Fitting the subject of this week’s Halloween blogathon by the Movie Morlocks, The Entity is a horror film that truly frightens and disturbs me. After many viewings of this lesser-known film from 1981, I know exactly where all the “scares” are, yet I am still startled by certain scenes and disquieted by the film’s serious themes and subtexts.

The Entity stars underrated actress Barbara Hershey as Carla Moran, a single mother who is repeatedly overpowered and sexually assaulted by an invisible being or force. To be blunt, the title character — a supernatural male entity — rapes her. On the recommendation of a girlfriend, she seeks help from her torment, ending up in the care of knowledgeable but skeptical psychiatrist Dr. Phil Sneiderman, played by Ron Silver. When he refuses to believe her interpretation of what is happening to her, she turns to a group of university parapsychologists who investigate her other-worldly visits by scientific means. Their experiment to flush out the entity and trap it actually endangers her life. In a disturbing ending that is open to interpretation, Carla learns to live with the entity.

I had heard about The Entity years ago, but I put off watching it until it made the rounds of Encore on cable television. Based on the drab title and a lackluster reputation, I didn’t think it would be either good or scary. I should know better than to judge a horror film by its title or its reviews.

The film’s poor reputation stems partly from bad timing. The Entity was released too late to ride the wave of serious horror fare spearheaded by The Exorcist, which established a taste for serious horror drama using contemporary settings, and it did not fit the adolescent-driven slasher genre, which was eating up the box office in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Adult audiences who would have appreciated the serious, “realistic” treatment by a veteran director in addition to the incredible acting by Hershey may have been turned off by the controversial subject matter. The film was picketed by feminist groups who believed The Entity was exploiting rape and violence for entertainment in the manner of the much-reviled slasher flick I Spit on Your Grave (1978). Teens who were flocking to the slasher films, which were gory, sensationalistic, increasingly campy, and focused on the trauma of adolescence, found nothing in The Entity to embrace.

AN ALTERNATE POSTER EXPLOITS THE SEX.

In my opinion, the film’s so-so critical reputation also stems from the fact that 25 years ago, film reviewers were predominantly male. For that matter, they still are. How can a male reviewer possibly empathize with how frightening rape is on a primal level? I would think that male reviewers would realize this and consider the film from the perspective of a female audience. A few DVD reviewers did do that when the film was released for the home-viewing audience, but reviews from the original release are noticeably lacking in insight and sensitivity. The first time Carla is raped, she is winding down after a routine day, ready to go to sleep in the comfort of her own bed in the security of her own home. But, unbeknownst to her, the entity is waiting for her. He attacks her out of thin air, holding a pillow on her face as he brutally assaults her. Carla sees nothing, can’t describe her attacker, and is unsure how this could have happened to her. She is embarrassed and ashamed, and after the first attack, she is never comfortable in her home again. The scene encapsulates the experience of rape victims — the unexpected shock of having a mundane routine disrupted by violence, the terror of being attacked in the security of your own home, the insecurity of never feeling safe again, and the shame of telling people about it. This scene speaks volumes to women viewers, who at one time or another have had to consider or contend with the threat of rape.

BARBARA HERSHEY AS CARLA

There are nine attacks all together, most occurring in Carla’s home. Most are sexual in natural, though the entity tries to kill her during a couple of the attacks. The rapes represent a variety of degrading and humiliating experiences: In addition to being assaulted on her own bed, Carla is raped from behind after being thrown up against the wall in the bathroom; she is attacked while fully clothed in front of her children who are powerless to help her; and while asleep, she is tricked into a having a sexual encounter that she deeply regrets. While Carla is nude during some of the attacks, more camera time is spent on her face, which reveals a woman being terrorized beyond comprehension. I can’t believe that anyone — male or female — would not find these scenes repulsive and frightening.

