Eureka Entertainment, out 15 May

Sidney J Furie’s 1980s horror movie gets a high definition UK release and shows that it has lost none of its impact in the depiction of a woman suffering sexual assault at the hands of an invisible attacker, though there’s no extras to add extra value.

The Entity is one of those early 1980s movies that could easily have been lost among the exploitation video nasties littering the rental shop shelves – a fairly tawdry image of a naked woman adorned the box, writhing in what appeared to be ecstasy as forked lightning crackled around her. I wanted to see it, but I was too young, and I guess that for many underaged would-be viewers it offered forbidden titillation. When I did eventually get round to seeing it, I was glad that I was now old enough to appreciate the seriousness of the subject matter in a mature manner.

Single mum Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is working hard to look after her three children and then one day while she’s in her bedroom she’s pinned to her bed and attacked by an unseen intruder. Her kids are in the house, but no one saw the assailant come or go. A further poltergeist attack and a near car crash convince Carla she needs help, but her psychiatrist (Ron Silver) is determined to rationalise it as hysteria or repressed childhood sexual trauma. Only when she is believed by a group of parapsychologists can she plan to trap and destroy the entity.

Sidney J Furie had what an only be called an eclectic career. Following films like Cliff Richard’s The Young Ones and The Ipcress File, he would latterly direct the Iron Eagle movies and Superman stinker The Quest for Peace. The Entity stands out as the director’s sole supernatural/horror project and maybe this is why it works so well. Eschewing cliched tropes or telegraphed jump scares he treats the movie like a regular domestic drama… and then bad things happen, underscored by Charles Bernstein’s violent crashing outbursts. At just under two hours, this movie is not scared to take its time, meaning that when all hell lets loose we’re sufficiently invested in our heroine.

Hershey is great, keeping it together in the face of disbelief and cynicism. She’s desperately trying to find someone who will believe in her and can’t get her head around why she is the victim of such unbelievable violation. While the movie does not exploit the ghostly rape, it does feature an inventive effect by a young Stan Winston where Hershey’s breasts are groped by invisible fingers and you see the indentation that they make. For a practical effect it’s very effective, and while it’s easy to work out how they did it, it left enough of an impact on the genre to be lampooned in Scary Movie 2.

The electricity/lightning effects in the finale also date the movie, but ultimately the movie succeeds in its performances, which are timeless. As to the ending… if you haven’t seen it yet then I’m not going to spoil things.

Verdict: A ‘true-life’ ghost story gets a Hollywood makeover with the victim enduring the most vicious of attacks. Ignore the tacky poster that suggests a very different movie and instead enjoy some nuanced performances and remember there were times when supernatural thrillers were happy to take their time to breathe, while still delivering on the chills. 8/10

Nick Joy

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