Forced Entry (1973)

A traumatized Vietnam veteran working as a gas station attendant uses his job to find victims for his psychosexual desires.

Forced Entry is a violent 70s porn from director Shaun Costello. I’m new to this scene and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Surely there had to be hairy, nude people and scenes of humiliation and torture? Yes. Yes, there is. Porn star Harry Reems (later better known for The Devil in Miss Jones) does what he is supposed to, which is rape, humiliate and kill women. His dialogue is disposable with repeated lines about how much the victims will enjoy this and how little he enjoyed it. Just because you’re making violent porn doesn’t mean you can’t say at least the occasional inspired line!

Forced Entry had me confused. Apart from some consenting lesbian action at the end, none of the sex/rape is what I would deem erotic. I was in fact quite disturbed by the rapes. Part of that probably stems from this being a hardcore film. We witness the rapes in graphic detail. I Spit on Your Grave (1978) is quite explicit, but here nothing is left to the imagination. Reems puts his gun to the head of one of his victims and forces her to suck him off. There are no angels trying to hide anything. This gives the Forced Entry an unpleasant feeling of being more real than most films dealing with such a theme. The victims’ reactions feel genuine. Their facial expressions are harrowing. Watching them humiliated and raped I began wondering just who would find this cinematic expression erotic? In addition Costello edits in Vietnam footage. Some of it is quite gruesome, as one would expect. But he does this during the rape scenes as well. A shot of Reems standing over one of his victims, dick hanging and cum over her ass is cut to a shot of three dead Vietnamese kids. This makes the whole affair even less erotic.

Nothing pleasant going on. 

Now Forced Entry answers a question a friend of mine posed: If a rapist rapes to feel empowered, will then a willing victim have the opposite effect? Director Shaun Costello seems to think so. It’s an interesting question to which I doubt there is a definite answer. Could it be that the heavily drugged, constantly giggling, hippie chicks, with their free love, are able to stop our crazy rapist? Or will Reems keep indulging his morbid fantasies?

Something to appreciate about Forced Entry is the look. It’s a filthy, ugly look that fits the movie perfectly. Some of the cinematography is even pretty good, with intruding close-ups almost making me jump backwards. I enjoyed the inspired music as well. It was old school. Another thing I want to address is movies’ tagline: “He was taught to kill. Rape was his own idea!” Doesn’t that sound incredibly silly? What an incredibly creative person who all by himself comes up with the idea of raping people!

I think Costello tries to make a statement regarding the Vietnam War and what it did to the people who were in it. Unfortunately, the edits seem too sporadic to make much sense and gives the whole film a strange art house feeling. But let’s not forget that this is a violent 70s porn, not 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is perfectly fine by the way.

While I can’t say I enjoyed Forced Entry it’s undeniably a rough piece of scummy 70s filmmaking. Anyone interested in seeing humanity in twisted forms or just curious about alternative movies should check it out once. I can accept it for what it is, but ultimately I was still bored.

4/10