31 Days of Feminist Horror Films: THE ENTITY + POLTERGEIST
Time and time again, horror films have shown the things we cannot see often end up haunting us the most. Such is the case with THE ENTITY, a powerful film that uses a sexually predatory poltergeist to explore the ways we treat survivors of sexual assault. Released almost four decades ago in 1983, Sidney J. Furie’s film is an indictment of rape culture and the way we dismiss, ignore, and deride women who’ve survived sexual violence.
Based on the real-life case of Doris Bither, THE ENTITY follows Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) a single mother of three who can barely keep up her messy, small house as she rushes from full-time job to night classes, pushing for a better future for her children. One night while putting cream on her pantyhose burn (an occupational hazard of being a single working mom) she’s raped by a supernatural force — this first encounter focuses entirely on Carla’s face, and a lamp that gets knocked from a bedside table, grounding the horror in relatable details. Carla’s unable to comprehend what she’s just experienced, and tells her children that “Mommy’s had a bad dream,” when she knows it was more than that.
She confesses to her best friend, Cindy (Margaret Blye) over coffee, the shot lingering on the close ups of the middle-aged women: “I was raped. I feel all rotten inside. When it was over he vanished like he’d never been there. I’ve flipped out. I’ve flipped out twice.” Cindy urges Carla to see a psychologist, thinking that Carla’s story cannot possibly be true, but Carla can’t afford it, and tries to write the whole thing off. But when she returns to her bedroom, and sees the small details (a broken perfume bottle, shards of mirror glass on the floor, rattling jewelry) of her curated feminine refuge destroyed, and she’s attacked again, Carla can’t ignore the entity that’s attacking her. “It wasn’t a real man that raped you,” Cindy tells Carla, “He evaporated.” Carla knows otherwise.
Pushed to her breaking point after the entity tries to crash her car, Carla relents and goes to see Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver) who’s skeptical from the start. The film shows the grotesque intake process for rape victims, full of prodding examinations, invasive probing, and impossible questions that make the medical treatment of the rape feel like reliving the attack all over again. Dr. Sneiderman’s winking cynicism over Carla’s account is indicative of the way women are treated in the American medical system in the whole, especially when it concerns their mental health.
Carla is barely recovered from her brutal intake visit when the entity rapes her again in her bathroom while she’s just trying to take a relaxing bath. Once again, the camera focuses on Carla’s face during this encounter, but even when she’s left with bruises and bites all over her body (including on her ribs and inner thighs) Dr. Sneiderman still believes Carla has psychosomatically done it to herself as she relives certain phases of her life.
Carla shares her complicated history with him: “Terrible things did happen to me. I didn’t have a normal childhood. But who does?” she tells him of her father’s abuse and notes that her mother knew. At sixteen, Carla ran off to New York, had a child and was a widowed within the same year. “I thanked god when he died,” she says, admitting her adolescent mistake to Sniederman before describing her second husband, an older man, a doctor who was good to her but transitory. Sneiderman of course ascribes Carla’s supposed trauma to lingering daddy issues, and pacifies her by saying “I respect you. Doing what you want, keeping your family together, doing it the hard way,” before giving her tranquilizers and showing her the door. Because she’s been abused before, and because she’s struggled with mental health issues, Carla’s story of ghost rape is all but laughed off — while Carla’s supernatural story is of course a bit sensationalized, we’ve seen the same thing happen to rape victims in the real world time and time again.
Soon afterwards, Carla is horrifyingly assaulted in front of her children, and the entity breaks her eldest son’s wrist. Because of this physical proof, she’s forced to go before a panel of doctors who ask Carla humiliating questions like “Would it be a reflection on you as a woman if [your boyfriend] left you?”, tell her hysteria is contagious, that violent masturbation is probably the cause of the bruises, and blame the attacks on an “infantile reality” that could be cured from “a real man” to satisfy her sexually. It’s an absolutely infuriating scene that’s indicative of the various ways rape victims are put on trial, over and over — their stories are picked apart until they cannot bear to speak them any longer, and they’re forced to give up their pursuit of justice via traditional, institution channels.
