"The Sentinel" (1977) d/Michael Winner

Brooklyn residents nowadays will tell you: Hell isn't underneath one of it's brownstones, it's affording the rent for one. Still, you have to admire the originality and intelligence of the premise of tonight's feature, a well creepy little flick from the guy who brought you 'Death Wish'(1974). I remember the tv spot for this one giving me the creeps at the time, and that creepy vibe only carried over into the Jeffrey Konvitz novel (with the cool open-up cover) that my old man brought me home afterwards. Come to think of it, the whole damned affair is a memorably unpleasant experience, but in this genre, that's a compliment, isn't it. There's an all-star cast along for the ride, too, with names like Burgess Meredith, Jose Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Ava Gardner, and Arthur Kennedy topping the list, a soundtrack by Gil "Night Gallery" Melle, and one or two seriously painful-looking effects from the maestro himself, Dick Smith.


"I no care about Burgess Meredith. You sed there wud be cheezburgrs I can haz..."
Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) is a troubled model/actress who's just moved into one of New York's historic brownstones, below an elderly reclusive priest named Halliran (John Carradine) who sits in front of his top floor window like a blind, arthritic piece of furniture, at all times. Then there's kindly old Mr. Chazen (Burgess Meredith) who holds birthday parties for his cat, Jezebel (that's odd, cat people, you can't tell me it isn't!), and a pair of oversexed lesbians named Gerda and Sandra (Sylvia Miles, Beverly D'Angelo)...Or so it would seem. Meanwhile, her clingy lawyer beau, Michael (Chris Sarandon), is getting hassled by a local detective (Eli Wallach) who's not so convinced that he wasn't involved in his ex-wife's death. Alison starts suffering from insomnia, compounded by horrifying memories of interrupting her father and two hookers during a food fetish ménage à trois involving cake (!), and her prior two failed suicide 
attempts. The noisy oddball neighbors lead the troubled girl to take matters up with her new 
landlord,  Miss Logan (Eva Gardner), who informs her that, besides the blind priest on the top floor, she is alone in the building!!!  Cue: creepy 50's theremin here.


In a kid-free environment, Ellen Griswold shoots sexy catcher signals at Clark.
...turns out the building is situated atop the gates of Hell afterall (I'd be after a rent rebate, personally, but that's just me) and owned by a secret order of excommunicated Catholic priests, from which one is chosen to rectify his mortal sins by becoming the overseer and guardian, protecting the portal from any stray demons with designs on entering our realm of existence and it just so happens that our heroine's failed suicides make her the perfect candidate to replace ol' Halliran upstairs. She squares off against Chazen, who reveals his true evil nature, and a gaggle of lost souls (translation: actual deformed circus freaks) that includes her murdered boyfriend Michael, who had been damned for all eternity for offing his spouse. Chazen offers her a blade to finish herself off, and avoid all the unnecessary responsibility, but she chooses to relieve Monsignor Franchino (Arthur Kennedy, as an Italian, really??) and Halliran of a large burdensome cross and take her place in the window seat, instead. After the brownstone is demolished and replaced with a new apartment building, we see Miss Logan showing a young couple the place. When they ask about neighbors, she tells of only two: a violinist, and an old blind nun on the top floor...

 
You should think about exchanging your reading glasses for a monocle, pal.
Even if the controversial finale of tonight's review isn't your gruesome cup o'tea, you have to admit it was more interesting than Won Ton Ton: The Dog That Saved Hollywood, director Winner's effort from the previous year. Nearly as many celeb cameos as that flick, too, when I think about it. Wallach, Berenger, Walken, Goldblum,  Orbach, D'Angelo...even a post-Jaws Richard freakin' Dreyfuss, ferchrissakes. I'd need  a separate post altogether just to tag 'em all. By no means anything exceptional here, but an enjoyably moody old school good time, none-the-less. Two big ones.
 

Blinded by the light, he was revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.
 

