O Enigma do Mal

When any film incurs user-comments that are at a 180 degree variance from one to the next, the odds are it is the subject itself which is the catalyst behind the emotion. We have those who admire its technical expertise (at least for 1981) and who recall its fear-factor and professionalism to others who deplore the entire work, branding its laughable script and effects. The truth I suspect lies midway between these inconsistent comments.

To start with there are always going to be a significant percentage of the population who are affronted by the concept of a young girl being sexually assaulted by a ghost for a prolonged period of time....whether it actually happened or not. This, incidentally IS based on a true story that was itself the grounding for Frank De Felita's top selling book. If the notion is a distasteful one, the chances of you liking the film are slim HOWEVER technically adept it is. As it transpires, Barbara Hershey is remarkably good as Carla Moran, the young lady with a problem neither the Police, the Medical Profession or the supposed experts of the paranormal have much luck with. The rapes and sexual assaults are both graphic and quite worrying. Some loopy reviewer likened them to scenes in the SCREAM and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID films! Huh? I think being taken apart by a psycho with a knife or hook is way THIS side of normal compared to being sexually molested in your own bed! but hey, thats just MY opinion!

For its day THE ENTITY was nearer the edge of hard-core horror than many of its contemporaries. I suspect those who claimed to have "laughed" at the entire thing are having themselves on or at least putting up a front for whatever reason. The film was not laughable! I can understand those who believed the film was exploitive and bordering on the distasteful - but hey, so was SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!

I believe you owe it to yourself to find a copy of this film (a) If you have never seen it or (b) If some reasonably heavy-duty horror scenes appeal to you!

All up I would rate this a 6.6 which probably errs on the side of conservativeness.

Hershey is doing some truly amazing/insane acting. I mean... just watch. I can't think of too many actors that COULD or even would be wiling to ATTEMPT to pull what she's doing off. They would feel too silly.

Again... just watch if you can get your hands on a copy of this. It's very difficult to find.

Carla Moran is violently raped by a seemingly invisible force. She tried to tell the people around her about what has happened but finds only resistance as her family and friends don't believe her as she didn't see who assaulted her especially when she says that her house was locked up when it happened and the assailant seemingly vanished into thin air.

Frank De Felitta's bestselling book based on a true story (the case of Doris Bither) translates very well to the big screen with Barbara Hershey cast as Carla doing a phenomenal job in invoking the terror of a woman going through something very real but undertaken by someone or something very unreal. Apparently Bette Midler, Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Jill Clayburgh were all offered the role but declined.

Sidney J. Furie's film stands alone as a one-off film of a one-off case that most people will have thought of as too much of a tall story to be true.

Carla not being believed can also be seen as an allegory of something that far too many women (and men) go through when they find the courage and strength to report a rape or sexual assault- that their horror isn't over yet as they try to seek justice whilst being met with an unfeeling and cruel judicial system that views their account with scepticism and disbelief. If it actually makes it to a court of law they will be made to relive their trauma. Those opposing them will try to disprove and belittle the magnitude of what they've been through. Or they will try to convince a jury that it didn't happen at all.

The film all too harrowingly shows the full horror of what Carla goes through when she is raped and does a great job of showing the trail of very disturbing signs when the spirit or entity is approaching (objects shaking, a certain odour that permeates the surroundings Moran is in, a very sudden drop in temperature). Hershey's performance, just like the film in general, never slides into TV movie melodramatics or sensationalism.

There needs to be special mention to Charles Bernstein's insistent, pulsating and truly shocking score that is perfect for the movie and it's subject matter. There are also echoes of the music he would write three years later for a new film called A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Also the special effects for the scenes in which Moran is molested by the invisible force are very effective indeed. For one sequence a body cast of Hershey was made that was manipulated by currents of air to make it look like the invisible entity was touching her. It succeeds eerily well. Stan Winston supervised the practical effects.

The effects also come into their own when Carla meets professionals who actually believe her story and work in the field of parapsychology. But to tell you more about this would make me tiptoe into spoiler territory...

