Base, repulsive and morally bankrupt; words I'm sure even contemporary filmmakers would love to see used to describe their pictures. This one deserves it, a real sickie. Shaun Costello's full-tilt degenerate roughie, Forced Entry.

Starring Harry Reems, Laura Cannon, Jutta David, Ruby Runhouse, Nina Fawcett and Shaun Costello.

Shot in two days under the alias of Helmuth Richler, Forced Entry is the first feature film by Shaun Costello, after producing a succession of short "loops" for, as he puts it, "an illiterate Jamaican smut peddler named Smitty". It serves as something of a precursor to Costello's later infamous feature, Water Power (1977). The two films do share similarities; both flirt with slasher tropes and feature a lunatic, predatory male watching, stalking and victimising women. They both also feature a scene in which a woman taking a shower is menaced by the villain à la Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

In 1975, a non-pornographic remake was made by Jim Sotos, also known as The Last Victim, starring Tanya Roberts and an early appearance from Nancy Allen.

Forced Entry is unique for being one of, if not the earliest example of a film that deals with the ramifications of a Vietnam Veteran who after being relieved of duty returns home deranged, has difficulty readjusting to normal life while suffering a type of PTSD, and subsequently wreaking havoc upon the general population. Predating both Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) by several years, two movies that had an enormous success at the box office with a similar concept.



The picture opens with a newspaper clipping about Vietnam War veterans and a brief explanation of "Vietnam syndrome", which is quickly followed by another quote, this time from an Air Force psychiatrist. The next sequence is a bunch of NYPD cops at a crime scene, photographing the corpse of a man. The guy's brains have been blown out the side of his head and it's over one of these frames that the title card is displayed, immediately setting the tone; Forced Entry isn't a typical sex film (though I don't doubt for a moment there are sickos who get off to the on-screen abuse), but more akin to what one might come to expect from extreme-horror. The plot and substance of the movie is akin to a slasher or a character study of the demented that goes all the way, utilising unsimulated sex scenes to hammer home the viciousness and callousness of Reems' character.

The plot centres on a deranged Vietnam veteran (Harry Reems, sans-moustache and credited as Tim Long) who returns home from the jungles of the Southeast to wage a war of his own on the female population of New York City. He works at a simple one pump gas station called "Joe's Friendly Service". At first I thought this might have been a mere retitling of an existing forecourt for the benefit of the movie, but given the $6,200 budget it's unlikely that was the case. So after a little research it transpires that it was a real gas station named "Joe's Friendly Service", lending a true sense of irony to the plot. The creep selects his victims from female customers that pay using a credit card, the sick son of a bitch uses the address provided during the sale to pay them a house call. Armed with a knife, a gun and a brain buzzing with memories of combat, he forcibly rapes and murders his victims.



To avoid any potential obscenity charges the film needed "redeeming social value", for this the narrative sees our "hero" blowing his brains out during the climax, after encountering two spaced-out hippie chicks who are so high they show no fear of him, instead they mock and laugh at him. Yes, it's his corpse the film opens with. Though if you're paying any attention, you'd realise that immediately with the recognisable baseball cap.

The rape and murder of Laura Cannon's character is the most talked about sequence in the film and rightly so it's utterly gruelling, not to undermine the attack on Jutta David's character; that's no walk in the park either. But the length of the scene with Cannon, the dialogue and the the filth under Harry's fingernails are truly repugnant. Laura's performance is stellar, even if it doesn't feel quite "ok" to commend a woman for such a realistic portrayal of a rape and murder victim. Reems does his best to appear as menacing as possible, walking, stalking and hanging-out on fire escapes. What exacerbates the sickness of the picture is the inclusion of Vietnam War footage throughout, including the sex scenes, for a total battery of the senses. The two also featured together more wholesomely, though with an ultimately a bleak outcome, in Andy Millgan's Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1973).



I believe the final scene with the two hippie chicks is a stroke of genius. Allegedly, they were two real hippie girls who let Costello use their loft apartment, under the condition that they could both appear in the film. The scene took four or five hours to shoot because both girls were high on mescaline. I interpreted it as two lesbians chiding and mocking a man who deems himself to be the pinnacle of masculinity, but when he has no joy in bending them to his will, it's incomprehensible, he's rendered powerless and desperately starts losing control. He plunges into a spiral of despair that ultimately leads to suicide, or maybe he only wants the noise crashing around inside his head to stop? Either way, it's a tremendously unpleasant film and God only knows what audiences in 1973 thought of it.

A debasing journey through the irreparably war-scarred mind of a psychopath. I actually really like this film, although it is one I tend to watch with little frequency, I appreciate the way it touches upon certain  subjects; voyeurism and psychopathy, along with the damaging and lasting effects of war on the psyche. Costello uses varied and innovative camera angles, and what appears, at times, to be a wide-angle lens, together with an honestly smart sense of framing of shots, I believe there's a genuine talent behind the production of Forced Entry.

Another film with a similar aesthetic that came along a bit later is Buddy Giovinazzo's Combat Shock (1986); a purely nihilistic, grimy and depressing exploration of a mind permanently damaged by the Vietnam War.