Exploitation Nation

FORCED ENTRY
D. SHAUN COSTELLO
AFTER HOURS CINEMA
FULL SCREEN

Shaun Costello’s FORCED ENTRY is one of the most brutal and unpleasant films every made. It horrifies and shocks on several different levels, pummeling an audience into submission, leaving them shattered and brutalized. Most shockingly it is a porn film.

Made for peanuts in the warm months of 1971 the film was shot in three long days the movie was fashioned as a way to get around the censor boards of the time. The idea being that if the film has a plot and some sort of discerning social value then it cannot be totally considered obscene and can get around prosecution. So Costello fashioned his quickie porn film that tells the story of a Vietnam vet, (Played by Harry Reams under the pseudonym Tim Long) scarred by memories of the war who finds him self outcast at home. Sexually frustrated and tormented by his wartime past he stalks the women that come into the service station he works at. He garners the information from the credit card receipts and follows them home. He watches them have sex and once he reaches a fever pitch (and the men have left the premises) be barges in and proceeds to humiliate, degrade, torment, rape and kill the women inside. All the while having Nam flashbacks consisting of actual newsreel footage from the war.

 Its unpleasant business to be sure and there is only one or two scenes in the movie of consenting sex in the film for a porno audience to attach themselves to. The first being a busty young woman and a partially balding man (who happens to be the director!) whom the stalker watches through a window. This scene goes on for some time and is the only legit hetero hardcore scene in the film that you could possibly “get off” on. Its only moments before the movie plunges straight into hell and never looks back.

 Once the Stalker has entered her apartment all bets are of. He forces her at knife point to perform fellatio on him all the while spewing forth some of the most hate filled dialogue ever heard on the silver screen. He compares her to the “ no good gooks in Nam” while the movie flash cuts cowering civilians from Vietnam. The scene is brutal and ugly. Even if you were someone who wanted to fantasize a rape scenario it is filled with the Vietnam war footage too, so it offends on multiple levels. To a sane person it is uneasy viewing on EVERY level and not arousing in the slightest. Finally he ejaculates, directly into the camera lens, thus assaulting us the audience, and then slits her throat.

 Now at that point, 1971, there were roughies that were regular movie experiences. But from what I understood it was simply understood that the violence and hardcore imagery didn’t cross. Yet here it was hardwired together creating a frission that had to send audiences screaming. But it gets worse.

His second victim is a woman that he finds after watching her take a shower. He corners her in her bedroom and holds her at gun point. She cries and begs, but he starts in with his hateful ranting and forces her to suck him until he is erect and able to start the violation of her body. Laura Cannon is the actress who plays this role and this is outstanding. Her performance is of the highest caliber. We believe her plight, and feel her pain and agony. Her cries and screams are terrifying and very, very real. When the stalker finally gets his way and sodomizes her, it is unrelentingly grim and horrible.

Remember all of these rape scenes are hardcore sexuality portrayed on screen. So the actors are indeed have full penetrative sex. But they are still acting as well. So they are taking the level of performance up a notch to include full on sex as part of the performance, something no mainstream movie has ever dared to do in the United States. Laura Cannon proves her self on equal to a mainstream actress in her horrible violation scene. When he pulls out and screams at her while she is cowering before him “you got my prick all full of shit!” it is a terrifying moment. You feel this, for real.

Soon the flashbacks to the real life Nam footage start coming into play again and he starts hacking her up with his switchblade. She doesn’t die easily, it takes several slashes to do her in. Horrible stuff.

Soon after this Reams character meets some Hippies on the street, his thoughts on hippies are looped on the soundtrack “Scummy hippies!!!”

*** SPOILER***

But these hippies turn out to be his downfall because with their free love and wild drug use he can’t rape them. When he pulls his gun out on them to force himself, they just laugh and invite him into their beds. They begin to try and seduce him and it blows his mind. His sexual powertrip is premeditated on sexual sadism and when faced with two young women he cannot humiliate or control it shatters his character and ability to deal. He puts the gun to his head and amidst a montage of Vietnam war footage and the savagery from the film, he blows his brains out.

***END SPOILER***

Shaun Costello went on to a healthy career in the porn biz both in front of and behind the camera directing tons of movies and starring in a few too. Venessa Del Rio named him as one of her favorite performers to work with on screen. Harry Reams of course went on to fame as the stare of DEEP THROAT and DEVIL IN MISS JONES and made efforts to avoid being associated with FORCED ENTRY as he had a hard time reconciling the person he saw on screen with the person he was in real life. Forced Entry started a sub genre of the porn film that lasted through the 70’s and into the early 80’s where some directors made an effort to weld the hardcore imagery into dark and brooding storylines. Some of these films work well such as SEX WISH, others cascade along as exercises in brutality such as CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER. And some are just fucking weird and goofy like HOT SUMMER IN THE CITY and HARDGORE. But the granddaddy of them all, the best of them and the one that still holds the power to shock, revolt and squeeze the life out of a viewer is FORCED ENTRY.

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