Main cast: Eric Roberts (Jean), Alice Poon (Rosalie), and David Bowie (The Host)
Director: Chris Hartwill
Dream Sentinel is loosely based on Poppy Z Brite’s story The Sixth Sentinel. I am not familiar with that story, so I can only hope it’s better than this thing.
This one opens with three minutes of bared breasts shoved onto the screen, because yay, we’re at a strip club so look, more boobies.
Our protagonist, Rosalie, is an edgy stripper—she’s edgy because she has a ring of black eyeliner around each of her eye like she’s a stripper panda or something—that is driven to drink because she keeps seeing black and white visions of Eric Roberts stalking her.
Yes, I can see why, as I may start drinking too should I experience hallucinations of Eric Roberts leering at me the whole day.
Eric Roberts plays the ghost of Jean, a killer, who is obsessed with her. Rosalie has banned him from attending her shows, as he would get very jealous of her clients and drive them away with his threats.
At the same time, she allows him to stick his ghostly hand and other appendages inside her body to make her feel, er, refreshed again after a long night of running away from him and drinking herself into a stupor. Talk about a confusing relationship—guess the ghost peen is too good to give up!
The whole thing could have been an interesting metaphor about the dangers of addiction to things that are clearly bad for oneself, but by this point, this show has given up all pretense of being anything more than soft porn.
Hence, the bulk of this episode consists of a topless Alice Poon writhing and moaning in faux ecstasy when I’m sure the poor dear would rather have more opportunities to showcase her acting talent.
Eric Roberts plays the menacing Jean pretty well here, and this younger, pre-Botox overload version of him actually looks kind of hot. Still, like Ms Poon, he doesn’t have much to do here. While he doesn’t get to be topless and touch himself into a frenzy here, his entire repertoire here consists of just standing there and issuing menacing threats and statements.
All in all, this episode will be fun for people that want to see Alice Poon half-naked and moaning a lot, but on the whole, this whole thing is a huge missed opportunity.
What could have been an intriguing story is wasted on a quarter-baked episode that looks like it was made on a budget of a hundred dollars, with most of the money going to rental for the club and Mr Roberts’s salary.
