A Vietnam veteran, having endured countless horrors in that green hell, finally receives his long-awaited discharge and returns to his hometown of New York City. Driven by an insatiable thirst for sex and violence, he begins brutally dispatching every woman who crosses his path, acting out his most hidden and savage fantasies. The film *Forced Entry*, shot in 1973 by American adult director Shaun Costello (though some sources incorrectly attribute pseudonyms linking it to Gerard Damiano of *Deep Throat* fame; in reality, Costello directed it under the alias Helmuth Richler), spawned a remake two years later and is now an undisputed classic of sexploitation-horror. It stands as one of the earliest truly successful attempts to fuse pure horror with gritty, deliberate hardcore pornography, belonging to a now-extinct subgenre of exploitation cinema known as the "roughie." Unlike later entries in the roughie vein—such as the infamous Naziploitation films like *Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS* (1974), which reveled in sadistic female dominance and campy excess—or even contemporaneous hardcore shockers, *Forced Entry* distinguishes itself with a somewhat coherent plot and a gradually built motivation for its protagonist. In essence, this ambiguous and once wildly provocative film anticipated the 1974 release of Peter Collinson’s *Open Season* (also known as *The All-American Boy* in some contexts), a sharply critical and socio-psychological drama about a group of deranged Vietnam veterans who hunt humans for sadistic thrills during hunting season, all while maintaining facades as affable family men in civilian life. However, *Forced Entry* lacks the depth and layered meanings of Collinson’s work. Instead, it exemplifies a brutally misogynistic exploitation horror that seemingly glorifies male domination. Portrayed by actor Harry Reems—better known for his starring role in Damiano’s groundbreaking *Deep Throat* (1972)—the central character falls into the archetype of the "fallen angel": a discarded Vietnam veteran, broken by war, for whom no place exists in normal society. Many real veterans ended in suicide or turned to crime; Reems' character chooses the latter, a far more destructive path. He descends into an abyss of absolute free will, plunging headlong into meaningless violence, transforming from a fallen angel into a downright demon—for whom human life, especially female life, holds no value whatsoever. The film’s structure cleverly intercuts the protagonist’s assaults with genuine documentary footage from the Vietnam War: explosions, gunfire, and atrocities that blur the line between battlefield trauma and urban madness. This editing technique amplifies the psychological fracture, making the hardcore rape sequences feel like extensions of wartime brutality transplanted to the streets of New York. Reems, credited here as Tim Long, delivers a convincingly unhinged performance—his haunted eyes and mechanical movements convey a man trapped between jungles of green hell and concrete jungles of indifference. Yet, even he later regretted the role, calling it the one film out of hundreds that haunted him. Our anti-hero gives no thought to those trifles that define moral truth as he dispatches yet another screaming victim amid brutal forced oral sex, leaving her bloodied and hopeless. Yet, in vividly painting these scenes of violence and sex, Costello inadvertently reveals the essence of complete human dehumanization: the abandonment of morality and principles, the plunge into a vortex of sadism. The metatextuality emerges organically, not from premeditated narrative blueprints, but from the raw chaos of the era. The 1970s were an ambiguous decade that profoundly shaped history, and in this grindhouse gem, that time is stained with the colors of thickening blood and spurting semen. It captures the spirit of libertinage and near-total permissiveness, turning the Big Apple into a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. New York City, with its teeming streets and anonymous crowds, becomes the perfect hunting ground—a place where a shell-shocked vet can vanish into the masses by day and unleash hell by night. The film’s low-budget grit, shot on the sleazy underbelly of 42nd Street-era porn production, enhances its authenticity: grainy cinematography, abrupt cuts, and an unrelenting pace that mirrors the protagonist’s fractured psyche. Comparatively, while films like *Thriller: A Cruel Picture* (1973) or *The Last House on the Left* (1972) explored rape-revenge with visceral intensity, *Forced Entry* dives headfirst into the perpetrator’s perspective without redemption or catharsis. There’s no empowering turnaround; only escalation until the inevitable self-destruction (the film frames its narrative as a flashback leading to the killer’s suicide). This refusal to moralize or punish through plot makes it more disturbing than many peers. Even hardcore roughies like *Waterpower* (1977, also by Costello) or the simulated depravities of *The Taming of Rebecca* pushed boundaries further into taboo, but few tied explicit sex so inextricably to real-world trauma as *Forced Entry* does with its war footage intercuts. In the broader landscape of 1970s exploitation, the roughie subgenre—born from the relaxation of censorship post-*Deep Throat*—allowed filmmakers to blend arousal with revulsion. *Forced Entry* sits alongside titles like *Sex Wish* (1976) or the Nazi-inspired sadism of the Ilsa series, but its Vietnam hook grounds it in contemporary American guilt. The war’s end in 1973 coincided with the film’s release, amplifying its resonance: veterans returning to a hostile homeland, ignored or vilified, their rage misdirected onto the innocent. Costello doesn’t preach; he shocks, forcing viewers to confront the paradox of a society that trains men to kill abroad then abandons them at home. Ultimately, *Forced Entry* endures not as erotica (its sex scenes are decidedly unerotic, meant to horrify) but as a time capsule of post-war alienation and exploitation excess. It’s a film that rapes the senses, leaving one unsettled about the thin line between victim and monster, civilization and savagery. In an era when pornography was exploding into mainstream consciousness, Costello’s debut dared to ask: what happens when the horrors of war come home, hardwired into the libido? The answer is bleak, brutal, and unforgettable—a true artifact of grindhouse nihilism that still packs a gut punch over fifty years later.