Director Sidney Furie uses the traditional horror-film style straight from the canon of the German Expressionists to create a tense atmosphere of anticipation and dread. In most of the nine or so attack scenes, dutch camera angles in which the camera is canted or tilted at odd angles telegraph to the savvy viewer that something is not quite right with Carla’s surroundings. Low-key lighting suggests that something unknown is lurking in the shadows or being hidden from Carla, and bar-shaped or web-shaped shadows across her face tell us she is trapped by something beyond her control. And, the occasional use of the subjective camera angle adds a familiar creepiness. There are very few special effects, save for the bolts of electricity that emanate from the entity during some of the attacks. Most of the effects are simple mechanical ones, such as the shaking of objects on a dresser or the destruction of furniture. The tour de force is the mechanical body double developed by legendary effects wizard Stan Winston to represent Hershey’s body during two of the attack scenes. In one scene, the invisible entity touches Carla’s breasts. We see the effect of the monster’s touch on her breast, but we do not see the entity himself. In another scene, a long shot of Carla’s entire nude body on the bed shows the impression of some heavy figure flattening her torso during an assault, but again we do not see the perpetrator.

DUTCH CAMERA ANGLES DOMINATE THE FILM'S VISUAL STYLE.

The use of a traditional horror-film style and the lack of a lot of special and mechanical effects made the film more frightening to me. While I appreciate horror films of all types and styles, I prefer atmosphere and naturalism. An eerie atmosphere creates tension and dread; it is a contemplative style that leads the viewer to anticipate the victim’s plight and to ponder what kind of world we could live in that would create such monsters. And, what kind of world do we live in? Well, according to The Entity, it’s a man’s world.

Carla’s circumstances and the events that happen to her suggest this conclusion. In her back-story, she tells us she was molested by her father, a minister, so she ran away from home when she was 16. She got pregnant by her first boyfriend, a rebellious, motorcycle-riding teen whom she married. But, he was killed in an accident before her son was born. Her next husband was an older man though not necessarily a mature one; he left her with two additional kids without bothering to marry her. When the attacks start happening, the first solution that springs to the viewer’s mind is that Carla should move. But, she can’t afford it because she is a single mother with no child-support holding down a low-paying job while trying to go to school to get a better one. Carla was victimized by her circumstances even before she was victimized by the monster.

Despite her problems, she is an independent, self-possessed woman, who pulls herself together throughout the film, with little help from the men around her. In a lesser film, Dr. Sneiderman might have become a love interest, but instead he tries to control Carla almost as much as the entity does. He instantly diagnoses her problems as hysteria — that age-old, cliched diagnosis that doctors dole out for any female problem they can’t figure out. Carla makes a pact with Dr. Sneiderman. She will consider that the entity is all in her mind and promise to work with him if he promises to still help her if the problem turns out to be paranormal. But, Dr. Sneiderman is so sure he has the answers that he has no intention of considering an alternative. Whenever Carla is in his office, she is shown in a high-angle shot, which makes her seem small and vulnerable, while the good doctor is shot from a low angle so that he looms large and powerful. As their conversations continue, the camera angles become distorted and canted — not unlike those used in the attack scenes. Needless to say, Dr. Sneiderman breaks the pact.

MIRRORS DOMINATE THE SET DESIGN: IS CARLA HIDING SOMETHING?

He brings her case to the other psychiatrists at the clinic, which is a cigar-smoking “boys’ club,” despite the inclusion of a masculine-sounding older woman. The head psychiatrist launches into a long diagnosis, accusing Carla of several embarrassing motivations as though she is some inexperienced teenage girl. Finally, he declares that because she was first married to a teenager and then an older man, she must be afraid of “real sex” with a man her age; therefore, she is inflicting punishment on herself. The whole board agrees. Thank you, doctors. In their last session together, Dr. Sneiderman pushes her to accept this diagnosis, piling on the even uglier accusation that she is sexually attracted to her son. In Carla’s encounters with the doctors, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the many cases in which women have been molested, raped, harassed, or abused, but authority figures refuse to take them seriously until it is too late.