"Being Different"(1981)d/Harry Rasky

Tonight we wrap our glassies around a documentary about sideshow freaks, errr, human oddities, ummm, y'know, I'm not exactly sure what the 'politically correct' term is these days for a dude, who, when asked where his brother is, replies "He's growing out of the side of my face, you can't miss him.", but judgmentless distinction doesn't come easy when looking at these folks focused upon in the Rasky-written and directed production, most of whom are Gibsonton, Florida denizens when not travelling the countryside with carnival sideshows.Ironically, listening to the pretentious narration as delivered by Christopher Plummer, who'd come a long way from his Sound of Music(1965) salad days in trying to make a nearly eight foot tall giantess seem ordinary without directly pointing up at her, screaming, and running for his life like an evacuated Tokyoan as Rodan's leathery wings menacingly flap over the metropolis.Yeah guys, next time you're trying to document the triumph of people over life-altering deformities and handicaps in a condescending p.c. light, you might wanna leave out sex life questions in your interview with three foot tall midgets, it just makes you sound like a glorified barker selling tickets outside the big tent.Kind of like the one you hired to introduce each human oddity here?I'll go out on a limb here and surmise that these folks are probably pretty used to "Holy FUCK!" expressions and comments from people in this stage of their lives, especially if they're making a living in a sideshow or in a Guinness Museum display.But that's the good thing about this one, kids, you can leave the pretense to the filmmakers and be properly astounded, guilt-free.

I wish you and Cactus Jack all the luck in the world, brother.
First stop on the "C'mere! You GOTTA see this!" Express is Gibsonton, Florida, the winter home away from home for carnival folk, where we're introduced to the Galyons, adult twins who are conjoined at the large intestine, have no outward genitals(!), and are situated face to face.Watching them tread the basepath during a softball game reminds me of two guys in a horse costume.Ronnie profoundly says of brother, Donnie: "That's because we are like brothers.Wherever I go, he goes, and wherever I go, he goes."Nah, dude, you are brothers, but besides whiffing on the Bette Midler lyrics, you're like some creepy Harryhausen animation once you start moving all those legs.Then there's a dwarven fire eater who looks like my dad circa the nineties, the grumpy 729 lb Paul Fishe who lays to waste the 'jolly fatso' myth, a hefty female bookend, Icelandic giant and former B-movie actor, Johann Petursson, who, at eight foot two, needs dual walking canes just to get around, and his opposite, Dolly Reagan, who's an ordinary head on an underdeveloped infant-sized body.After asking her considerate questions like "Do you feel like a freak?", they get down to the nitty-gritty and beat around the bush about her sex life.From 'human dolls' we switch to the 'strangest married couple', or simply Alligator-skinned Boys and the Monkey Girls who love them.He just looks like he could use some lotion(about a fifty-five gallon drum's worth), while she can't go shopping in public(even in Gibsonton) without rocking an Arab-style veil over her non-ironic beard, while their average son appears on-camera to subtly answer the interviewer's sex question before he can even ask it.

"Fore!" might be a bit too much for you.Try "One and a half!" instead.
After some irksome filler footage involving amusement park rides and hot air balloons over a forgettable music soundtrack, we're whisked outta the carny world and into the "normal" one, where being different is once again measured in opposites:First Sandy Allen, at 7'7", the world's tallest woman, then cult movie personality Billy Barty and clips of the annual Little People convention, where we see dwarves rollerskate.Then, we're off to Montreal where we meet a six foot man who's married to a three foot woman and living in a midget-sized house.We see him flush the cute little toilet.Then he's finally asked about his sex life, to which he wisecracks that it's better than his previous marriage to a normal-sized woman.Bob Melvin's box art-gracing, elephantiasis-ravaged grill is next, and we watch him ride a bike, and be memorialized at his local Missouri church for some reason...while he's still breathing.A lengthy disco segment doesn't quite prepare us for the crab-pincered marathon runner/motivational speaker who was also born without feet, the karateka with one leg who blows through pine boards with his arm stub, two legless rascals, and finally, a Texas lass born without arms who shimmies into her jeans with a wire hanger, drives a car, writes, knits, and even gives her son haircuts with her feet.We hear a sacchariferous ballad to Louise herself, who's been married twice already(once at twelve years old, insert your own "Yeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaawww!" here) as she skateboards, daydreaming about posing for Playboy.Plummer returns to coerce good feelings out of a shell-shocked audience while prattling on about the human spirit and other insincere verbal knick-knackery...

