'THE ENTITY'........A GHOSTLY RAPIST SETTLES ON ONE VICTIM.......

 The Entity (1982)

       Quite some time we'd been chasing after this one for a re-watch but found it constantly elusive to get ahold of.....until, wonder of wonders, it popped up in the Amazon Prime lineup.

       And like many of the rediscovered horror movies of the 1980's, it still packs a hell of a punch, brimming with jump scares, constant dread, skilled performances and even some all-out special effects spectacle.

         Unlike Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper's 'Poltergeist', released the same year, 'The Entity's not designed to give you a popcorn-munchin' chuckles 'n chills rollercoaster thrill ride.

         This movie traffics in pure unadulterated terror and unease......it's not interested in showing you a good time. Just a frightening one...

          Inspired by a true 1974 paranormal case history, it's a hellish tale of lower middle class working mom Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey, superb in the role....)

           Carla's ill-fated marriage and other random hook-ups have given her a teenage son Billy (David Labiosa) and two small daughters. One night, an invisible presence slaps her and subjects her to a brutal sexual assault. 

           And it's only the beginning of subsequent, increasingly violent rapes, often accompanied by poltergeist-ish breakage of windows and furniture. Whatever this ghastly thing is, it's filled with rage....and foreplay is not its forte. Possibly a stand in metaphor for all the abusive, defective men in Carla's checkered past.

           Increasingly panicked and distraught, Carla turns for help from best friend Cindy (Margaret Blye) and then psychiatrist Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver).  As Sneiderman becomes deeply concerned and worried over Carla's torments, he staunchly rejects any paranormal theories as rubbish and fakery. He's convinced that Carla's attacks are self inflicted manifestations of her dark, troubled childhood, including molestations as a child. 

        In desperation, Carla turns to a parapsychology team, who've viewed enough of  the entity's sudden, explosive rampages to believe her. And to Sneiderman's outrage and worry, Carla allows the ghost hunters to use her as bait in an elaborate booby trap to freeze the transparent demon in a cascade of liquid helium. 

         Director Sidney J. Furie ("The Ipcress Files", "Lady Sings the Blues", "The Appaloosa"), gives the movie the propulsive immediacy it needs. He's more than aided in putting the horror of it all across by his MVP Barbary Hershey (of so many unsung, under-appreciated performances in films like "Black Swan", "Last Summer", "Boxcar Bertha", "The Right Stuff", "The Natural" and "The Last Temptation of Christ").

           Hershey combines the heart rending vulnerability of her character with an ingrained core of steel that's startling when it comes out of her.....(after the repeated assaults, she dares to provoke the entity with contemptuous disdain.). The film's last encounter between Carla and her unseen predator leaves an audience with a sardonic close-out and maybe, just maybe a slight bit of hope.

          We don't want to forget finishing up this  review without mentioning composer Charles Bernstein's most adept help in driving up the scare quotient.......scoring the horrific assaults with relentless, pounding percussion, a real soundtrack of nightmares.

            All horror movie completists should seek this one out if you haven't done so already. If you need more shivers and chills for chilly nights, "The Entity" remains at your service.

           4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2).

    

  

         

             

MIDWEEK GLADNESS WRAP-UP..... ........BREAKING NEWS......U.S.A. SAVED.

 

'NUMB WERE THE BEADSMAN'S FINGERS'.....FAREWELL TO A BELOVED CHILD DETECTIVE AND HER GIFTED CREATOR.....

 Numb Were the Beadsman's Fingers by Alan Bradley (2026)

     So torn as to what the tone of this 5 star review should be. I want to convey the enthusiasm at how much I loved this book, but at the same time feel deeply saddened about the passing of its author Alan Bradley. As delightful as this latest (and last) Flavia de Luce mystery is to read, I couldn't escape the aura of melancholy I felt even as I enjoyed every page of it........including the brief poignant farewell left by the author, filled with his signature wit and wisdom.

