for the time but are fairly minimal. There are some prosthetics to deform a group of people at the end of the film, something which wouldn't be allowed in this day. At the time, I can imagine it being really scary though - I would have been 9 when it was released so too young to watch it.

May (2002)

Yet another film I came to cold this week. For the first half of the film I was wondering why this was called a horror film. The character called May, played brilliantly by Angela Bettis, seemed like a sweet dorky girl with a talent for making her own clothes and looking after sick animals in the animal hospital. As the story evolves you get to understand the character a little better. Her "best friend" is a doll in a glass case given to her by her mother when she was a little girl. It was made by her mother and she gave it to May saying "if you can't find a find a friend, make one". May has a lazy eye, which gets corrected during the film. She changes from wearing glasses to contact lenses and starts a relationship with a guy who she thinks has beautiful hands. Another relationship she has is with a female colleague at work who she tells has a beautiful neck. There are other smaller characters in the film who are liked by May for a specific part of their body: legs and a tattoo. Well, I won't spoil the plot but you can see where it might be going. I found it an entertaining film and one that kept me guessing right up until the end. I liked the characters and the way they were portrayed, Anna Faris plays the colleague who seems slightly unhinged in a sexual way. An intriguing film, I'm not sure who will enjoy it though as its hard to think of anything like it.