Movie Review - The Entity (1982)

The Entity - 1982

 

Carla Moran: All right. All right, bastard. I've finished running. So do what you want. Take your time - buddy. Take your time. Really, I'm thankful for the, uh... rest. I'm so... tired of being scared. So it's all right, it really is, it's all right. You can, uh, do anything you want to me, you can, uh, torture me, kill me, anything. But you can't have me. You cannot touch me.
[pause]
Carla Moran: That's mine.

 

I have to ask as i start this review, but what is it about scary movies of the 80s !! they are brilliantly more scary then anything i have ever seen since the year 2000 hit, it was like technology gave people a liscenes to make movies choke full of gory blood spilling scenes and the ever constant 'fake' jump scares that they forget the REAL scares, not like in the 80s, those ever present stalking scenes done so well it DOES leave you scared.

 

Thus brings me to this film, the entity, the first 3rd of the movie does scare me, it had me shivering and wanting to cower under the blankets with my ralph the dog (the toy ive had since i was like 6 or 7) and a flashlight, it had me for a few nights afterwards having to turn on the lights when i went to the toilet instead of my usual falling out of bed and tripping on things in the dark !, i think the ESSENCES (pun intended hehe) of this movie boils down to the story line of a mother of 3 Carla Moran is being haunted by and subsequently raped repeatedly by some unseen entity.

 

 

I think everyone who has ever seen and reviewed this movie has said it, and i will say it again, hats off to Barbera Hershey for her portrayl of Carla Moran, she does such a tremendous job with this role, and its what makes this movie so damn scary, from the first scenes of Carla first rape where she's thrown onto the bed and a pillow is shoved over her head, her eldest son comes running in and carla is screaming that there's someone in the room still, but upon looking around her son finds no one or any sign that anyone was ever there, and from that moment it esculates into some very intense creepy moments in the film, the bathroom rape where the doors swing shut and she can't get out, to the point where she finds herself so sexually stimulated as she had been asleep when it occured, you see the pure fear in her eyes at that point, and you FEEL it too as you watch her.

 

She is a strong woman, but whats happening to her would break ANYONE even the STRONGEST woman on the planet and even in NORMAL circumstances rape is a horrible thing, but under these circumstances its terrifying even more because she cannot explain it, which we experiances when she goes to see a doctor and he tries to come up with all manners of ways to explain whats happened to her, but she shows him CLEAR bruises all over her body that are physically IMPOSSIBLE for her to have done to herself, at one point the doctor even goes to far as to accuse her son of the rapes just to be able to come up with some plausable explination.

 

at this point we seem the termoile going on inside of Calra she starts to wander herself if she's really going crazy and as the audiance i started to wander it too, but at the height of her 'am i or aren't i' we get escualting scenes of attack from the Entity and this is where it starts to creep me out, especially for a movie made in the early 80's there is some nudity in which we see someone touching or i should say groping at Carla naked breast, but there is NO ONE else in the room but her and yet you can clearly see someone it doing something to her, that scene had me shivering so much, it had me BELIEVING it was real and she wasn't just going crazy.

 

 

Though slowly towards the end of the movie i find it loses a bit of steam, especially with the introduction of paranormal investigators at a university who Carla happens to bump into at a book store, she tells them her story and they dont know whether to believe her or not at first until they witness something they cant deny as seen in the picture above, they take photos and take them back to their professor i guess she is i didnt really know who she was compared to who they were, but basically they show her the pictures and she gives them the go ahead to investigate more.

 

by this point Carla has stopped going to her doctor, and he rocks up at her house to check on her, she pretty much blows him off putting all her trust into these paranormal investigators and this is where the movie peters off for me a bit, the creepiness of her being alone and being attacked gives way to scenes of the blue sparks appearing, you can see the cracks in Carla sanity are starting to show and the doctor honestly thinks she delusional and everyone around her is helping to fed her delusions thus keeping it alive !

 

basically by this point we get some big experimental ending in the university where the paranormal invesitgators are from, and then we get a shot of Carla packing up her car and moving away, which then right at the end the movie proceeds to tell us that it was all based and actual events, that happened to some lady in like 1974, and that to this day (or eg 1982 not now) the events are still accuring thou these accurances have slowly decreased in frequency over time.

 

I do honestly have to say that the start of this movie right up till we get the 'paranormal investigators' is fairly creepy, you cannot deny the amazing job that has been done on this movie, especially the acting of Barbera Hershey, the whole plot between Carla and the Doctor holds up well i think to, it gets you to look it from the point of view of a stranger/someone else that maybe it is all in her head, that her years growing up thinking sex was wrong, and a number of other numerous 'sexual' encounters throughout her life all lend to this point, to making up delusions in her head.

 

the rape scenes within this movie are somewhat vicious at times, and decidedly scary i think for any woman watching this its more confronting then watching any other normal ghost story out there, it's something we live with a fear of throughout our lives and especially in todays culture its so much more prominet which i think is why this movie stands the test of time and is scary in those moments to this day.

 

 

I recommend a watch of this movie, if only just to see how well done it is, especially for its time. between the acting and pacing and the scares it really does give ya a little bit of hebbie jebbies, but i do think it should also come with a warning, it can be a very conforting movie, as much as it is scary it also have that very real element of society, the questions we all have about our own sanity is one thing, but how do you know for sure your bat shit crazy, or your really being raped by a unseen entity !