     In her incredibly eventful yet still brief lifetime, irrepressible, ultra-precocious 12 year old Flavia has managed to close the case on 11 previous confounding mysteries in and around her post World War 2 countryside estate. With her faithful crime solving gardener cohort Dogger, she now faces a truly bizarre, baffing puzzle surrounding the death of a nun from a silent Order. It appears that the late Sister Garance hid a startling secret about herself and her dark past contained far more than anyone could imagine.

     Flavia and Dogger's investigations into the nun's strange death lead them all the way back to the turbulent, violent Klondike Gold Rush of the late 19th century. With the help of recollections from one of the surviving Klondike adventurers, Flavia delves into a past brutal world of thievery,, betrayal, and murder amid the lethally arctic cold more dangerous than the greedy men who live in it.

     Along the way to an ultimate solution, the good hearted Flavia cherishes her time with the worldly wise Dogger and copes with the constant drama surrounding her two older sisters and her perpetual constant shadow and nemesis, the little devilish cousin Undine. And as always, author Bradley finds a way to mix humor and heart in every scene.

     I couldn't recommend 'Beadsman's Fingers" more highly and I can only wish Alan Bradley has stayed with us to take Flavia de Luce into adolescence, young adulthood and even middle age. Flavia and her creator will both be sorely missed.

     5 stars (*****).

MONDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP........ONE LAST REMINDER BEFORE YOU GO TO THE POLLS........

 

Tomorrow's your chance to save the United States of America.....

Please be there.

'NIGHT WATCH'......LIZ SEES DEAD PEOPLE..........AND THE MOVIE'S NOT DOING TOO WELL EITHER.....

Night Watch (1973) 

         We nursed high hopes for this one.....only because it sounded like a perfect rainy Sunday afternoon Guilty Pleasure.....

      Its source came from one of those Broadway stage play murder mysteries. You know the ones.....3 or 4 characters, one single stage set, a few jump scares and wrapped up with a delicious twist to make you leave the theater chuckling at the diabolical cleverness of it all.

       A few playwrights specialized in the genre, such as Frederick Knott with his "Dial M For Murder" and "Wait Until Dark" and Lucille Fletcher with "Sorry, Wrong Number" (filmed back in the day with Barbara Stanwick and Burt Lancaster) and our subject for today, "Night Watch". 

         Other playwrights enjoyed having some wicked meta self-mocking fun with the template, such as Anthony Schaeffer's "Sleuth" and Ira Levin's "Deathtrap".

         You can easily understand what attracts the scribes to take a whack at a stage thriller......not all that expensive to produce and if you craft yourself a hit, you scoop up a film deal and endless royalties from touring and amateur productions all over the country.

         But "Night Watch", either as a play or film, never enjoyed that much success. Creaky and obvious, it was designed to let its lead actress wail in hysterics or shriek in terror......much like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and a host of elderly golden age actresses did in that weird 1960's sub-genre of geriatric horror movies. 

        So the attraction here comes from Elizabeth Taylor, still high gloss glamorous as ever at 41. But she was filling up her 1970's dance card with a slate of oddball little movies that few people ever heard of and even less wanted to see. "Night Watch"  offered up her one and only dip in the horror pool, hamming it up and screaming her head off on a dark and stormy night....ooooooooooo.....you could practically hear Liz muttering under her breath, "take that, Bette Davis, eat your oversized eyeballs out......"

       La Liz plays a wealthy uppercrust who spots corpses parked in a chair at the abandoned dilapidated mansion next door. Trying their best to calm her down (and telling her she didn't see what she saw) are her cool-as-a-cod husband (a gaunt Laurence Harvey, beginning to suffer from terminal cancer) and her loyal BFF (Billie Whitelaw, well remembered as the satanic nanny in "The Omen")

        Undeterred by everyone diagnosing her overactive imagination, Liz makes life hell for an exasperated detective (Bill Dean) by demanding repeated searches of the neighboring house. But something's afoot......and it's more than what's stuck on the end of Liz's ankle......

