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6
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
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A
deranged Vietnam vet (Harry Reems) takes out his
violent aggressions on innocent women...
The early
1970s saw a plethora of independent porn unleashed
on the grindhouse circuit —
director Shaun Costello, looking to make a film
that would stand apart from the rest of the pack,
determined to make a porn film with a social conscience.
The end result can be accurately described as
the XXX equivalent of Scorsese's Taxi
Driver (1976), though it beat that masterpiece
to the punch by a number of years. The film anticipates
the Scorsese picture in its gritty aesthetic as
well as in its theme of how the violence of the
Vietnam war was beginning to seep into the American
landscape, and viewers looking for a harmless
skin flick must have sat in utter astonishment
as Costello's horrific spectacle unspooled before
them.
The story is a simple
one... The unnamed protagonist, his mind warped
by a tour of combat duty in Vietnam, stalks women
he meets at his lonely gas station before raping
and murdering them. The mixture of sex and violence
is a heady one, but Costello avoids degenerating
into bad taste eroticism by showing sympathy for
the victims rather than the killer, and also by
refusing to beautify the acts he commits. The
sex looks real —
which is to say, clumsy and unrehearsed, rather
than absurdly athletic —
and the staging and lighting give it a grungy
quality. The performers similarly are not presented
as idealized in any sense —
the actresses look like real women, not the usual
parade of perfectly formed bimbettes, and Harry
Reems as the protagonist looks unkempt and shabby
throughout, his hands often grotty from his work
at the gas station. This approach makes it difficult
to find the film overly erotic, but this is precisely
the point: Costello uses the conventions of the
genre as means of making a commentary on violence
and the society of the period. Similarly, the
violence has legitimate impact because it's presented
in a matter-of-fact manner, with Reems barely
batting an eyelash as he slits his victims throats.
As such, the film can hardly be described as a
'fun' example of its ilk, but it is weirdly poetic
and effective when the inane dialogue and sometimes
amateurish performances don't get in the way.
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After Hours Cinema's release
of Forced Entry marks
the film's debut on DVD. The source material is
in pretty bad shape, but one could argue that
the grimy print adds to the film's sickening impact.
Presented fullframe, the film has been mastered
as effectively as possible —
colors tend to be muted and on the brown side,
but this seems to be consistent with the original
cinematography. The film is completely uncut.
The mono soundtrack is limited by the crude nature
of its original recording, but dialogue is clear
and distinct. Extras
include a booklet by Costello, which sheds some
fascinating light on the film's production (Costello
maintains that he brought it in for under $7,000),
as well as three vintage porno loops (the first
two feature Costello, and the last features Reems)
and trailers for other After Hours XXX releases.
10/19/07
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