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The next night, after a long shoot, Alison returns home to find herself being coaxed upstairs to Charles� apartment for a surprise party for his kitty-cat. A whole posse of eccentrics are at the party, some of whom live in the building and the rest of whom used to but moved out.
�Black & white cats, black & white cake!� exclaims one of the doddering old women several times. Brrrrr.
That night Alison is awakened by a horrible thumping and dragging from the floor above her. She complains to Miss Logan, and Miss Logan says with surprise: �My dear Miss Parker, aside from the priest and now you, no one has lived in that building for 3 years!�
Bleh. The whole idea of furnished apartments just got scarier.
Alison is showing some odd symptoms including fainting, headaches, nausea, and dizziness. Is she pregnant? Even when faced with the list, neither she nor Michael seem to consider it (she�s probably on the pill, or he�s had a vasectomy, it being 77 and all).
Michael copies some Latin that is on the wall in the apartment and tries to get it translated by Monsignor Franchino (Arthur Kennedy), who is less than helpful. Michael�s a pretty smart guy and feels like he�s getting snowed.
That night, Alison hears the thumping from upstairs and goes up, with a knife in one hand and a faulty/flickering flashlight in the other, only to be confronted by the ghostly presence of her father! He stumbles, all zombie like, at her and she slashes him up with her handy butcher�s knife. After hacking up the old man, she collapses sobbing in the middle of the street.
Now Alison has help offered to her, in the forms of Detective�s Gatz and Rizzo (Eli Wallach and Christopher Walken?! What are you two doing here!?) who promise to investigate a bit. Gatz and Rizzo have their suspicions about her involvement with Michael. Gatz is convinced that Michael offed his first wife for the insurance money, but can�t prove it. Rizzo only has about 1/2 of a line, something like: �Yeah, but�� before Gatz talks over him. This is disappointing to those of us who find Chris Walken�s speech pattern entertaining.
Michael takes the Latin inscription to a befuddled and absent-minded Professor Ruzinsky (Martin Balsam? What are you doing here!?) who tells him the translation is from Milton�s �Paradise Lost�, and describes the
inscription over the gateway to hell.
Gatz and Rizzo recognize all of the people who Alison has described as being at the shin-dig for Charles Chazen�s cat:�She went to a party with 8 dead multiple murderers�. Dum-Dum-Duuuuum!
Michael hires an extremely pale B&E man names Perry (William Hickey!) to help him access a safe he noticed during his visit to the Diocese. They find a long list of files (going back almost two hundred years) of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, who attempted suicide and then became either priests or nuns, depending on their sex. And Alison is in the files, with her �disappearance� into the Order of St. Something taking place the Very Next Night! Jeekers! Better act fast, Chris Sarandon!
While Michael is doing his illegal acts in secret from his girlfriend (whom he is doing them for, which is really kinda sweet) she is having hideous nightmares with naked lesbians� wait a minute, Beverly D�Angelo is kinda hot�
Despite Michael�s insistence that no one let Alison out of their site, she stumbles away from a party and heads towards her spooooky apartment. Michael is already there, all set to uncover the mystery. He discovers it, all right: The entrance to Hell is in New York City. Eh, who�d a thunk it?
Michael can�t get Father Halloran to fess up to plans concerning Alison, or for that matter to say anything. He is so frustrated by his inability to protect his gal that he begins to strangle the old Padre prior to a candlestick whonking him on the temple, black out!
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