The Entity - Reception

Reception

Director Martin Scorsese placed The Entity on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.

In a rare interview with Rue Morgue magazine in July 2012, director Sidney J. Furie stated that he did not consider The Entity to be a horror film in spite of its extreme imagery, unsettling atmosphere and horrific plot. Instead, Furie said he considers The Entity to be more of a "supernatural suspense movie." Furie also confessed that he intentionally avoided researching the actual case upon which The Entity is based as he "did not want to judge the characters and story in any way." Both he and actress Barbara Hershey did not meet with Doris Bither, the real-life Carla Moran, either prior, during or after the shooting of the film was completed in 1981.

Also speaking with Rue Morgue in the same issue, actor David Labiosa who plays Carla Moran's teenage son, Billy, revealed that Sidney J. Furie dropped an entire dream sequence and plot thread from The Entity which featured Carla being forced by the entity to have incestuous thoughts about her own son. Labiosa believes that this aspect of the film was too "controversial" and "sexually-charged" for audiences in the early 1980s and had to be excised.

According to the trivia section of IMDb's page on The Entity, "The real-life Carla Moran's teenage son described a particularly vicious attack in which Carla was thrown by the malevolent force and hit her head. He tried to intervene, but was also thrown, breaking his arm." David Labiosa recently informed Rue Morgue that during the shooting of this same scene in The Entity his arm was also broken in an accident. This bizarre coincidence resulted in Labiosa missing a few days of filming and being written out of several scenes in which his character was originally to have featured. The arm-cast which he is seen wearing was hastily written into the film.