- Director
- Michael Winner
- Year
- 1977
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 92 min
Also released as
- La centinela
- Centinela de los malditos
- A Sentinela
Filed under
The Sentinel
A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.
Alison, recovering from a suicide attempt, rents a floor of a beautiful old Brooklyn house. The other tenants are strange. A blind priest sits in the top-floor window at all hours. The building is a seal over the entrance to Hell, and she has been chosen to be the next guardian.
Michael Winner made a lurid, star-packed occult film in the Rosemary's Baby wake, and it is best known for its ending, in which the damned are played by people with real physical differences and disabilities, a choice that was controversial then and is more so now.
The cast is astonishing, Ava Gardner, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Burgess Meredith, Beverly D'Angelo, many in early roles.
It is uneven, tasteless and genuinely eerie in stretches, and its final images are hard to forget for reasons that are not entirely to its credit.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Canada
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 10 Aug 2026
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