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This happens to be one of my favorite horror films. It's a rich, classy production boasting an excellent cast of ensemble actors, beautiful on-location cinematography, a haunting musical score, an intelligent and novel plot theme, and an atmosphere of dread and menace. It's reminiscent of such classic films as ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE SHINING, wherein young, vulnerable women find themselves victimized by supernatural forces in old, creepy buildings with a macabre past. Here, CRISTINA RAINES plays a top New York City fashion model named Alison Parker. Her happy, outgoing exterior masks a deeply conflicted and troubled soul. This is evidenced by the revelation that in her past, she attempted suicide twice- once as a teenage girl after walking in on her degenerate father cavorting in bed with two women and having him rip a silver crucifix from her neck and toss it on the floor, and the second time, after her married lawyer-boyfriend's wife supposedly committed suicide over learning of their affair. Telling her beau(played by a suitably slimy CHRIS SARANDON) that she needs to live on her own for a year or so, she answers a newspaper ad for a fully-furnished, spacious one-bedroom apartment in an old Brooklyn Heights brownstone. This building actually exists and is located at 10 Montague Terrace right by the Brooklyn Heights Promenade off Remsen Street. The producers actually filmed inside the building and its apartments, paying the residents for their inconvenience, of course. The real estate agent, a Miss Logan(AVA GARDNER), seems to be very interested in having Alison take the apartment- an interest that cannot be solely explained by the 6% commission she would earn. Especially when she quickly drops the rental price from $500.00 a month to $400.00. Alison agrees and upon leaving the building with Miss Logan, notices an elderly man sitting and apparently staring at her from the top-floor window. Miss Logan identifies the man to her as Father Halliran and tells Alison that he's blind. Alison's response is very logical- "Blind? Then what does he look at?" After moving in, Alison meets some of the other residents in the building, including a lesbian couple played by SYLVIA MILES and BEVERLY D'ANGELO, who provide Alison with an uncomfortable welcome to the building. Alison's mental health and physical well-being soon start to deteriorate and she is plagued by splitting headaches and fainting spells. When she relays her concerns to Miss Logan about her sleep being disturbed on a nightly basis by clanging metal and loud footsteps coming from the apartment directly over her, she is dumbstruck to learn that apart from the blind priest and now herself, no one has lived in that building for the last three years. Summoning the courage one night to confront her nocturnal tormentor, she arms herself with a butcher knife and a flashlight and enters the apartment upstairs. She is confronted by the cancer-riddled specter of her dead father and uses the knife on him in self-defense when he comes after her. The police investigate and find no sign of violence in that apartment- no corpse, no blood, nothing. Yet Alison fled the building and collapsed in the street, covered in blood- her own, as it turns out. But there's nary a mark on her. What Alison doesn't realize until the film's denouement is that her being in that brownstone has a purpose. She was put there for a reason- a reason whose origin dates back to the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden and of the angel Uriel who was posted at its entrance to guard it from the Devil. She is being unknowingly primed and prepped by the Catholic Church to assume a most important role- one that will guarantee that her soul, which is damned for her two suicide attempts, can be saved. At the same time, the "invisible" neighbors, who turn out to be more than just quirky oddballs, have a different agenda in mind for her. This is a competent and intelligently done film and one that surprisingly portrays the Church and its representatives in a mostly sympathetic light.


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