The Sentinel is a movie that was recommended to me years ago, by my father, and i've seen it many times since. It always manages to entertain me, while being effectively creepy as well. The flashback scenes are what really made it for me. Cristina Raines's father running around all creepily, with the two creepy woman, always manages to send chills down my spine. it's your typical good vs evil thing, but at least it manages to be entertaining. The ending I consider to be one of the finest in Horror history. It has plenty of shocks and suspense, seeing Burgess Meredith do his thing as Chazen, had me on the edge of my seat. The Sentinel has the perfect build up of tension. We are never fully comfortable whenever Allison is on screen. We know something terrible is always awaiting her, and that made things all the more tense. This movie is often neglected among horror fans, but I personally think it's one of the better one's out there, and it certainly has enough for all Horror fans, to be satisfied.
Performances. Cristina Raines has her wooden moments, but came though in a big way for the most part. She's beautiful to look at, and her chemistry with Saranadon felt natural. Chris Sarandon is great as the boyfriend, Michael. He had an instant screen presence, and I couldn't help but love him. Martin Balsam,José Ferrer,John Carradine,Ava Gardner,Arthur Kennedy,Sylvia Miles,Deborah Raffin,Jerry Orbach,Richard Dreyfuss,Jeff Goldblum and Tom Berenger all have memorable roles, or small cameos. Burgess Meredith is terrific as Chazen. He looks like a normal old man, but what we find out, is absolutely terrifying. Eli Wallach&Christopher Wlaken do well, as the bumbling detectives. Beverly D'Angelo has one chilling scene, that I won't spoil.
Bottom line. The Sentinel is an effective Horror film that Horror fans, sadly tend to neglect. It will give you the thrills and scares you need to be satisfied. Well worth the look.
7/10

Very bad but watchable science fiction film that suffers from abominable special effects, poor acting, and a ridiculous story. The film opens with a spaceship returning from exploration on Mars with a woman and a man with green slime on his arm. She, through some hokey plot contrivances, begins to tell what happened on this fateful trip as almost all the tapes seemed to be magnetically wiped off. Four astronauts take on this journey: a military type played by Gerald Mohr, a poor man's Humphrey Bogart who enjoys saying the word "Irish" and has the acting savvy of a codfish, then there is Naura Hayden, a beautiful redhead and only female crew member on flight with three men wearing the most formfitting suits possible to accentuate all her curves, next, Les Tremaine, a wonderful character actor from cheap sci-fi films like this as the egghead, and last, Jack Kruschen as Sammy - the guy from Brooklyn with jokes and doesn't seem too bright although chosen for his expertise in electronics. None of these performers are really any good, and all of them say their dialog with little conviction. Watch Tremaine as he utters that scientific nonsense! Really, the best out of the four is Kruschen - and that really says a lot about this film. But bad acting aside, the movie just falls apart when they land on Mars via flashback. The Angry Red Planet had a real cheap budget because Mars is really the American Southwest with a heavy red tint over it. When the story calls for something that might look Martian, there are drawings placed with a heavy red tint over them. You can tell they are drawings The monsters are perhaps even worse as we get a Bat-rat-spider with a size upwards of 40 feet that looks like some kids got together piecing dead animals together. The other significant creature is a giant amoeba with an oscillating eye. Whew! These are bad. There is a nice drawing of a Martian city, but there just was not enough of this in the film. Despite all these big problems, The Angry Red Planet is a fun bad film. It is really fascinating to see how far we have come as a civilization. Most of the stuff they used in the movie is so outdated. One guy is using an electric razor with a cord and I thought they can get to Mars but they are still using cords. Director Ib Melchior gives an interesting look to much of the film even with the budgetary constraints, but the story by him and Sid Pink doesn't fly. And how bout that ending with the music and the psychedelic colors? Groovy man!