If you don’t already know, I also write for the website www.cultsploitation.com, and my friend Ryne (The Moon is a Dead World) also reviews releases there. It turns out that Ryne was quicker at watching The Entity than I was, so he was first at writing a review for the Umbrella Entertainment release and to be perfectly honest, his critique reflects almost exactly how I feel about the movie. However, I don’t want to be lazy here and just paste a link to it, as Umbrella Entertainment was kind enough to send me along a copy of The Entity and I would feel terrible if I didn’t say at least something about the release.
Because Ryne expressed the same feelings I have about the movie, I’m not going to waste my time or your time going over everything. Instead, I just want to mention a few things about the movie that I thought was interesting or things I didn’t like.
First up, the biggest thing that stands out about The Entity is Charles Bernstein’s insane score whenever the ghostly Entity shows up to attack Barbara Hershey’s character, Carla. It’s a death metal-esque theme that will have you feeling intense. It truly is one of the most memorable elements of the movie.
Two things that didn’t quite stand out for me was one, Stan Winston’s special effects for the fake nude body. It was just so obviously fake that it zapped some of the intensity out of the scene. The next issue was the ending, where the film just sort of ends with a text blurb explaining a few things and that’s it. Because the movie is based on a “true story,” they think they can just get away with some text to end it, but come on, that’s just lazy.
That’s just a tiny bit of stuff that stood out about The Entity, both negative and positive. Other than that, as I already mentioned, Ryne covers pretty much everything else that I felt about the movie on our sister website cultsploitation.com.
As for the Umbrella Entertainment Blu-ray release, they have done a splendid job on the audio and video. I’ve compared it to the other releases that have come out on Blu-ray, and they are all very similar, which is to say perfectly acceptable. The Extra Features included on the disc are not exactly plentiful, but the 30-minute interview with Charles Berstein is informative. The other feature with Robert McNaughton is short and not much else.
I really enjoyed The Entity. The concept might seem silly, but the execution skips the silliness and gives us a seriously intense story. Umbrella Entertainment’s release is a solid package and is worthy of purchase.