Zombie, Zombie, shambling fright/In the graveyards late at night/stalking virgins who just might/offer up an enticing bite…Screened: The Sentinel. This movie is quite a bit seamier than the severely altered TV version I saw as a teen. It was actually quite a shock to see some of the things that were cut (some of them probably deservedly so). Christina Raines (who can’t really act) plays a fashion model recovering from a suicide attempt after seeing her nekkid scrawny daddy do the nasty with a couple of wayward women not his spouse (shudder, eew). After he dies (two years later, not during his hedonistic fleshfest), she decides to get her own apartment and wouldn’t you just know it the inexpensive one turns out to be in a building that just happens to contain the doorway to hell. The doorway is in an apartment above her and is guarded, more or less, by an old blind priest—who needs a replacement. The moment she moves in, odd things start to happen, like visions of orgies and thumping footsteps above her bedroom. Her neighbors are a collection of oddities; an old man, played creepily enough by Burgess Meredith, with a cat and bird, an old woman who blurts nonsensicals, and two lesbians, one with a disturbing habit of masturbating herself in front of new acquaintances. When she complains to the landlord, she is told and shown all the other apartments, save the one with the blind priest, are empty. She wonders if she is going insane and headed back to the institution. Her boyfriend is smarmy, possibly responsible for murdering an ex-wife and girlfriend.
This movie is fairly scary on some levels, but leaves you feeling a bit dirty on others. The demons (actual circus freaks were used, creating some controversy when the film came out) are chilling and there’s enough debauchery, including a lesbian breast-feeding a rat, to make you uncomfortable as, uh, hell, pardon the expression. I think it actually gets in the way of making this film an above average fear fest. So it becomes one of those movies I can’t recommend or dismiss and it will largely depend on individual comfort levels whether you enjoy it. It is no Rosemary’s Baby (which it seems striving to be at times), but it’s not the cheesy crapfest Drag Me to Hell, either.
Well, summer has officially begun and with it always come fond memories of school ending and staying up practically all night reading, listening to CBS Radio Mystery Theater and on Fridays watching the local channel’s late night horror offerings. Foremost among them were the Christopher Lee Dracula movies. Although somewhat edited for television, they were still pretty scary at the time and I couldn’t wait to watch them over and over. A number of other Hammer films played during those hot summer nights, their version of The Mummy and Phantom of the Opera being two particular favorites. I first saw Valley of Gwangi this way, and though now when I watch it I see it was a bit sillier than I recalled I still find myself transported back to that time, lying on the living room carpet in the dark, fireflies bobbing beyond the window, a sultry summer breeze coming through the screen and the occasional hideously startling screech of a fisher scaring the living crap out of me, usually during some corresponding scare scene in the movie, as if those damned animals timed it specifically for that moment.
There are moments we experience as kids that are once in a lifetime, and they are often things we don’t grasp at the time, only upon looking back and seeing through the rose-colored glasses of memory. The times when we first discovered a particular book, movie or show that forever became a fond remembrance or set us on a particular course in our life. Summer seemed pregnant with these moments during childhood…if it’s only now I realize them. They come few and far between as an adult, perhaps not at all. So we strive to recapture them through the time travel of our thoughts…grasp for the comfort of a simpler period, when wonder was still a gift waiting to be opened. Monster movies on late Friday summer nights…that was one of those wonder times for me. So, I think it’s time to put in the DVD of Gwangi and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave late at night and recapture a little magic.
Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time…
THE CHLOE FILES by Howard Hopkins
In the tradition of Sookie Stackhouse and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer…
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