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Forced Entry (1971-2)

Dir: Warren Evans (aka - Shaun Costello/Helmuth Richler)

It was the 70's; 'Porn chic' had arrived. It was the latest sensation to hit America, transforming the whole make-up of Exploitation and it's temples like 42nd Street.
For a brief period of time it was actually acceptable to go out (with a date or even, *shock*, your Wife) and openly watch hardcore pornography.
While most of the movies in the 'chic' cannon were semi-comic suburban romps like "Deep Throat", highflying travelogues like "Insatiable", high school high-jinx like "Debbie Does Dallas" or hallucinogenic fantasies like "Behind the Green Door"…"Forced Entry" took a very different route.
The dinner suit and fancy dress brigade who would slum it in the cinema strips to see Marilyn Chambers or Linda Lovelace would most certainly find it a step too far on the wild side too view this slice of grime coated scuzz.

Taking the ever popular 'deranged, sexually twisted, psycho killer' plot and the now semi-acceptable hardcore sex sequence, Writer/Director Evans (or whichever name you want to give him) created something that used 'porn chic' to it's advantage (coming out roughly the same time as the 2 big titles "Behind the Green Door" and "Deep Throat"), while at the same time being as far away from anything 'chic' as you could possibly imagine.

The story is a simple one. Its delivery is not.

70's Porn bigwig Harry Reems plays a down at heel psychotically deranged Vietnam veteran who works at a New York gas station.
Targeting female customers he tricks their addresses out of them (hey, this is the far more naïve 70's folks!) and then breaks into their homes to rape and eventually murder them.....
That's it.
But what makes "Forced Entry" into something far more than the sum of its plot is the use of hardcore sex, violence, blood and authentic newsreel/camera footage of the war in Vietnam.

Opening on a green tinted still of a Vietnamese woman punting a canoe, scored with a haunting Vietnamese song, which sports a quote from an Air Force Psychiatrist - "This is the legacy that welcomes back a combination of fear, confusion, rage and frustration, and this leads to a desperate need for an enemy…" - we are instantly warned that there is something very different about the porn film that is about to un-spool in front of our unsuspecting eyes.

To fully showcase the attitude and feel of the movie, the first attack shall be discussed here….
After getting her address the rapist proceeds to make his way to the apartment of a female customer. Frantic, drum heavy music accompanies him on his journey and he is assailed with flashbacks of Vietnam (actual black and white newsreel footage, that will become a staple part of the movie's dark and savage nature) as he runs through the city's bustling streets.
Spying on her, from the fire escape, as she is making love (to the director in a hairy, ball-slapping cameo) the film is petty much following the lines of what you would expect.
It's the usual unflattering close up; hairy, crude sex sequence that is the staple of 70's hardcore.
But the fact the commonly used 'peeper' character is fondling a gun and licking the tip of his knife as he watches the (explicit oral and penetrative) sex…signposts what is to come.

Later, at knife point, she is forced (in the closest of close-ups) to fellate Reems as he spews forth gross obscenities at her and we flash-cut back and forth to actual war atrocities, combat and turmoil.
It's a truly haunting sequence and is expertly crafted for maximum shock value (the rough low budget cinematography, complete with camera sound now and again, only adds to the extremity and the harrowing documentary look of the thing, especially when Reems actually ejaculates onto the camera lens).
Women in 'Nam are grabbed, threatened, terrorised… the woman in New York is threatened, debased, terrorised…and throughout it all is the fact that the sex is real, just as the terror in 'Nam is real. The only blessing is that the terror in New York is acted…in 'Nam it's not.

But that we're pushing the limits of anything remotely acceptable is shown in the fact that after this extended, forced, sex scene the rapist then (in close-up again) cuts the woman's throat, as the shots of her dead face are intercut with shots of the actual dead in Vietnam.
'Chic' just left the building with puke down it's frock.

The rest of the film is basically this same set-up of stalking, knifepoint/gunpoint sexual attacks, extremely nasty verbal assaults and ultimately murder. All played out with the ever present, shockingly effective, 'Nam footage.

