The Entity

Sidney Furie’s (The Ipcress File, with Michael Caine)1982 film The Entity is "based on a true story", adapted by Frank De Felitta into a novel and subsequently a film screenplay. The actual case of Doris Bither, otherwise known as the Entity Hauntings, is a sad story that most likely had no true connections to supernatural phenomena; however, The Entity as an adaptation certainly enhances some of the events of those “hauntings” into a surprisingly adept look at emotional and psychological trauma and the plight of a single mother attempting to understand her real phenomena while being unknowingly misled by modern science unwilling to allow for mystical acts of nature.Barbara Hershey (Hannah and her Sisters, Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha) plays the afflicted woman Carla, who, as the film explains, has experienced her own fair share of psychological and physiological abuse in her past. The first half of the film finds Furie focusing on Carla’s interviews with Dr. Sneiderman (the always great (RIP) Ron Silver, Reversal of Fortune, Blue Steel and co-star of Chuck Norris' horror/chop-socky hybrid, Silent Rage) after she experiences a supernatural rape and nonsexual assaults. The psychological focus allows the audience to understand Carla as a protagonist and also gives reasoning why she would be left open to these kinds of paranormal attacks; it also forces the viewer to question whether Carla’s experiences truly are part of her own psychic hallucinations.Both Silver (he'll be missed) and Hershey (an early "adult" role - she was usually cast as a hippy - adopting the name "Barbara Seagull" during her marriage to David Carradine didn't help) give great performances and play off of each other very well. The first hour of the film is some of the most rich and rewarding, not only because of the various attacks in Carla’s home – all quite disturbing due to their sexual nature, sometimes taking place in front of her young children – but also because the film brings up interesting questions about how to define real and imagined trauma. There is a moment, though, where The Entity presents two paths the film could travel. One is more problematic, that Carla truly is hallucinating these events making her a weak character that is a constant victim.However, De Felitta and Furie choose to take the film in a different direction, treating the entity as a literal manifestation of a dark force and dropping the psychological exploration in the second hour for a paranormal investigation. While some may not like the direction, it is arguably the better decision: the paranormal entity is a real force for Carla to overcome and not some psychological trauma that she has carried with her over time, and it allows her character to strengthen and progress from the timid woman at the beginning of the film.In this sense, The Entity showcases a great example of a fully realized woman throughout. Hershey’s character has overcome past abuse; she’s forged a life for herself and her kids despite some bad experiences; and at the end of the film, she’s found a strength in battling the entity despite its constant presence in her life, even after the film ends. There’s no perfect resolution in The Entity, and Carla’s hauntings presumably continue; but Furie shows us that she’s figured out how to confront the beast, like waging a war. It’s indicative because of the entity’s only piece of dialogue throughout the film: “Welcome home, c***.” It seems sinister, but more than that, it’s a verbalized threat meant to scare because the entity’s actions no longer affect Carla the way they used to. There’s a powerful motif here, and thankfully it doesn’t rely on Carla’s past vulnerabilities.Furie’s film is often spooky and disturbing, with some great special effects from the legendary Stan Winston and his crew. Charles Bernstein helps by providing a memorable score, and the cast puts in an excellent performance. The Entity might not have the same visceral scares as The Exorcist nearly ten years before it, but its more sexual focus is a welcome addition to the paranormal genre. In many ways, this is an overlooked gem in the horror genre (though many seem to be appreciating it more and more).The extras and specs:NEW Inner Strength – an interview with actress Barbara Hershey - still looking great - you'd never recognize her performance as Mila Kunis' psychotic stage-hag of a mother from Black Swan.NEW Seeing Is Believing – an interview with actor David LabiosaNEW High Dread – an interview With Composer Charles BernsteinNEW Spirits & Sprocket Holes – an interview With Editor Frank J. UriosteNEW Audio Commentary with author/filmmaker Daniel Kremer (Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films)Trailers From Hell - The Entity with audio commentary by Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria - 2018)The Entity Files Featurette (about 45 minutes). One of the better "making of" extras that buyers of physical media love and expect.Theatrical TrailerTV SpotsRadio SpotsStill GalleryAudio: DTS-HD Master Audio Stereo 2.0, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, DTS-HD Master Audio 4.1Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

I discovered this on HBO one night back in the late 80's and it scared the ever lovin' hell out of me! It easily ranks right up there with the likes of 'The Haunting', 'The Exorcist' and 'The Changeling' as a ghost story that's guaranteed to raise goosebumps.It tells the supposed real life tale of Carla Moran, played wonderfully by Barbara Hershey, an otherwise ordinary woman and single mother struggling to raise her three children who is suddenly violently attacked and sexually assaulted in her bedroom one night. But this is no ordinary case of rape, the assailant was not a human being but rather an invisible and powerful demonic force that has, for whatever reason, targeted her.The attacks continue in both frequency and ferocity until she involves a team of paranormal investigators to help rid her and her home of this unholy spirit before it escalates any further. The film also stars Ron Silver as a well meaning but disbelieving psychologist who finds himself at odds with the parapsychologists who he believes are doing nothing but enabling her and doing her more harm than good.The Blu-ray of the film looks fantastic, the film is presented in it;s original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 anamorphic even though the case mistakenly lists it as being 1.85:1, I mention this so that people won't panic thinking that the film is presented wrong and return their discs, rest assured the film is correctly presented.All in all a fantastic release for a screamingly fantastic horror film, there are no extras to speak of but that's okay, the film is given a solid presentation which is all that matters.

