The Sentinel

A film which plagiarises so brazenly - and so badly - that it seems like little more than a pile of out-takes from recent supernatural successes. Take a Catholic heroine and her treacherous lover in a spooky apartment block (Rosemary's Baby). Add the nutty priest and the ominous prophecy from The Omen, not to mention a touch of demonic masturbation from The Exorcist. And what do you have? In Winner's hands, just a mass of frequently incomprehensible footage, acted so badly that even the most blatant shocks go for little. Out of sheer desperation, given the thinnest basis imaginable for a horror movie (fashion model finds her apartment is over the gateway to hell), some genuinely deformed people are brought in for the climax. The only frightening thing about The Sentinel is its director's mind.