The film does tend to play out the 'rapes', the gun or knife aside, as 'normal' sex sequences and sometimes the actresses play the scenes like any other porn set-up and don't play on the 'victim' angle, looking rather unconcerned about the whole thing. Which in itself seems dubious as we seem to have the oft familiar 'she really likes rape' attitude going on, whether intentional or not.
But this is not always the case thankfully, the latter part of the 2nd assault has the actress (Laura Cannon, who would also appear with Reems in Andy Milligan's respected "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" and would go on to pose in "Playboy") going all out to portray the sex as the viscous assault it really is and this truly sadistic sodomy scene ("Starting to bleed a little in there"?), thanks to her agonised and terrified reactions, is indeed a vile sequence…which is as it should be.
But this also shows how this type of film can never actually win.
If it does not make the rapes truly nasty it gets criticised. If it does make the rapes the vile acts they are it gets criticised simply for BEING so vile.
In these circumstances hardcore can never win.

Sex, as this is the 70's, is close-up, rough, naturalistic and thankfully has nothing that is not real, natural flesh on display. No round lumps of silicone blandness here.
People are imperfect, of various sizes and shapes and are of course… hairy.
But this adds a natural energy to the sex and also to the documentary look of the film that this plot really benefits from.

Violence? Well, much of the sex is of course very violent and some of the 'Nam footage (especially in the context it is used) is violent as it portrays the destruction of war and it's resulting maimed and dead.
But the main violence is in the murders. There is nothing here that is 'gory' as such, though the knifings are bloody, but coming after the rapes, and having the actresses in states of undress (sometimes fully naked) when they happen, ups the violence level a big notch.
And when you place all these together in the one film, a film made in this way with this attitude, you do get what is a very violent and disturbing creation indeed.

The music, just like the rough film making style and 'Nam footage, is also important to the film.
Switching from Vietnamese songs, folk ballads and distorted soundscapes it exemplifies the movies' (and the lead characters') chaotic, schizophrenic madness.

As the stone cold rapist and killer the normally weird but somehow likeable persona of Reems is most definitely missing here. As is his showcase 70's porn moustache.
Here he portrays a character of unremitting savagery and hostility to everything and everyone around him.
There are none of the 'camp' villain touches seen in his "Deadly Weapons" turn or any of the knowing, wicked humour of "The Devil in Miss Jones".
The rapist may be a ' pop psychology' psycho character…but he is certainly an effective one, and brutally animalistic.

Does the film genuinely have something to say about the horrors of war in general and its trauma on the Vietnam veteran in particular? Well no, not really.
The 'Nam footage, though it works from an 'artistic' point of view as far as it's effect on the rape sequences is concerned, as discussed above, is basically there to shock just as anything else in the film is.
And of course, as with all exploitation, it takes advantage of the current problems in society at that time, and by now Vietnam, and its effects on everyone, was in full swing.
In many ways the film pre-empts the later movies that would also use the psychologically disturbed 'Nam Vet as their centrepiece. Some for good honest thrills and spills as in "First Blood", some for genuine social comment like in "Coming Home".
But astonishingly this underground, bleak slice of pornography got there before most of them.
But basically the Vietnam angle in "Forced Entry" simply seems to be the preferred (taking advantage of what is big news at the time) method of showing the psycho's 'reason s' for madness. It's purely opportunistic.

The finale is genuinely unexpected and provides the only bit of (wonderfully ironic) humour, but also ups the 'Nam flashbacks to a senses pummelling degree to make sure the movie ultimately ends as dark as it started.

So what do we ultimately end up with? Well, it's never going to get a nice DVD release like "Deep Throat" and it's never going to be accepted in any decade, let alone this most politically correct one.
But there is a car crash fascination to this monstrosity.
You know you should not look, you know there is no real need to look, you know you may well be frowned upon for looking and maybe even berate your own self for doing so…But you still look.
It's everything taboo. It's hardcore pornography, it's sexual and sexualised violence, Its cheap, dirty and nasty. And you still look.
It exploits what it needs to and it exploits it well. For what it is...it works.
You just have to ask yourself if what it is, is something you want anything to do with………