The Entity Year: 1981 Director: Sidney J. Furie Written by: Frank De Felitta Threat: Entity Weapon of Choice: Liquid helium Based upon: novel by Frank De Felitta IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
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Rish's Reviews
After doing this site for as long as we have, there's not a lot of notorious horror films out there that have gone unreviewed. And now there's one less. About twenty years ago, my cousin saw The Entity and couldn't stop talking about it. He told me more of how dirty it was than how scary, but those were his priorities in those days.
Barbara Hershey plays Carla Moran, a single mother who discovers a sinister force "living" in her home. A horny sinister force. Raped, mistreated, raped, thrown around the room, and raped, she finds no one to believe her tale, despite the evidence at hand. And the attacks continue.
Just like The Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw, The Exorcist and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, this was supposedly based on a true story. It was directed by the man responsible for the terrifying Ladybugs, and the film that killed the "Superman" franchise, The Quest for Peace, Sidney J. Furie.
If it's any indication of how old the cassette I rented was, it came in one of those oversized cardboard sleeves that opens to reveal the tape. The film itself was so horribly Pan & Scanned that I felt like weeping.
About the movie itself, I haven't much to say. A pretty unpleasant film, The Entity is not so much scary as it is disturbing.Barbara Hershey was very good. You really feel for the poor woman. She was pretty, and about two years older than the actor who plays her son. I was sure she was dating him until he called her 'Mom.' And even then, I wondered. Alex Rocco plays her clueless boyfriend, and Ron Silver is good as the psychologist that tries to explain everything away. This film may merit more "No One Believes Only Witness" Skulls than any other. Even the ghost hunters, who have made it their purpose in life to accept the supernatural, don't believe her.
I don't know who the greater villain was: the Entity or the psychiatrist who was intent on proving she was crazy, no matter what. The film spends a lot of time with psychologists trying to explain away stuff we've already seen and know to be supernatural in origin. It's infuriating. There were also a couple of really impressive Stan Winston effects, one of which was an interesting effect of Hershey being felt up by an invisible hand. Also creepy was the fact that Hershey's thirty year old teenage son listened to overloud Elton John in the garage. Oooooh.
The Entity wasn't poorly done, but it certainly wasn't enjoyable. I found more than a couple of parallels to Steven Spielberg/Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist. I wonder if Spielberg read the book and decided to make his own version of it. A fun, rape-free version of it.
Best Scare: There is a quite disturbing scene when Alex Rocco goes into the bedroom, expecting some good lovin', only to find Barbara Hershey being violated by an invisible force. Gross.
I'd Recommend It To: Eighties ghost movie completists, mostly.

The tyranist's thoughts
This is one from a big batch that I TIVOed off of the Fox Movie Channel last Halloween. I thought it would be fun to TIVO a bunch of movies that were showing around that time and with access to a couple channels that typically letterbox their movies and don't edit them, I grabbed as many as my (admittedly tiny) TIVO would fit. I probably never got to see half of them before they had to be deleted to make room for other things, but I kept The Entity around since it was one I'd always been curious about. Rish absolutely refused to see it again though, so it had to wait until I had a good time to watch it alone.
I woke up last Tuesday with the flu and felt miserable enough that I skipped work and slept very, very late. For me. Rish normally gets up around that time. Anyway, this is all crucial to my review, because I had to find some reason why I might possibly not have been bothered by a movie that Rish found pretty difficult to watch. So here goes. I was in so much physical agony from the flu that Barbara Hershey's agony on the screen just didn't penetrate the haze much.
The movie was interesting, but frustrating in the way I find most "based on a true story" films. And I mostly hate those kinds of films. But Barbara Hershey was pretty sympathetic even in her craziness. In fact, most of the characters were really sympathetic. It is like they didn't want to offend anyone, I mean, other than by showing multiple rape scenes. Still, I wonder if this would have been a more effective movie if it had been told strictly from the psychologist's point of view. Make the main character unreliable because we don't see every single thing and perhaps it would have been more engaging.
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. In the end, I thought that the movie was pretty mediocre. Good characters. Decent script. Nice effects. Good pacing. Difficult subject matter. It probably isn't for everyone, or maybe even most. She's treated pretty rough.

Total Skulls: 9

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?