A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I'm watching this in 2016 for the first time (when this movie was realized I wasn't even born) and I can honestly say that is one of the best I ever seen about this genre. I truly loved poltergeist, but this one has something special. Is disturbing and beautiful at the same time. Which other movie has sexual harassment performed by a strange ghost, that is living in your house, around your family, your kids.. around you. And you don't even now if believe in this entity till the end, you got two points of view and you can't even understand which is the real one (do you think is obvious that there is an entity? You're wrong. Just put yourself in a character). If we want to add that is inspired by a true story, we can make it more terrifying. There are few scenes that you can't easily forgot. Maybe for someone is granted and obvious, but we are talking about a movie made in 80's. Was one of founders of this kind of movie, and if today we got Paranormal Activity or ESP is just thanks films like this. All the today paranormal movies must learn something from this one.

I knew this was kind of scary movie, and from the title it suggested something to do with the paranormal, and being one I had heard of a few times I was definitely up for giving it a go, directed by Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace). Basically Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is an ordinary single mother, one night she is violently attacked and raped, but the assailant is invisible. Carla talks about her experience to her family and friends, but she is shunned and they think she has gone, so she speaks to a psychiatrist, Dr. Phil Sneiderman (Ron Silver), she tentatively agrees to undergo therapy. Another attack occurs, Carla is left with bite marks and bruises, but with past traumas in her childhood and adolescence, including sexual and physical abuse, teenage pregnancy and the violent death of her first husband, the doctors believes she has inflicted them on herself. However, Carla's children witness an attack for themselves, Dr. Sneiderman urges her to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital for observation, but she refuses, instead turning to parapsychologists, they witness several paranormal activities and agree to study the home. Carla is reassured that she is being taken seriously, and after more attacks and studying, she agrees to to participate in an elaborate parapsychologist experiment, a full mock-up of her home is created to lure the entity into a trap, they will attempt to freeze the spirit in liquid helium. The experiment goes ahead, Carla does indeed have the unseen being attempting to attack her, it is frozen and trapped in a mass of ice, Dr. Sneiderman finally believes her, it eventually breaks free and vanishes. Carla returns home, and the end text says that the entity remains present, but the attacks have become less frequent and less severe than previously. Also starring David Labiosa as Billy, George Coe as Dr. Weber, Margaret Blye as Cindy Nash, Jacqueline Brookes as Dr. Cooley, Richard Brestoff as Gene Kraft and Michael Alldredge as George Nash. Hershey gives a very good performance as the innocent woman suffering at the hands of invisible demonic force, other characters question if she is crazy for a while, of course they realise the terror is real, there is only a little special effects stuff, but the tension of this complex chiller is ramped up at the right moments, overall it is an atmospheric enough "fact-based" psychological and supernatural horror thriller. Worth watching!

Way back in the 70s and 80s, when I was just a young feller, I enthusiastically devoured horror novels by the ton. The large majority of them were called "The (Noun)", and Frank de Fellita wrote several of them including The Entity, duly filmed in 1982.This purports to be an adaptation of true events whereby a young mother is repeatedly raped by an unseen demonic entity of some sort. Her appeals for help bring her the attentions of a psychologist who thinks it is all in her head, and parapsychologists who believe her. They, like us, have seen that it is real.The film does not present us with the question of whether she is doing this herself, there is no question that this is all genuine. The double drama is a) whether she can be saved, and b) who will win the rationality vs parapsychology battle.In a dramatic, but not particularly horrific, movie, Barbara Hershey is excellent as the terrified but defiant young woman. Ron Silver is massively annoying as the bull-headed psychologist. The special effects, good in their day, are now a bit hokey, especially the prosthetic body used to show invisible fingers at work. And the climax is a bit, "Oh. And...?"

I remember seeing the VHS video cassette for this film with a beautiful, buxom, naked (or at least topless) dark haired woman lying on her back with her hands held behind her head as if in the throes of surrender/sexual bliss with lightning crackling overhead. It obviously did the trick and intrigued me enough to read the blurb on the back of the case which seemed to belong to an altogether different film. It was probably the semi-pornographic poster which earned the feminist condemnation of the production, I doubt if they'd actually seen the movie they'd feel the same, there's not a hint of eroticism in any of this and indeed Barbara Hershy makes a strong, likable and brave heroine although I do wonder about Eddie Murphy's famous joke of 'Why don't they just get out of the house?' It is effectively terrifying and I must confess I fast-forwarded through all the rape scenes. Ron Silver is also good in the period before he got typecast playing slimeballs and villains (I guess in 1982 you could still have a beard like that and be a hero?). The ending is effectively ambiguous in keeping with the rest of the film. As for real life? The scientists did witness and even photograph some strange and as yet unexplained phenomena but nothing definitive and the whole scene where they tried to freeze the Entity was invented. It still stands out though as one of the most puzzling alleged supernatural incidents of all time with no easy explanation.