Great movie! Good condition! Enjoyed it!

The Entity (1981), a fictionalized account based on a `true' incident, relates a tale of how a single mother in California suffered brutal attacks by unseen forces. Taken from the popular novel by Frank De Felitta and directed by Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Iron Eagle, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace), the film stars Barbara Hershey (Hoosiers, Tin Men). Also appearing is Ron Silver (Silkwood), George Coe (The Omega Code), Margaret Blye (Mischief), Jacqueline Brookes (Ghost Story), Richard Brestoff (The Man with Two Brains), Raymond Singer (Feds), Alex `Moe Green' Rocco (The Godfather), Natasha Ryan (The Amityville Horror), Melanie Gaffin (Armed and Dangerous), and David Labiosa, whom many may be familiar with from his appearance as the character of Antonio the busboy from the "Seinfeld" episode The Busboy.Carla Moran (Hershey) is a single mother, who works during the day and goes to school at night, drives a funky car and lives in a funky rental house with her three children. After returning home one night she suffers a brutal, penetrating attack by an unseen aggressor, one that's real enough to her to believe her attacker is a corporeal being in the house (he's not). Her oldest son Bill (Labiosa) writes it off as a bad dream, but the amorous, groping, invisible entity soon returns on a regular basis causing Carla to think she possibly losing her marbles, to which she seeks professional help from a psychiatrist named Dr. Sneiderman (Silver). As Sneiderman begins probing Carla's background he believes the attacks are all apart of some delusion, stemming from her sketchy past, but the incidents continue and grow in intensity, eventually witnessed by others around Carla, including her children (at one point she suffers various bruises and bite marks upon her body). Eventually a disillusioned Carla, after a falling out with Sneiderman, comes into contact with a couple of university funded parapsychologists named Gene (Brestoff) and Joe (Singer) who later witness some of the strangeness, and they agree to get involved not only to document the powerful force but to also help Carla, much to Dr. Sneiderman annoyance who thinks such intervention by those he presumes quacks will only feed the delusion. Anyway, as the unusual activity continues the parapsychologists look for a way to isolate and immobilize the force, resulting in a grand and elaborate experiment in a university gymnasium where they use a willing Carla as the bait (once Sneiderman gets wind of what's going on, he flips his proverbial lid and tries to intervene), the hope being to capture that force which they believe to have crossed over from another plane of existence (apparently looking for a good time).I'm not a big believer in the supernatural but I am perfectly willing to admit there's a lot of stuff going on out there that we, for some reason or another, just can't explain. Whether or not part or most of what's relating in this film actually occurred I do not know, but it certainly made for an interesting and unnerving film, especially if you like well developed ghost stories with an intellectual slant. I thought Ms. Hershey did a really wonderful job portraying a woman fighting to keep her wits, struggling to come to terms with those who would have her believe her very real experiences were all just a product of her fractured mind. One aspect of the film I really enjoyed was the animosity displayed between the established medical community, represented by Dr. Sneiderman, and the pseudo science of the paranormal, represented mainly by Gene and Joe, whom, by the way, were a real couple of nerdlingers (check out the scene when they're in Carla's bedroom and some static electricity appears in the air...the both dive for the floor in fright). There's one sort of funny scene when Sneiderman's in a staff meeting with his peers with Carla present, and after she leaves nearly everyone lights up (one guy's smoking a pipe, another a cigar, and most of the rest pull out cigarettes). I'm not entirely sure why I found this humorous, but perhaps it has something to do with seeing all these medical professionals engaging in an activity we now know to be detrimental to one's health. Anyway, I thought the film, which ran just over two hours, was pretty solid all the way around, including the flow of the story, the special effects (which were understated enough to appear real), the performances, and the direction. Furie and his cinematographer Stephen H. Burum (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) did employ some interesting camera slanted angle shots and tight close ups, most likely to create a heightened sense of tension, and they usually worked, on me at least. As I said the film runs just over two hours, and I thought the time was used well. The only element I thought a little off was the ending, during the grand experiment meant to try and capture the entity. I won't go into specifics but despite not being familiar with the source material, I highly doubt this `Ghostbusters' sequence was something that actually took place. Most likely it was a spectacular element tacked on to the film in an effort to provide a whiz-bang of a finale. It was interesting, but it felt at odds with the rest of the story in terms of up until that point there felt a certain sense of disturbing realism steeped in the fantastic, whereas the ending moved into the realm of the ultra fantastic. I did like their train of thought in as far as how they were planning to capture the entity, but, again, it didn't seem to fit well with everything that occurred previously given most of what's depicted is supposedly culled from actual events. That's not to say the ending ruined the film, but only that it takes away slightly from everything else that came before.The picture on this Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD release, presented in widescreen (2.35:1), enhanced for 16X9 TVs, looks very sharp and clean, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround comes through very well. Extras include a newly created and entertaining documentary titled The Entity Files (27:28) featuring a real life parapsychologist named Dr. Barry Taff who shares some of his experiences (he was involved in the true life events from which provide the basis of the film), a theatrical trailer, a poster and still gallery, and an original screenplay accessible as a DVD-ROM feature.Cookieman108By the way, I saw on the Internet Movie Database website there's a remake of this film in the works, tentatively scheduled for a 2008 release. No word as of yet who might appear in the film, but Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Ringu 2) is listed as the director.