Cinema

Horror queen

Clancy Sigal

The Sentinel (Plaza 2) Burnt Offerings (London Pavilion)

Burgess Meredith bids fair to become the George Kennedy of occult films. Mr Kennedy, you recall, is the dour mechanical wizard who is almost always the symbol CIf

Impending doom in a whole series

of disaster movies, especially the AirPorts. Any time you see him near a grounded Boeing 747 or a tinder-dry Skyscraper,

cataclys you can be sure a major

nt is just around the corner. Burgess Meredith, as a sinister old queen, Performs the same function in this week's satanic epics.

The Sentinel (X certificate) Mr meredith, a cat-loving pensioner, is the ,Ilownstairs neighbour of a model who i!Ives alone in her apartment in a BrooklYn brownstone. Gaily, but with much !lake in his small, evil eyes, he introuuces her to the other tenants, a crew of nutcases which includes a blind priest Who sits at his attic window guarding (as l',Ype later discover) the world from Satan.

plot is diabolically jerrybuilt, but I

Luunk that the haunted house is meant to °e the gateway to hell. Well anyway, if Yocni clumsily rnix The Exorcist and The ,L11.1en with Lipstick you will get some"ling like Michael Winner's campy, crude Antic' frankly thieving picture. Since I despised The Exorcist, I don't mind seeing it ripped off so cheerfully and with such utter lack of conviction. As in Lipstick (the same actor plays ille romantic villain here as well), the ta tget is a 'liberated' woman who exposes ;tiler body for money and also has second eights about marriage. 'I've rejected _mist,' she tearfully tells one of the many Catholic priests who infest this picieure, I need to come back.' Sin is , (Plated with sexual independence, and lust so we don't miss the point Mr Winner thuggishly caricatures homosexuals lltd lesbians too. Since it's no longer done to use blacks as a metaphor for nmitigated evil, Winner climaxes his 111., ovie with a parade of freaks (the truly s,carred, the crippled and maimed) who, assured us in a recent radio interview, had a jolly time on the set. I wish I could Y the same for me in my seat. B alt tintr Offerings (AA Certificate) is an t ogether less brutal creepie which tries A° tickle, not degrade, our nerve ends. f, gain Burgess Meredith, el.f.led to a this time con wheel chair, is the human g,tain-raiser to extrasensory horror. He ki_t_o his sister rent their spacious country 'Louse for the summer to Oliver Reed,

Karen Black and their teenage son — on condition they leave a tray of food out for their aged mother who never quits (guess where?) the top of the house. Eventually things go bump in the night, walls and chandeliers shake, and the ending is pure but tired Gotterclamerung.

With a little more thought and brisker pace, Burnt Offerings could have been a good thriller. Clearly it is some kind of parable about the hysteria and sexual tensions latent in a 'good' marriage, and about the psychic risks run by a 'total joy' housewife like Ms Black. But we know so little about them that when Karen Black suggests now is a good time to sit down and finish his PhD thesis the audience breaks up with laughter. Unlike The Sentinel, the parody seems wholly unintentional. Despite its small cast (including Bette Davis, as Reed's aunt along for the trip) and one set, Burnt Offerings somehow seems slow and cumbersome.

This week's other horror tale wasn't on the screen but in Wardour Street itself.

In a generally gloomy movie trade, one of the few cheerful signs has been the rise of `alternative' cinema in London and the provinces. But this welcome development is now seriously threatened by the action of the KRS — Kenmatograph Renters Society — which is the umbrella group for most large (and some small) distributors like Warner, CIC and Columbia. In effect, KRS controls what we all see in Britain's 1400 (remaining) cinemas.

On a technicality, KRS is now advising its member companies to withhold renting films to one of the best new cinemas, Derek Hill's Essential. (And, I hear, has also started to move against the Electric, King Street.) Like most small independent outlets, the Essential runs as a club, in this case because a public license cannot be obtained from the GLC without costly alterations. Yet the KRS demands a GLC license from Hill who is now operating wholly legally without such a license.

The Essential is a comfortable theatre, centrally located in Wardour Street itself, resurrected from a porn 'tart house' into an art house by Hill's brave, singlehanded

efforts. It has rescued such neglected films as Orson Welles's F For Fake and recently embarked on an exciting season of

repertory, changing its two (usually very good) films every day. The Essential is a superb example of a resourceful small businessman filling a need which the large companies cannot or will not satisfy. In fact, the major concerns earned £200 a week from Hill's rentals and — until KRS stepped in with its destructive, dotty ruling — seemed perfectly happy to keep supplying him. If the Essential goes down, the Electric, Other, ICA, NFL' and similar outlets outside London cannot be long for this world. Unless, that is, the Essential is being singled out. And if so, why?