The viewer knows that the doctors’ diagnosis is untrue because Carla has a boyfriend, a salesman named Jerry who keeps promising to give up the road and make a real home with her and the children. We hope that this might “save” Carla, but we suspect otherwise. First, Carla is afraid to confide her situation to Jerry, because she is afraid he will think less of her and leave — a familiar insecurity for women. When she finally does tell Jerry, he doesn’t leave her, but he doesn’t really believe her either. Though she is obviously frightened of something or someone who has sexually assaulted her, Jerry takes the opportunity to give her a slinky nightie that he has just bought her, hoping for sex. “Go put it on,” he coaxes. “Come on, it’s my homecoming!” In the next scene, Jerry witnesses an assault on Carla by the entity, who is obviously jealous and possessive. After dropping Carla off at the hospital, Jerry does end up leaving her because he could not handle the sight of another “male” having his way with his girlfriend – even though it is not Carla’s fault.

Carla’s best friend, Cindy, helps her and her family at several points in the film, but she is hampered by an unsympathetic and rude husband, George. The first night Carla arrives with kids in tow on her friend’s doorstep, Cindy and George argue. When the entity destroys part of George and Cindy’s apartment, George is quick to blame Carla. Cindy stands up to George but often she merely placates him to ease him out of his gruff mood, which is constant. “Here’s your coffee, just the way you like it,” Cindy coos to her husband the morning after Carla’s visit. Any woman who has ever tried to deflect male anger to restore some sense of balance and peace will recognize Cindy’s coping tactic.

Carla’s last resort is a paranormal solution and she seeks help from a university parapsychology department. The department is headed by a woman, with two male investigators handling the specifics of the investigation. Dr. Sneiderman becomes extremely angry that Carla has decided to seek help elsewhere, and he tries to interfere with the ghostbusters’ plans, which smacks of obsession and jealously — not unlike the entity. The parapsychologists believe her, which is a major relief for Carla, and they are also sympathetic, but as scientists, they seem more concerned with getting evidence to prove the existence of the supernatural than they are with solving Carla’s dilemma. Their plan involves re-creating her house in a lab setting, then using her as bait for the entity. When the monster manifests itself, they will trap it with liquid nitrogen. The re-created house, which has no ceilings, looks like a maze, suggesting that Carla is their lab rat. The experiment does not go well, but the scientists do get corroboration of the entity’s existence. Carla, however, goes through the ordeal for nothing.

A PARAPSYCHOLOGIST HELPS CARLA.

The Entity was based on a series of actual events that occurred in the mid-1970s, which made paranormal history. When Frank DeFelitta wrote the book The Entity, he interviewed the real “Carla Moran,” and based his fictionalized account on her experiences. The woman told of being repeatedly attacked by three supernatural beings: One raped her while the other two held her down. Often, she was black and blue from the attacks. According to DeFelitta, the woman was emotionally destroyed by the attacks, and she was investigated by the parapsychology lab of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA headed by Dr. Thelma Moss. The unit captured arcs of light over the victim’s head in photographs, among other evidence, but the haunting was never resolved. The victim moved several times around Los Angeles, before finally relocating to Texas, but the attacks continued.

Fans love to believe that the stories depicted in horror films are based on actual incidents, and studio marketing departments exploit this fact in their promotion of the film. I guess it is more frightening to think that if something paranormal really happened, then it could happen to you. But, I find the allegory behind the monster in The Entity more frightening than the true story. The entity personifies the abuse of women, not only by individuals but also by our social system. The way that Carla is disempowered by (male) experts who represent various social institutions disturbs me with each viewing. Social institutions and those who represent them are supposed to protect us, but that doesn’t always work for women. In the film, religion (Carla’s father), marriage (her first and second husbands; Jerry; George), the medical community (Dr. Sneiderman), and academia (the parapsychologists) refuse to believe her, work against her, or let her down. I am reminded of the high-profile rape and abuse cases of recent years in which women were victimized by their attackers and then let down by the system. Or, on a much smaller scale, if you are a woman who has ever been discounted, disbelieved, or distrusted because you are a woman, you can relate to Carla.

At the conclusion of the film, Carla returns to her house, and the entity is there to welcome her. Carla acknowledges its presence, then goes out the door to meet her children who are returning to the house — as though everything is okay. Like her friend Cindy, or like most women in a man’s world, Carla discovered that she can’t change much about the way the world works. But, she can cope — and there is strength in that.