Did you watch The Sentinel? To see the original contest announcement, please click here.
It was a homework assignment, people. Like Rosemary’s Baby and Burnt Offerings, the film is a great blend of old Hollywood actors and new ones. It’s a cycle story, based on a best-selling book in the golden age of ’70s horror.
But for our purposes, it contains repeating objects that morph and escalate the plot. Again and again, we get tight insert shots of little items. Can you name them all?
What’s at stake is a lavish collection of Easter stuff. Candy, a rabbit, that stuff. All for the one person who—first—names the key morphing object that represents the entire metaphor of the story. Please, don’t just say the item. Please give a little detail about why your item is the central metaphor.
This is sounding like a school assignment, sorry. But it’s a good way to become aware of objects and how they appear and disappear and change throughout a story.
You have until Tuesday, April 4th, to enter your Comments.
I’ll be judging the Monkees contest soon. So go for it.
Possible morphing objects in ‘The Sentinel’:
1) The ring that the priest is wearing.
2) The necklace that gets ripped off the women when she walks in on the ménage a trois (the crucifix necklace).
3) The golden letter cufflinks that Michael has.
4) The movie clapper? It’s snap quickly becomes sinister with every subsequent take.
5) The apartment building itself? “I attended a birthday party here last night. For a cat.”
6) The English to Latin Book(s)?
Karen, Michael’s murdered wife, is reincarnated as Jezebel, the black and white cat. Like the Biblical Jezebel, Karen was also thrown to her death. Near the very end of the movie, they’re reunited after Michael’s killed and is now wearing the white suit with a black tie and he is holding Jezebel in his arms. Alison’s transformation into the nun at the gates of Hell, also in black and white attire, could also be Karen’s final revenge on her for being Michael’s mistress.