When the film opened it was met with protests from those who thought that such a film was exploiting such a serious topic as rape. Hershey actually defended this claim and voiced that herself and the filmmakers had actually worked hard not to make the film exploitative and to display the true horror of sexual assault and rape.

All in all a terrifying film that still feels underrated and excluded from serious writings regarding 80's horror.

Actually, "The Entity" isn't a haunted house movie as much as it is a haunted person movie since the ghost or "the entity" only follows the main character around. What makes this movie darker than say "Poltergeist" is that we hardly ever see the demon that causes all the trouble. We only see what it does and that's raping its poor victim without remorse.

A story such as this could easily have become campy, especially since it was made in 1981. Surprisingly, "The Entity" still holds up very well. The performances are convincing, the characters are believable and the special effects are reduced to a minimum. The whole script comes dangerously close to losing its balance when in the last third of the movie a team of parapsychologists turns up and has some "really rad ideas" on how to destroy The Entity. However, thankfully the movie doesn't go too much over the top.

The weak points of "The Entity" are that it's not too scary and too long, both for the sake of maintaining veracity since this is supposedly based on a true story. As a horror movie it could have used better pacing and some jump scenes. The score is minimalist in that it's only a thunderous beat that kicks in as soon as The Entity turns up. What worked well in "The Thing" is a bit too little here. The same can be said about the ending. An open ending can be a good thing, but there should at least come a satisfying climax before it and at the end the main character's situation should have changed for better or for worse. "The Entity" kind of just stops without the heroine achieving anything.

A remake by Hideo Nakata is in the works and it seems to be a good idea to hand the project to an Asian director as the rawness of the story would probably get lost in the hands of an American. Here's one original movie that can be bettered as much as it could be worsened. We'll see what happens.

I never heard about the case before (and I'm too lazy to do further research) but if this story, like it claims, is indeed based on factual events, then it really is one of the greatest supernatural mysteries in the history of mankind! Barbara Hershey stars, in what unquestionably is the role of her life, as the struggling mother of three children who gets (sexually) assaulted – repeatedly – by an invisible spirit everywhere she goes. The inexplicable attacks naturally affect Carla's social life and pretty soon her sanity as well. When seeking for help, Carla becomes the desired study-object of scientists in several different branches, but none of them really cares for the woman's growing agony, since they're all defending their own obnoxious "theories". The theme and background of this remarkable film are a bit similar to Steven Spielberg's blockbuster "Poltergeist", but that's pretty much where the comparison stops. The supernatural "horror" in Poltergeist is childish nonsense compared to the genuinely devastating and often disturbing footage featuring in this film by Sidney J. Furie. The scenes in which Hershey's character is defenselessly thrown around the room are truly rough and the sight of her being raped by something you cannot see makes you feel very, VERY uncomfortable. Despite the sleazy-sounding premise that, in the hands of other directors, easily could have resulted in an overly exploitative and graphic picture, "The Entity" is very suspenseful and compelling. I'm not even sure this movie fully qualifies as horror, as it feels a lot more like psychological drama and – at times – even like a portrait of pure feminist power. Carla Moran is such a strong woman and determined to survive this nightmare, whereas all the male characters in the story are either stubborn egoists or insensitive bastards. Their insufferable personalities are brilliantly illustrated by the camera's reluctance to picture them! The male characters in "The Entity" are often just voices off the screen or partial faces in sequences dominated by Barbara Hershey's image, which is a really efficient trick actually. You can't possibly develop sympathy or respect for someone you can't initially see and, by the time they fully appear on screen, it's too late already. The film delivers great shocks, surprises, uncanny music and special effects and the wholesome is overall very tense. Whether truthful or not, the screenplay approaches the bizarre supernatural events with great respect and inserts absolutely no humorist situations or satirical disbelief. It's a little hard to stomach sometimes and two hours of intense substance like this perhaps is too long, still, it's an impressive piece of 80's cinema.