The Entity

Directed by Sidney J. Furie

Starring Barbara Hershey,Ron Silver,Jaquline Brooks,David Lablosa,George Coe,Margaret Blye,Alex Rocco

The first time I saw this film , I was a lot younger and unappreciative of how scary this truly is. I remember Barbara Hershey's breasts being squeezed and fondled by an invisible hand and being in awe of an unseen phantom getting to second base. I also wondered to myself how this unique special effect was brought to  the screen.

This is a fascinating film based on  a true story of the super natural as it unravels , not in a Gothic mansion in the deep south or a decrepit , broken down castle somewhere in the European mountains. This story takes place in sunny Los Angeles. Carla Moran( Hershey ) is a single mother of three, teen age son Bill, and two young girls Kim and Julie. Carla works hard to make ends meet, she is even trying to better herself by taking a typing course at night school. When we are first introduced to Carla we see her going through the motions of working and then off to night school and finally making her way home , it's late, dinner plates still on the table and the girls asleep in their room.Bill out in the garage working away on some project, he sees himself as the man of the house. Carla is everything to these three kids which adds to the horror of the events that we will witness.

 One night as Carla is preparing for bed, out of nowhere she is violently struck across the mouth causing her lip to bleed  repeatedly attacked and raped by some sort of unseen force. Fleeing the house Carla and her children spend the night at her friend Cindy's apartment. Early the next morning Cindy's unsympathetic husband shows his disdain causing Carla and her family to return back to their home.

Carla seems to attract the attention of men with an agenda for ill disputes and their own personal demons. Carla ran away from home when she was sixteen years old  after  her father,a minister became a little too friendly towards her. Carla's mother knew what was going on but refused to do anything about it. Shortly after moving out she  gives birth to her son Bill. Bill's father begins to abuse drugs and alcohol and finally becomes abusive towards Carla. She is a beautiful woman, single but caring mother who loves her children dearly but has made some bad decisions with her choice of men. Could this be the reason for this "Entity " to be attracted to Carla? She is a good person and you want to wish her happiness with a good man, personally I found myself rooting for the psychiatrist that was recommended by her friend Cindy. Carla deserves someone successful, handsome, somebody unlike the previous men in her life.

Even her current boy friend Jerry Anderson ( Rocco ) is never truly there for her, as he is a traveling salesman and spends a great deal of time on the road. Jerry must be one helluva salesman though,apparently Carla bought his sales pitch. Jerry comes across like a sleazeball and we can't put our trust into him, unfortunately Rocco's  typecasting has seen him play this  kind  of character many times in his career.Even Carla joins us in our doubts when Jerry promises her everything will be better when he is promoted and will no longer need to travel.

Whenever Jerry does return back home from the road for the last time, he brings Carla a present, a piece of sexy lingerie. O.K. guys, we all know when a guy gives his better half some satin and lace it's not for her but for himself. A sign of Jerry's selfishness perhaps. His true colours show when he is in the bathroom prepping himself for a night of passion with the lovely Carla. With his exit from the bathroom and into the bedroom he witnesses first hand the rape of his girl friend by the unseen Entity, and it proves too much for this shallow man. In his defence, any male would be devastated to see his wife, girlfriend or daughter violated like that,one can only imagine the emotions racing through your mind, but again when a doctor exclaims  that Carla will need him, Jerry whimpers " I can't, I can't". Like he was the only person to deal with the horror, what a wuss.

Another man in Carla's life during her violent attacks was Dr. Phil Sneiderman ( Silver ). With her painful previous experiences with the men in her life she needs to be able to trust this one.Sneiderman presented himself as someone who showed compassion towards Carla and genuinely  one who could put an end to her unseen attacker.As it turns out Dr. Phil  is an asshole,he wants to treat Carla's poltergeist entity as a mental illness and even going as far to suggest she is suffering from sexual frustration due to wanting sexual relations with her own teen aged son, Billy.

Looking elsewhere  for a solution to put an end to her attacks , she hooks up with a team of ghost hunters from the local university, the same school where Dr. Phil attends. The parapsychologists set up a replica of Carla's house inside the university's auditorium with hopes of capturing the Entity. During one of these experiments Dr. Phil makes an appearance for one last plea to Carla  to leave the ghost hunters and return for his help. Science vs. the supernatural. I believe the doctor had become obsessed with Carla, but not sure of the reason he was there. Was it because he was falling in love with her or more of his own egotistical determination to convince her it really is all in her head. And prove that he was right all along.

As the tanks of liquid helium or was it nitrogen tanks explode causing the fake Moran house to be engulfed in flames, with Carla  trapped inside, Dr. Phil rushes into the burning building to rescue Carla, does he finally see something unnatural, beyond our world ?

My Final Thought: Where do you go? When it's you and not your house that is haunted. As the end credits read Carla moved from Los Angelos to Texas but the attacks continued, though  not as violent and less frequent.  I can't stop thinking about another film that was recently produced, Insideous. With similer themes at least the film makers had the  decency to cast Barbara Hershey in a  small role.

My Rating: Four Go Go Girls out of Five