THE ENTITY (1981)
Article 3211 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-3-2010
Posting Date: 5-30-2010
Directed by Sidney J. Furie
Featuring Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa
Country: USA
What it is: Supernatural thriller

A woman is being assaulted and raped repeatedly by an invisible demon. She seeks help from both psychiatry and parapsychology.

According to the end crawl, this movie is a fictionalized account of a true story. This means that the movie in and of itself can’t be considered a true story, and one would have to know the true story (whatever it is) to compare with the movie to know what supposedly happened and what has been made up. For what it’s worth, the movie does at least one thing to give it a sense of verisimilitude; true events don’t wrap themselves into tidy, neat little packages, and neither does this movie. Unfortunately, as a result, the movie isn’t quite satisfying since there are a number of things that are never really resolved. Still, the movie does feature a strong performance from Barbara Hershey, and it shows some good insight and intelligence at times. And, given the subject matter, it’s probably about as tasteful as it could be without wimping out altogether. It would have helped had it been a bit shorter than its two hour five minute running time.