Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.
I saw The Sentinel for the first time in 2009 when I was writing the now-defunct and long gone first version of this blog. I was relatively unimpressed with the film then, so I can’t say it was one that I was dying to revisit. But, I’m going to get to them all eventually, so I might as well knock it out now. On a rewatch, I ended up liking this more than I did my first viewing, so I’m ultimately glad I chose to watch it again. While not everything the movie sets up is fully realized in its 92 minutes, this is a surprisingly ambitious little film. It also sports the single greatest cast list for a B-horror movie in cinematic history.
This is not one of those Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, before-they-were-stars cast lists, either. The Sentinel is filled with well-known, respected actors well into their careers in roles both big and small. Included in this are the following people: Ava Gardner, Eli Wallach, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Beverly D’Angelo, Sylvia Miles, Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, Martin Balsam, Jose Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, Tom Berenger, William Hickey, Jerry Orbach, and Jeff Goldblum. Richard Dreyfuss has an uncredited role as an extra, and this is post-Jaws and from the same year in which he did Close Encounters of the Third Kind and won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl. It causes one to wonder what sort of demonic pact director Michael Winner must have signed to arrange this.