We'll return to "When 75% of Your Face Wages War with The Other 25%" right after these words from our sponsor...
The late Rasky, a leading Canadian documentary director, covered subject matter like Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, and Chagall when he wasn't penning the awful lyrics to the personalized songs in tonight's review(which were composed by Paul Zaza, who provided scores to genre films like Prom Night(1980), My Bloody Valentine(1981), and Porky's(1983) by the way) or ignoring substance and structure in revealing these extraordinary individuals in the same damned exploitative geekshow light we've peeked at human oddities in all along, only from behind an artificial moral shield.Billy Barty(nee Bertanzetti!) was a native Pennsylvanian who acted in 177 films from 1927 until the time of his death in 2000.The Galyon brothers now boast of being the world's oldest conjoined twins, long retired from the sideshow circuit to a tranquil life somewhere in Ohio.On the scale, Different rates two solid Wops, and makes for one of the more memorable mondo documentaries of the eighties.

Yeah, but can she handle a standard tranny?

"The Funhouse"(1981)d/Tobe Hooper

Like most genre enthusiasts, I fully recognize Tobe Hooper's crowning cinematic achievement, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as one of the greatest horror movies ever made.It's just the erratic shit he followed it up with that I've gotta take issue with.With TCM, he took a high and outside pitch and sent it deep into the upper decks for an uncontestable grand slam.His 1981 offering, The Funhouse, which was ravenously hyped by most horror zines of the day, is closer to a sputtering ground out back to the pitcher.I've noticed a lot of people out there seem to hold fond memories of this one, but it's a fucking mutt, plain and simple.I remember coming away from my first viewing feeling betrayed by all the advance press and leaked photos of Rick Baker's special extreme cleft deformity makeup, having just endured a lethargic, scareless, and mostly bloodless turd.After a few pay-cable viewings and a half-hearted vhs rental in the eighties, I buried the lackluster experience in the darkest recesses of my mind until the technological breakthrough of dvds forced me to re-examine the damned thing, hoping I was overly critical towards it, or perhaps a different cut of the film would change my mind.An emphatic "Cazzo no!" would be the case.On the positive side of the coin, Hooper provides some decent old fashioned atmosphere and suspense in a classic carnival setting dressed with creepy vintage animatronic figures and surreal lighting that's reminiscent of Argento in spots.On the other hand, the cast leaves me pretty flat, apart from perhaps Sylvia Miles and Kevin Conway, as a skeevy fortune teller and sideshow/funhouse/stripshow barker, respectively.Also, the story, as novelized from the screenplay by horror fiction icon Dean Koontz under the pseudonym Owen West, takes something like eight and a half hours to finally kick into high gear, and once it does, it leaves me thinking there ought to have been more.More scares, more gore, more of a body count, more focus on Baker's makeups...but there isn't.

