Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

For unto us, in 1974, three horror novels were born: The Black Exorcist, The Search for Joseph Tully, and The Sentinel. As discussed, The Black Exorcist is its own wild West Coast jam, while Joseph Tully and The Sentinel are set in isolated apartment houses in desolate New York neighborhoods. Tully became a cult classic, conjuring up gloomy gothic Gotham atmosphere and delivering a still-potent sting. But The Sentinel was a bona fide money train thanks to a moderately successful movie version that featured an all-star cast (John Carradine is Father Halloran! Burgess Meredith is Charles Chazen! Christopher Walken is Detective Rizzo! Jeff Goldblum is Jack! And Ava Gardner is “the Lesbian”!) It also featured a grotty urban hellscape, courtesy of director Michael “Death Wish” Winner, and a famous climax in which the gates of hell spring open and vomit forth a legion of demons played by sideshow freaks, actors with disabilities, and amputees.

Invoking the holy trinity of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Other on its inside cover, The Sentinel tells the story of Alison Parker, a top model in New York City who, like all beautiful women in 1970s paperbacks, is troubled by a dark past.

After flying home to attend daddy’s funeral, Alison returns to New York determined to make a fresh start, move into her own apartment, and forget about sins of the past. She finds a dream pad in an old brownstone that comes complete with antique furniture and creepy neighbors, like lovable old busybody Charles Chazen and his black and white cat Jezebel; the Norwegian lesbians in 2A; and Father Halloran, who sits in his unfurnished apartment on the top floor staring out the window with blind eyes.

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The Guardian featured big action, psychic warfare, and séances gone wrong, but its tired transsexual-panic plot twist left it feeling as flat as a communion wafer. Credit 20

After being shocked by her lesbian neighbors (“Masturbation and lesbianism. Right in front of me!”) Alison takes to fainting randomly. A doctor excavates the dark secret behind her multiple suicide attempts: when Alison was a kid, she walked in on her father having sex…with two women at the same time!!! Young Alison ran away but her father chased her down and tried to strangle her with a crucifix necklace, sending her into a fainting, barfing frenzy that ended only when she kicked him in the nards and renounced the church.

What happens next is that Alison is attacked by the naked ghost of her father, her mind shatters, and her lover confines her to the loony bin like some eighteenth-century country squire chaining up his wife in the attic. After Alison is released, her delicate grasp on sanity slips completely when she confronts the realtor who rented her the apartment.

“Why, Alison,” the realtor says, “no one lives in that building but you and Father Halloran.”

Alison never stood a chance, thanks to a Catholic conspiracy to groom her as Father Halloran’s replacement. The poor guy is ready to retire from guarding the gates of hell, which happen to be conveniently located in this delightful brownstone with period details. The book ends with Alison taking the job and the brownstone being torn down and turned into luxury condos. Which sounds like a cheap punchline until a couple years after the movie, when Konvitz wrote a sequel, The Guardian (1979), set in the same high rise.

Readers were particularly fascinated by the priestly vow of celibacy. Surely, they reasoned, a total denial of sex must mask total sexual perversion. In the Name of the Father, by John Zodrow, wallows in the sweet spot where fascination blurred into fetishization. Peter Stamp is the youngest priest in church history, and he’s haunted by his vows of celibacy, scourging himself in private and exercising constantly to burn off his dangerous sexual energy. Miraculously able to find water in drought-stricken countries, Father Stamp advocates tirelessly for the liberation of oppressed peoples. But wise readers will instantly see through his lies. Turns out, all Stamp’s talk about liberating Central America and the Middle East masks his true agenda: he’s the anti-pope, whose liberal Marxist theology will destroy the Church and bring about the apocalypse.

Fifty million American Catholics provided a ready audience for two-fisted tales of priests taking on Satan (In the Name of the Father), heretical cults (The Night Church), and possessed kids (Shrine). Credit 21