Saturday, March 23, 2013

Forced Entry

When I was a teenager, a friend of my mom and dad's gave me a box full of Penthouse and Playboy magazines from the mid 70's and early 80's. I figure his wife was sick of them being in their house, so they were passed on. As you might imagine, I read every one of them from cover to cover, and I used to see ads for video tapes of this movie. Now, the 70's and early 80's were pretty disgusting. Clothes were butt ugly, bell bottoms were de rigeur, perms were considered hot, greasy hair was a fashion statement, and pornography was something that played at the Bijou Theater off Pacific Avenue in my hometown of Stockton, CA and was advertised in the local paper. As nasty-ass as those times were, though, I had no idea how low it could go until I watched this movie.

Forced Entry tells the story of a gas station attendant (and maybe owner, considering he's free to leave whenever he wants) who has recently returned from Vietnam. We know this because everything reminds him of Vietnamese people, places and things. This is shown in black and white footage that appears to be newsreels from the Vietnam Conflict. Really, he just looks like Harry Reems without the mustache he wore in Deep Throat. Anyway, dude follows women home, rapes them, and kills them. Since this is a straight-up hardcore porno film, that makes this an unusually disturbing entry in the genre. I'm sure with the advent of the Internet and digital video etc that movies that combine porno with any multitude of other topics are commonplace, but I hadn't seen anything like this from that era before. It's completely repugnant.

There are layers of disgusting aspects to this movie. First off, it's filmed in 1973. While it's impressive that this is supposedly about a veteran suffering from PTSD before it even had that name, I couldn't help but feel that that was a plotline slapped onto a movie that was made to show someone explicitly raping women and then murdering them. The constantly interspersed war footage is just more heinous shit on the pile. 1973 also means that aside from Reems' lack of mustache, there's a whole lot of hair on display here. While I'm not much of a fan of the current trend towards shaving and waxing anything and everything, this is the opposite extreme and it's pretty ugly at times. Furthermore, I suppose it's dumb to criticize bizarre music in a damn porno, but it really is absurd. Perhaps most revolting of all is Reems' relentless talking during the rape scenes. It's creepy, repetitive and, again, disgusting as shit.

At least the end offers something slightly different when it features what could well be the most retarded pair of hippie chicks I've ever seen in cinema. It's easily the worst acting in a (not surprisingly) movie full of bad acting. The scene where the killer meets his demise is wholly disjointed and thoroughly stupid. Overall, this is one nasty, ugly and sick piece of work. Almost unbelievable.

Tomorrow:Salo

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