I'm suddenly compelled to whip myself up a pair of fried eggs for some reason...
After Amy Harper(Elizabeth Berridge) gets her titties rubber knifed in the shower by her prank-loving brother Joey(Shawn Carson), she not only renegs on taking him to the carnival(you know, the one where two little girls' dead bodies turned up at last year...) on Saturday, but also vows to exact memorable revenge upon his gruesome little ass for his mischief, before venturing out on a first date with a grease monkey named Buzz(Cooper Huckabee) who can't even pick her up at a decent hour, ferchrissakes.They pick up Liz and Richie(Largo Woodruff, Miles Chapin) and pass around a quick jibber, as Joey climbs out of his bedroom window, determined not to miss the carnival and a perfect opportunity to spy on his older sibling.Buzz wins Amy a stuffed animal and explains his unfunny dancing duck joke to her at the top of the ferris wheel.Amy discusses her troublesome virginity with Liz in the bathroom, when they're interrupted by a over-zealous bag lady(!) who reminds them that God is watching them.Joey gets a ride proposition from a toothy creep who points a shotgun at him.Meanwhile, inside the sideshow, Buzz marvels at a lip-licking cow with a cleft palate and another with a parasitic twin growing out of its face, no doubt, two of the 'eighteen worst mistakes that God ever visited upon man', this movie excluded.Before leaving, Richie drags the double date into a separate tent that contains a mutated baby floating in a lighted jar that momentarily puts a damper on their cannabis-based hijinks.The funhouse barker(Kevin Conway) puts a chill up Amy's spine with his monologue before the group ducks into the magician's tent, as Joey finally makes the scene, dumping a sack of change at the ticket booth.After smoking another discreet pinner(these kids know how to party) behind the tent, the group decides to check out the hooch-slugging fortune teller, Madame Zena(Sylvia Miles), who tells Amy a tall, dark stranger will enter her life amidst her friends' pot-induced giggles("Don't come back or I'll break every fuckin' bone in your body!", she later warns).Richie suggests that both couples stay at the carnival after closing, spending the night in the funhouse.Probably not a good idea, dude.

"Ewwwww, Rasputin's penis!I'll give you a buck if you take it outta the jar and tug it like a bell rope!"
Joey watches as the funhouse cars that contained his sister and her friends return to the mute operator in a Frankenstein mask outside without the prior passengers inside as the carnival shuts down for the evening.The couples notice gaps in the funhouse floorboards that reveal an office below, where the wheezing mute in the Frankenstein mask has solicited Zena(100 bucks for Sylvia Miles?C'monnnn.) for sex.While Zena administers a handy to kick off the action, Frankie prematurely pops his cookies, and when Zena refuses to refund him his money, she gets choked the fuck out for her thriftiness.While the gang beats a hasty retreat for the (locked, of course)exit, Richie jacks all the samoleans outta the office cash box, earning the masked mutant a hearty beating at his own hands(!), to the glee of his barker/father("You really did it this time, didn't ya?!You killed one of the family!"), until he rips off the latex to reveal a severely deformed, blood-curdling cleft-grill and red eyes.Richie carelessly drops a cigarette lighter through the spaces in the floorboards, alerting the carnage-crazy carnys to the intruders upstairs.At this point there's a whole lotta walking around in the dark, until finally the funhouse power is turned on suddenly, as the barker tries to goad his misshapen son into doing one last bad thing for him so they can bury the bodies and go fishin', like they used to.Richie gets lassoed with a noose and hung in front of his panicked pals as the surrounding props once again come to life, the stolen money floating down around them like so much confetti.Buzz blindly swings an axe down into an oncoming ride car, only to discover his blade planted in Richie's dome instead, with Liz hysterically chasing afterwards and falling through a trap door in the floor, later to be killed off-camera when she plants a dagger in the monster's back.After dispatching the gun-wielding barker by skewering his hayseed ass on a sword, Buzz is, in turn, taken out by the murderous freak, leaving only Amy to fend for herself against it in the dark and foreboding funhouse.Just remember, it aint over until the mechanical fat lady sings, which, in this movie's case, probably should have been directly after the opening credits...

"Sorry, kid. You must be this hideously deformed to ride this ride."
Hooper was approached by no less than Steven Spielberg to direct his E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial(1982), but was too busy working on this movie at the time.He'd team up with the director a year later on the wildly popular Poltergeist(1982), though it's been argued that Hooper had precious little to do with the finished product, as Spielberg directed the actors, designed storyboards, and cast the movie on his own, but was unable to direct another movie while still immersed in E.T. due to a clause in his contract.In between all of that, he was also replaced in the director's chair(translation:quit) by Piers Haggard on the 1981 Oliver Reed/Klaus Kinski thriller, Venom.He would eventually direct Lifeforce in 1985.Berridge would go on to play Constanze Mozart in Amadeus(1984), while Huckabee, who'd scored genre roles in The Pom Pom Girls(1976) and The Curse(1987), has enjoyed a long career in television.On the scale, Funhouse gains a single Wop, not being very much fun at all.

"Hit yerself, you ugly thing!"