The Entity
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Actor: Barbara Hershey, David Labiosa, George Coe, Margaret Blye, Ron SilverDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of The Entity
DVD Review: Barbara Hershey and the case of the spectral groper...
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Cookieman108
By 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.
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