Behind the Green Door

No history of film can evade porn. Some of it contains some clever ideas and every once in a while it actually influenced something. That's the case with this.

Schrader has explicitly said that this influenced his "Taxi Driver" in the notion of someone driving around and creating a whole imagined sexual narrative. Kubrick has admitted no such thing with his "Eyes Wide Shut," but one is tempted to make a dual connection: the private sex club with masked men and the imaginary narrative. ("Eyes" is about a dialog between two dreams.)

Here's the story: A guy drives a long time, giving us the impression that this defines his character. He enters a diner and meets a friend. The two spin a tale which constitutes the remainder of the movie.

But that isn't a simple tale. It has another nesting: the same two guys engaged in inane conversation on a restaurant terrace, while a plain girl (the only other being present) occupies a nearby table. Then we have an improbable story which could be the fabrication of the two in the diner, or the one (the driver) imagines in looking at the girl on the terrace. (Or all could be something imagined by the driver while driving. We get a hint at the end that the latter is more probable.)

That tale is that she is abducted and placed on a stage in a private sex club so they/we can watch an innocent be ravished. Now begins the porn section which I suppose is tame by today's standard. It includes a racial stereotype that Spike Lee should have put in "Bamboozled" (except he exploits that one himself).

Within that stage scene is a bizarrely psychedelic cinematic celebration of the ejaculation. Like everything in this project, the quality is laughable. But the idea is that we have four nestings.

Then the first framing is closed and we are back at the diner. The cook asks what happened next. The driver leaves and drives a very long time, during which he imagines the girl again (and we have another porn sequence).

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

One of the first porno chic crossovers, this 1972 film helped bring XXX movies to a mainstream audience. Anonymous young woman (Marilyn Chambers) is "abducted" to kinky sex theater where she performs on stage with a variety of other people for the delectation of an audience of voyeurs, who eventually perform among themselves. There are some fair SFX, though hardly on an ILM scale, and the story content is inherently slanted against any real involvement other than arousal by the viewer.

Despite its B.O. and reputation, this is a fairly primitive picture. Every print I have seen is both overly dark and dupelike grainy. Chambers is stunning here, and though it is now nothing odd, at the time it was a real shock to see anyone so wholesomely attractive in the centerpiece role of a porn film. (The Ivory Snow publicity did not hurt ticket sales a bit.) Chambers later demonstrated (in the superior RESURRECTION OF EVE and in David Cronenberg's R-rated horror film RABID) acting talent not particularly visible in DOOR, but even now, 30 years later, she remains the BGD girl to an entire generation.

Film remains of much historical interest, though it has long since ceased to be a beacon for the seeker of cheap thrills. Look for lovely San Francisco porn actress Candy Johnson in the supporting ranks and pro footballer Ben Davidson in a non-sex role.

I say outstanding film, not outstanding porn film, to describe this film that is not only good for its genre, but great as a film, period. Marilyn Chambers plays Gloria, a young woman who refrains from speaking for the entire duration of the film, but is a complex character through Chambers' brilliant use of facial expressions and body language to express character. The plot deals with Gloria being "kidnapped" from the hotel she's staying at and taken to a seedy sex club, where she is "relished" and is then forced to perform sex acts, where she is "loved as never before". This is by far the most artistic porn film I've ever seen, with an almost ten-minute slow motion "cum" shot that uses different angles and backgrounds to make a quite "trippy" viewing experience. Pro football player Ben Davidson has an amusing non-sex cameo as an intimidating bouncer. Best musical score, cinematography, writing, and acting ever seen in a porn film.

As a horror buff I came across Marilyn Chambers in the flick Rabid (1977) knowing she normally was an actress coming out of the porn genre. I know the classics from back then but she appeared in Behind The Green Door which created controversy and also became a cult classic.

The controversy laid in the fact that Marilyn had a pretty face and was used in commercials like Ivory Snow. A very popular washing product in the days made by Procter and Gamble. Her face vanished shortly from all commercials once this flick became successful.

