Trailer
Plot summary
An invisible assailant attacks Carla Moran in her Los Angeles bungalow, and the poltergeist activity that follows makes her take her children to stay with her friend Cindy Nash. The next day her car goes out of control in traffic. Cindy urges her to see a psychiatrist, and Carla agrees to therapy with Dr. Sneiderman. Bite marks and bruises from a bathroom attack sit in places she could not have reached, but he believes she made them herself. She describes childhood abuse, a pregnancy as a teenager and a first husband who died violently. He traces the attacks to that past, while she is certain something is in the house.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Entity (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before Barbara Hershey was cast as Carla Moran just ten days before shooting began, the part was offered to Jill Clayburgh, Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Bette Midler, all of whom turned it down.
- The story was based on the 1974 case of Doris Bither, a woman who claimed an invisible assailant repeatedly sexually assaulted her; her case was documented by doctoral students in the now-defunct parapsychology department at the University of California, Los Angeles.
- For the scene in which Carla's naked body is groped, the crew, supervised by Stan Winston, used a latex dummy with suction cups inside so they could make it look like fingers pressing into flesh; only Hershey's head was above the bed. The dummy cost $65,000.
- On its release in the United Kingdom, women's rights groups protested the film's graphic depictions of sexual assault. Barbara Hershey publicly answered them, saying the filmmakers had worked hard not to make it exploitative and calling rape "murder of a sort".
- During filming, director Furie cut a subplot about overt incestuous feelings between Carla and her son Billy, including a dream sequence from the screenplay in which Carla fantasized about taking her son's virginity.
- Actor David Labiosa accidentally broke his wrist while filming a scene in which his character is thrown backward by the entity, halting the shoot; he was then written out of several scenes.