Carla also can’t bear to tell her longtime, traveling boyfriend Jerry (Alex Rocco) about the attacks due to fear of how he’ll shame or not believe her. After another attack when the entity rapes her in her sleep (which causes Carla to enjoy the sex to the point of orgasm) she’s forced to return to Sneiderman, who thinks that the best strategy for “treatment” is just to scream at her until she admits the Oedipal issues with her father. When she won’t, Sneiderman callously tells her he’ll suggest a suicide attempt on her intake so that Carla has to be committed. And what can this single mother do except go along with the man in a more powerful position than her own? Carla is absolutely trapped.
Just when it seems that all hope is lost for Carla, she’s attacked while in Cindy’s home. “You saw it?…You see, I wasn’t lying,” she tells Cindy, relieved that her nightmare finally has a real witness. “I’m so sorry I ever doubted you,” Cindy tells Carla and the two team up to begin investigating the cause of the entity, focusing on psychic self-defense. Carla and Cindy’s bond is strong, and allows Carla the strength to fight back when the men around her have dismissed her claims continuously. Thanks to a chance encounter, Carla is able to align with a team of parapsychologists willing to take a look at her case, while Sniederman tries to get her son, wrist still broken, to stop corroborating her “stories.”
After Carla baits it by saying “show yourself, coward,” the entity does present itself to the parapsychologists, and Carla feels vindicated just as Jerry returns from touring. “I’ve been sick Jerry. Things have come to me in the night,” she tells her lover, and after Jerry witnesses the most violent rape of Carla, when she’s fully nude, he’s horrified. It isn’t that he doesn’t believe his girlfriend or what he’s seen, but it’s that Jerry cannot bear to live with such knowledge — he leaves her unceremoniously, but Carla keeps fighting: “I’ll do anything I can to get rid of him.”
The parapsychologists enlist an older female doctor, Dr. Cooley (Jacqueline Brooks) to take a look at Carla’s case. She’s initially skeptical like Sneiderman, but after hard evidence of the entity presents itself, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to capture the entity and stop Carla’s horror, as well as prove that her entire academic career has been worthwhile, that she hasn’t just been chasing imaginary ghosts. All the while, Sneiderman makes every possible attempt to undermine and derail the pseudoscience of the parapsychologist team, still convinced that Carla’s made it all up. Dr. Cooley serves as a great ally for Carla, and her belief in Carla’s claims runs counter to the skepticism of the larger male power structures of science and academia that constantly dismiss “hysterical” ideas from women.
The team recreates Carla’s home in their lab and prepares to trap the entity there in liquid helium. Sneiderman makes one final attempt to dissuade Carla, but she’s ready for the big fight — “I’d rather be dead than be living the way I’m living,” she tells me. The entity fights back against Carla, chasing her through the mirror of her own home (which demonstrates the shell of her former life she’s now living in) with the liquid helium attacks, phallic canons blazing. When he corners her, Carla proclaims “Alright bastard, I’m finished running. Do what you want. I’m tired of being scared. Do anything you want to me. Torture me. Kill me. But you can’t touch me. That’s mine.”
The parapsychologists are able to capture the entity momentarily in a giant block of ice, but it begins tampering with their controls, and frees itself. Sneiderman rushes in and saves Carla, finally believing her since the iceberg in front of them is indisputable proof (THAT’s what it takes for him.) His superior Dr. Weber (George Coe) who’s staunchly opposed to any kind of supernatural happenings, also witnesses the capture, but refuses to admit that he saw actual proof of such a thing, further undermining Carla’s credibility — and the credibility of all survivors.
“Welcome home, cunt.” While it may seem that Carla’s troubles with the entity are over, as soon as she returns home, it hurls that most hateful epithet at her, and a title card announces that while Carla and her family moved to Texas, the attacks continued, though they became less frequent and less severe. It’s a chilling ending, one that demonstrates how while rape victims can move on from their attacks, the pain of such a total violation will always be with them. In Carla’s case, she’s just waiting for the next assault to happen.
