The Entity [Blu-Ray]

Sidney J. Furie

BY Scott A. GrayPublished Jul 12, 2012

Few films "based on a true story" deal with the supernatural. Fewer still are supported by anything resembling the multiple sources of corroboration and arguably legitimate study that make the case of Doris Bither a unique and lasting curiosity in the field of parapsychology. Unfortunately, director Sidney J. Furie (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and a bazillion flicks you've never heard of) squanders the opportunity to make anything more than an above-average, salacious haunted house story. The successes of 1982's The Entity rests primarily on the intriguing nature of the actual case, including the way it was documented, and Barbara Hershey's bold and unselfconscious portrayal of Bither surrogate Carla Moran. A single mother of three, all issued from different seeds, Carla is beaten and raped by an unseen assailant in her bedroom while her travelling salesman boyfriend is away on business. Her strapping son leaps to the rescue, but is unable to find any trace of an intruder or how one could have gotten in or out ― chalk it up to a really bad nightmare. That prognosis falters when the next assault happens right in front of her kids. Her son, Billy, again rushing to her aid, is thrown back by an invisible force, breaking his wrist in the process. Unlike typical horror plotting, Carla swiftly seeks psychological counselling with Dr. Phil Sneiderman (Ron Silver, shockingly un-creepy) and has no qualms about plumbing the depths of her obviously damaged psyche. Childhood abuse, substance abuse, abandonment issues, suppositions of repressed sexuality ― there's plenty of fodder for a diagnosis to explain away the spectral rape claim as a literal event. When treatment fails to uncover any repressed memories and the attacks continue, and are further supported when Carla's boyfriend returns to witness some ghostly groping, a panel of psychologists settle on masturbation guilt, with a side of reversed Oedipal urges. As the parapsychology department of a local university gets involved with the increasingly desperate mother, the film never delves into the multiple perspectives available to explain what might be happening, with Furie electing to compose a literal surface interpretation of the events as claimed by Carla Moran, with a frustrating Hollywood super-sizing of certain events, always at the expense of psychological tension. This limited viewpoint, coupled with a laughably overbearing score, deflates the terror of a truly frightening ordeal. The Blu-Ray reissue is as lazy as Furie's vision, not only neglecting to include the documentary from the 2005 DVD edition, but even omitting something as standard as a menu screen.
(Anchor Bay)

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