(14) THE ENTITY (1982)

 

A supernatural horror film which makes what is often subtext in other horror films into its text (or super-text?) – sexual violence against women.

Alternatively, it’s the most infamously hilarious line in comics, from Jim Balent’s Tarot Witch of the Black Rose – “You have to get out of here! Your v*gina is haunted” – but as horror.

To be fair, there was a subliminal horror in that line which is made, ah liminal (or is that superliminal – heh, love using the same joke twice) in The Entity. If you didn’t pick it up, it’s in the first part of that line – “You have to get out of here!”. And go where?

There’s the horror – it’s not like a haunted house she can just leave. That is essentially the horror of the film, where the titular invisible and malevolent poltergeist-like being doesn’t limit itself to being a noisy spirit smashing up things in the house but instead repeatedly assaults a single mother in Los Angeles.

One might think that’s horror enough in real life – indeed in some ways the film works better as a metaphor for that real life horror, particularly when it comes to a complainant having her complaint heard and believed. However, it’s a film that sticks with you, mainly from its shocking subject (which even has a term, at least in its broader meaning, of spectrophilia) and the compelling performance by Barbara Hershey as the entity’s target Carla Moran.

Apparently it was adapted for the screen by Frank De Felitta from his 1978 novel of the same name – and to make it more creepy, based on or inspired by the 1974 case of Dora Blither, who claimed such attacks on herself in real life.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)