Imagine living your daily life with that kind of terror lingering. Survivors of sexual assault live with that kind of fear every day. While THE ENTITY may be a B-movie on its face, it’s actually a complex exploration of the various degrees of humiliation, doubt, and shame we cast on survivors of sexual assault, how male power structures seek to dismiss women under the guise of medicine, science, and academia — and the unconventional ways women gain control and power back after such horrific attacks.
THE ENTITY engages with these difficult questions in a far more empathetic, understanding manner than most other films that deal with the same subject matter, even prestige dramas. Once again, horror provides a conduit for audiences to confront these harsh truths about the ways we judge, assess, and support women who’ve survived sexual assault.
THE ENTITY is available from Amazon.
THE ENTITY pairs well with POLTERGEIST, as both films tackle the suburban ghosts of Southern California — and how it takes “mom power” to stop such relentless supernatural forces. Diane and her picture-perfect nuclear family certainly have a more comfortable life the one lived by Carla and her children — the class comparisons about suburban LA in the early 1980s between both films are fascinating. Both mothers will not let their own safety or their families’ safety be threatened by poltergeists, and do whatever it takes (even allowing their own bodies to be violated) in order to protect them.
POLTERGEIST is one of the all-time great cable horror movie staples, and has just enough of the Spielberg touch that it’s not too scary for kids to watch. But like a number of other films on this list, its feminist undertones may not be instantly apparent. Throughout the film, it’s the women who are the agents of change — they’re the ones who are able to stare down the malevolent spirits attacking the Freeling family home, and win.
When Carol-Anne gets pulled to the dark side, it’s Papa Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) who crumbles and mopes while Mama Freeling (JoBeth Williams, one of the most badass movie moms ever) refuses to take Carol-Anne’s abduction lying down. While many of the films on this list are about the horrors of motherhood, POLTERGEIST is about the incredible lengths most moms will go to in order to protect their family against anything, even ghosts.
The initial team of parapsychologists brought into the home are led by a woman (Beatrice Straight), and it’s the violent hallucinations of the male members of the team that force them to slow their research with Carol-Anne still stuck in the phantom zone. It takes another woman, the medium Tangina (the late, great Zelda Rubinstein), to figure out how to bring Carol-Anne to safety. When tasked with deciding who will go after Carol-Anne on the other side, Mrs. Freeling is chosen after her husband, who is often stern towards his daughter, declines the offer.
Mrs. Freeling succeeds in rescuing Carol-Anne, and sports a new white streak in her hair after the encounter — sacrificing her own beauty and youth to save her child. It’s tough to imagine a contemporary horror film that would feature three women in various stages of middle-age as the heroines, the ones who are able to buckle down and get the job done when the men around them fail.
Once Carol-Anne has been safely returned and things appear to be back to normal, Mr. Freeling is again nowhere to be found (he’s off fighting with his lazy boss, who of course caused the whole mess by not moving Native American grave sites) when the spirits start waging an all out war on the family home. Yet again, it’s up to Mrs. Freeling (interrupted while trying to fix that pesky grey streak during a bath) to save her children: a muddy pool full of corpses and possessed clowns are now match for a mother’s love.
The debate over whether POLTERGEIST was a Tobe Hooper film or a Steven Spielberg film has been up widely discussed since the film’s release, but there’s little doubt that Diane Freeling was a Spielberg creation. She joins E.T.’s Dee Wallace and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND’s Melinda Dillon in the trifecta of Spielberg’s badass moms who refuse to cave when strange phenomena threatens the lives of their children. Diane Freeling is the platonic ideal of middle-class motherhood: she’s fun but knows when blunt talk is necessary; she solves crises without breaking a sweat; she’s a great mother and a great partner; and when the going gets tough, she rises to the occasion every time.
There’s nothing outwardly radical about Diane Freeling (except for maybe smoking the occasional joint) but her commitment to her family will not be stopped. The very fact that POLTERGEIST achieves gender parity among its cast makes it one of the more progressive horror films of the 1980s, and today. There’s no power like a mother’s fierce love and dedication to her children — POLTERGEIST shows that even the underworld is no match for a determined mom.
POLTERGEIST is available from HBOGo and other streaming services.