        More or less competently directed by Brian G. Hutton ("Where Eagles Dare", "Kelly's Heroes"), the film dutifully rolls along through all its red herrings and bumps-in-the-night......until THE GREAT BIG GIANT TWIST THAT WE DARE NOT REVEAL.

         ......which, to put it plainly, isn't that much of a big deal. But if nothing else, it gives Liz that golden opportunity to give the movie the full no-wire-hangers Joan Crawford whoopity-doo that it's been promising all along. Whether anyone wants to spend over an hour and a half waiting for the wham-bams......well, that's up to you.

          Taylor completists will want to check this out, of course. And anyone with passing nostalgic pangs for those stage-play thriller adaptations. Just as long as you realize....."Wait Until Dark" this ain't.

                 2 stars (**).

          

          

           

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "LIVE....FROM THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY!" EDITION....

 

BQ visitors:  Hope a terrific weekend is ahead for all of you!  Thanks always for stopping by to check out the blog.....see you next week with more reviews......and maybe (who knows) we'll at long last have begun to forge a path forward to disintegrate the cancer of Trump and Trumpism. Please vote to save the U.S.A.

'OVER THE EDGE'.......THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT......

 Over the Edge (1979)

     Kurt Cobain and more than a few other rock bands felt themselves creatively inspired by this modestly produced but yet explosively provocative little movie about middle schoolers in violent rebellion. 

        But the rebels-without-a-clue in "Over the Edge" were nothing at all like the grimy, gritty tough-as-nails mean streets NYC delinquents  of "The Warriors" and "The Wanderers", also released in 1979.

         The middle class all-white 'Edge' kids, courtesy of their upwardly mobile parents, find themselves plopped down in the arid, remote, depressingly cookie-cutter, 'planned' community of New Granada, Colorado.  With its line-up of mass produced condos sitting in the middle of a flat prairie, the place looks like it could easily serve as a background for those lose-the-will-to-live Antonioni films,  dripping with ennui.

       Literally bored out of their minds, New Granada's youth turn to drugs and random vandalism.  And they're constantly harassed, pursued and arrested by the community's Police Sargent Doberman (no kidding about the name). Played by Harry Northup (one of DeNiro's cabbie buds in 'Taxi Driver), Doberman behaves like one of the cops left over from a 'Billy Jack' movie who'd been kicked in the head by Tom Laughlin....repeatedly.

       What sets apart this film, which over years established itself as a cult favorite, was director Jonathan Kaplan's unerring skill in manipulating his young cast, who appear directly plucked off the streets of 70's suburbia. (In their first roles, you can spot Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano).  

     Kaplan, who began his career grinding out Roger Corman's drive-in sludge, moved on to bigger and better things like "The Accused", "Unlawful Entry" and "Love Field".  But you can see in "Over the Edge what he learned in Corman's do-or-die school of wham-bam exploitation.....swift broad strokes of melodramatic angst with sudden eruptions of startling violence. 

        The kids are unable to connect with parents obsessed by living in their trimmed lawn bubbles. These unthinking adults no doubt expected their kids to behave like cheerful tykes from a TV sitcom, befitting their new plush surroundings. But they're left their children restless and cut off from any real outside cultural stimuli. 

     The community grudgingly gave them a pathetic underwhelming 'teen center' consisting of a few games inside a Quonset hut then yanks it away from them as a punishment tool......

.......thus lighting the fuse for the film's outrageous climax, a spectacle of fiery destruction perpetrated by the kids after they trap their parents inside their school while attending a meeting about the rising tide vandalism.  

      Supposedly inspired by a real incident, this way over the top, practically operatic fireball finale requires a certain amount of belief suspension, but still manages to pack a punch. And along the way, we had to admire director Kaplan and cinematographer Andrew Davis for their use of the stark Colorado landscapes to accentuate the lonely solitary environment the kids find themself  forced into. (Davis would later excel as a director of blockbuster thrillers like "The Fugitive", "Under Siege" and Steven Segal's "Above the Law" and "Under Siege".)

         Well worth seeing by all cinema buffs and easily available on free streaming services. 4 stars (****) for a film that more than earns its cult status.