Well I guess I’m 50 years late to this party. Huh thanks for the invite. And I say that not out of spite or hurt feelings are really anything because this wasn’t that super like something I’ve been missing out on for 50 years but why wasn’t I invited well I guess no one will miss me if they didn’t invite me kind of like Richie’s bachelor party where they were going to come get me on that bus and then never showed up thanks for nothing fuckfaces I’m still mad at you twenty years later up yours but The Sentinel was out new to watch and it had a shitload of known actors in it so why not and it was ok I guess. Sometimes it felt like some sort of cheap Kojak or TV show and then there was a bunch of un-erotic nudity or blood and stabs and dead bodies and then there was Burgess Meredith and a bunch of priests keeping secrets and Beverly D’Angelo naked and what was this thing? Well it was all right but let’s see if we can break it down here.

This skinny lady is a hand and hair model and her and her model friend are scouting apartments in New York City so she can live by herself because she never has and doesn’t want to marry her mustachioed fiancé Prince Humperdink I mean Chris Sarandon. I don’t know if it’s his stache or how sweaty you can see him get in 4K but she’s not ready yet so she rents this fully furnished apartment somewhere overlooking sone water where she can live alone and I presume stow away the bras she never wears not that I was looking. Her first night there she is literally pounced upon by Meredith who has a living bird on his shoulder and a cat in his arms and I might have been taking it wrong but he seemed really flamboyant and cheery and that didn’t make sense in my brains because that’s Mickey from Rocky and not this character he is no one else but Mick and no one else never only Mickey.

Where were we? Oh yes – Meredith and D’Angelo and a bunch of other weird folks have a party and then someone is walking around on the floor above her and the chandeliers are really swinging and suddenly she starts getting these pains in her neck that make her faint and now that I’m done with the thing I can’t remember why or what those had to do with anything unless they were trying to win her an Academy Award for “being in sharp pain” so naturally everyone thinks she’s gone batshit and someone ends up murdered and Christopher Walken has this small role as a gum chewing and food eating cop and some lady is going around like the Whore of Babylon and rubbing boobs and there’s a blind guy with long ass hair I don’t mean his butt hair just long old man hair and that’s kind of just the beginning first half of the movie, really, and it’s all super quick edited which made me think of old TV shows where they have only so little time to make their point. Without the nudity, fondling and people getting stabbed in the head.

So what does that set up for the second half?

In a surprising move, Meredith, completely disrobes and – I don’t know how to really describe it – he puts his hand on his hips starts thrusting his nude pelvis and ahem loins while doing some sort of maybe German dance (?) up and down the halls of this old building his voice croaking about sunlight and the moon and it’s really really weird considering he seemed like he was already in his late 60s here but there he is thrust thrust thrust slide slide slide and I’m really really surprised they put that in there but hey it was the 70s so anything was fair game i guess as we were transitioning out of the Age of Aquarius and into Capricorn but still that wasn’t very appealing to look at but honestly neither was Beverly D’Angelo’s screechy masturbation scene. Now I always like to keep everyone on their toes so just so you know one of those things I just described is not true for at least this movie but I don’t know what people do in their own homes I mean I know I make jokes about watching you through your windows but I really don’t I’m no peeper. Well one time about 30 years ago my friend and I were out drinking beer in this park that was surrounded by houses and we got the dumb idea to go look in the window of this one house that had their lights on so we hopped the fence and went up to it and looked in the kitchen all I heard was “WHAT THE FUCK” and we started running as fast as we could and someone came out of the back door and shot at us with either a rifle or a handgun and I’ve never made that mistake again. And that’s a true story.

In The Sentinel all of the peeping is done from a fifth floor window by an old blind man. How does he peep if he’s blind, you might ask? Well I don’t really know so maybe he’s just constantly getting some fresh air and keeping the damned off the planet through the doorway to hell. He’s the sentinel, see, and now we know what’s happening in this movie. Except for the party and the cake and the bird and the cat and how she sees Latin and that guys calls Prince Humperdink “Eldridge” and Jeff Goldblum’s unbuttoned shirt and those ladies eating that one guy and a number of other things I would hate to blurp out and spoil this 50 year old movie no one asked me to go see with them in the theaters or even on videotape thanks.

FILED UNDER: NO BRAS AND IVY COVERED WALLS AND TOM BERENGER