Unemployed housewife Eva Serkovich (Mercedes Sampietro) has recently lost her beloved husband Charles in an airplane crash; forcing her to raise their two young children, all on her own. Running low on funds, Mary goes to beg real estate agency manager Mr. Presley (Alfred Lucchetti) to wait until she collects on insurance to start up her house payments again, but he sends her out the door and tells her it may be years before her husband's employer, the powerful Atomic Cell corporation, actually pay up. Then some weird happenings and supernatural events ocurr at home. Eva's life is thrown into turmoil when she and her children begin receiving anonymous threats from an unseen stranger. And she suspects that her house has been invaded by demonic spirits. Nonetheless, a newly-single widow's gotta move on and thankfully her old college friend, lawyer James Ronald (Ramiro Oliveros), is around to give her legal advice. He's also newly single himself since his wife left him. Though skeptical, they go to famous parapsychologist Professor Oliver (Narciso Ibañez Menta), who agrees to help them as long as no reporters and no police are involved. Oliver begins his investigation by questioning Eva and then testing her to see if she's able to "generate psychic energy." He then discusses a bunch of mumbo jumbo about how the house may not be cursed or even haunted, but instead filled with negative "immaterial forces" that have become trapped there. The professor sets up cameras and infrared lights in an attempt to photograph the condensation of said bad energy, or its ectoplasm. But what's really going on?
A sui generis film in which strange, creepy and possibly even supernatural things begin happening in and around a home. A mess of film blending various genres as fantasy, thriller, and supernatural horror. As the picture is passable thanks to the suspenseful and twisted events that happen throughout the peculiar story. Stars notorious actor Narciso Ibañez Menta had a long career always tied to movies of fantastic and horror as Television as Cinema. During the Fifties , he played the most important Argentine terror films as Masterpieces of Terror by Enrique Carreras . And along with his son Narciso Ibáñez Serrador made some splendid episodes of the successful series : Historias para no Dormir . Returning to the terror cinema with The Saga of Dracula by Leon Klimovski and three fantasy/horror films directed by Sebastián D'Arbo : ¨Trip to Beyond¨in which he plays a doctor in parapsychology invites some people to their mansion, they all have lived some kind of paranormal experiences , ¨The Entity or El Ser¨ and ¨Beyond the death¨ in which Narciso Ibañez Menta performs a scientist carrying out secrets experiments with fateful consequences. But the real starring is Mercedes Sampietro, giving a fine acting, she already was an established actress by performing Pilar Miro's films, such as: Gary Cooper, que estás en los cielos and Crimen de Cuenca.
¨El Ser¨ is a twisted, talky, bland film, though we do see some brief nudity and an exploding head the same as ¨David Cronenberg's Scanners¨, it at least has its own quirky and sometimes interesting ideas that go directly against science and organized religion. While some of the scenes are frankly ridiculous, the acting -especially by the lead Mercedes Sampietro and Narciso Ibañez Menta are decent, and the last minutes are intriguing, lively, fun, and a pretty agreeable reward for enduring the film's convoluted middle section.
It contains an atmospheric cinematography by Juan Gelpí, he's an expert cameraman who photographed various international coproductions, such as Surcouf, The Un verano para matar (Summertime Killer), Crypt of the living dead, Las Vegas 500 millones, The man in Stanbul, Crónica de un atraco, A Dog Called... Vengeance, Les Libertines, Baraka sur X 13, among others. Shot on location in various locations in Cataluña as Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona,Viladrau, Girona, Catalonia, Spain. The motion picture was regularly directed by Sebastian D'Arbo, usually nicknamed Professor D'Arbo. Made in 1982, El Ser or Psychophobia lay largely unseen until it was leased by the USA cable network in 1986. D'Arbo directed a few films with penchant for supernatural themes as parasychology, life after death, and occultism. Considering the director is also the author of numerous books on otherworldly phenomenon, like the Enciclopedia de parapsicología y ciencias ocultas, we pretty much already know who's right and who's wrong as far as these strange occurrences are concerned. It belongs to a supernatural trilogy made up of: Viaje al más allá (1980), El Ser (1982) and Más allá de la muerte (1986). D'Arbo has made a few films , such as: El Ser, Cena de Asesinos or Dinner of Murderers (1989) , Acosada, Viaje al mas Alla, Tarde de Fiesta and some shorts as Valdemar.
