Trumpanzees: Try to at least understand why an overwhelming majority of the country delivered an enormous 'Go F*** Yourself' to your Marmalade Mussolini. Sorry, but there appears to be a new MAGA movement sweeping the land.....Make Assholes Go Away......
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).
Numb Were the Beadsman's Fingers by Alan Bradley (2026)
Please be there.
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 (**).
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.
