Michael Winner, 1977
Are you with me so far?
Just read those statements with actual surprise, not sarcasm, or worry over a beloved actor appearing in dreck (and I really dug Blade 2, so fuck off).
�Kay?
Now, the adorably angry Bettie has once or twice hypothesized that I would abandon her for Hottie McH, but I wouldn�t do that unless enchafed by a fiend. Which brings us to Nigella Lawson, for whom Bettie would most certainly abandon me if she had a chance. And bringing up Nigella brings up one of her recipes, which Bettie has made her own and reduced me to a drooling gibbering wreck. This is a good recipe, folks. Seriously. Our friend Jenn came over to say howdy, and I was laying on the living room carpet while grunting to myself.
Linguini or Angel Hair pasta, olive oil, parsley and bacon is all you need. It�s a small list of common ingredients but when properly used, I go into a 2 hour food coma. I have recommended this pasta to everyone I know since that weekend. It�s just that good.
The Sentinel is an example of a huge list of really high-quality ingredients� that when blended together taste kind of like blech.
[on with the show]
Northern Italy. A group of dark-garbed priests wearing distinctive rings hold a mass. One, a particularly spooky looking bastard (Jose Ferrer? What are you doing here!?) interrupts a quiet mass with the dire phrase: �There is a danger.�
New York City. Where all the pretty people lived in the 70s. Meet Alison Parker (Cristina Raines), super-model. She�s beautiful and a little neurotic and has a filthy-rich lawyer boyfriend (Chris Sarandon as Michael). When the movie kicks off Alison is looking for an apartment all of her own, essentially a getaway. She has moved in with Michael, who even wants to tie the knot and make things official and legal, but she wants some small token of freedom to remain. I wonder if this pic is gonna be some thinly
disguised sneer at feminism? She is having trouble finding something that she can afford, though. $600 a month she couldn�t afford, proof that the economy has spiraled down since �77. My apartment, a tiny studio, is around 6 bills a month, you should have seen the penthouses Alison was checking out!
At a film shoot Alison�s photographer Jack (Jeff Goldblum? What are you doing here!?) calls a break to the proceedings when Alison gets a phone call. Her daddy has just died (poor thing).
Off to the funeral, but Alison stays at the house rather than facing the service. In the house she has a rather awful flashback to when she was 16 or so and came home to find skeleton-thin daddy fornicating with about three super-sized strumpets. Bleargh. The event so traumatized lil� Alison that she slits her wrists. Daddy discovered her before she bled out, and some forced hospitalization appears to have been an element in Alison�s youth.
Now I was pretty traumatized by the nekkid women and nekkid daddy too, but I just had some bourbon. Bettie was utterly unaffected by the whole thing, because she was curled up in bed breathing softly through her nose.
Back in New York, real estate woman Miss Logan (Ava Gardner? What are you doing here!?) shows her a paneled and furnished apartment in Brooklyn Heights for 400 a month. Sheesh. Anyhow, it�s a pretty damn creepy (albeit realistic) looking apartment building, complete with apparently unmoving figure in the attic window. Miss Logan informs Alison that the figure is Father Halloran (John Carradine? What are you doing here!?) a retired shut-in who sits at the window a lot.
Alison takes the pad, and soon meets the lonely, friendly, sweet old queen who lives upstairs, Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith? What are you doing here!?). He introduces Alison to his cat and his parakeet, and leaves her a framed photograph of himself.
Alison works on a film shoot for director Michael Dayton (Jerry Orbach? What are you doing here!? And with brown hair!?) and has a fainting spell. Boyfriend Michael (Chris Sarandon, remember?) is concerned and asks her best friend Jennifer (Deborah Raffin) to watch out for her. Jennifer doesn�t particularly trust or like Michael, it seems his 1st wife died rather suddenly�
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