It isn't a common porn because Marilyn doesn't say a word in it doesn't really has a story. In the heydays of porn those flicks really had a story to tell but here it's rather simple, two guys telling at a diner what happened behind a certain green door. From there on, the movie slowly turns into a gangbang. Normal for the days back then but in editing they made the ejaculation clocking in at 7 minutes mixed with psychedelic effects. And it is that part that made it a cult classic. Shot for only 60k it made 25 million dollar profit. When it came out it was shown in normal theatres, another thing that gave it some controversy. But it was also the moment that porn started to conquer the world and became the next big thing

Gore 0/5 Nudity 5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

1972 was, of course, the year that porno briefly became "chic", entirely due to a triumvirate of films that have lost little of their iconic stature three and a half decades further down the line. Queens hairdresser turned quim artist Gerard Damiano unleashed the double whammy of DEEP THROAT and DEVIL IN MISS JONES while the ultimately tragic Mitchell Brothers pooled their considerable talents and resources for the very different BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR. Different in its approach to erotica, making a serious bid for highbrow respectability rather than just content to stimulate its audience's groin area, it was clearly intended to appeal to women as well as men. As a result, the female contingent of its viewer-ship during its initial theatrical run at the brothers' fabled O'Farrell cinema was rumored as being uncharacteristically high. Though exact numbers are nigh impossible to come by, it has also been documented elsewhere that an inordinate amount of female buyers procured the cassette when it was launched on its particularly profitable video career. Supporting the distinction between "rape fantasy" (fuelled by bodice-ripping romance novels) and the disturbing reality, GREEN DOOR details the feature-length subjugation of one woman – fair-haired all American girl Gloria Saunders, portrayed by former Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers in her indelible adult baptism by fire – abducted and taken to an underground sex club where for one night she's told she will be publicly "loved like she has never been loved before" with freedom returned to her the next morning.

Story was taken from an anonymously penned pamphlet that has been passed around among soldiers ever since the Second World War, framed by the supposed eye witness account of two "Everyman" types, strapping young Barry (George S. MacDonald, the boyfriend from David Gerber's superlative SCHOOLGIRL) and elderly Dudley (character actor Yank Levine, who played Abraham in the Mitchells' ill-fated epic SODOM & GOMORRAH) to an inquisitive diner cook. Helpless to save the girl Barry had been flirting with mere moments before, they watch her being dragged (by Jim & Artie no less !) into a car and speeding off. As coincidence would have it, she turns out to be the main attraction at the mysterious Green Door Club both men frequent later that night. Making their bid for real world respectability, the Mitchells enlisted a pair of minor celebrities for brief appearances at this stage. Former pro football player for the Oakland Raiders Ben Davidson plays the bouncer and Angela Castle a/k/a "Toad Attell", who was a regular on Sid Caesar's family-oriented YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, performs her patented mime routine which stands as one of few elements that really date this film. Though she's an unwilling participant at first, Gloria gradually grows to enjoy the erotic experiences afforded by her captors, a rapt audience progressively partaking which shifts the film's focus from stage to auditorium. In a key element to women's enjoyment of the premise, Gloria is immediately soothed by a sympathetic, tellingly mature matron (with the hint of a British accent, supplied by Linda Grant who thereby has the most extensive dialog scene in the movie) who assures that no harm will come to her and that she should just open herself up – okay, you can stop sniggering ! – to the physical pleasures that await her. Ravishment by half a dozen women in stylized nun garb, beautifully shot at strangely skewed angles by regular Mitchell DoP Jon Fontana (who worked on AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FLEA and their rarely revived CB MAMAS), leads to Gloria's response to the call of nature in the shape of the industry's original black stallion Johnny Keyes in an all time classic encounter. No longer on the receiving end, our silent heroine reciprocates in the legendary trapeze number with Mick Jones (another man of color, also in Ann Perry's COUNT THE WAYS and Gary Graver's V – THE HOT ONE) and an early appearance by Tyler Reynolds, culminating in the extended solarized spurting that now unfortunately seems mostly like the brothers showing off their technical prowess as it tends to stop the film dead for a ten minute stretch. The highly ritualized theatrical "performance" contrasts effectively with the spontaneous action bursting out among the rapt audience, including an imposing obese lady whose presence has engendered reviewer references to Fellini, along with a recent French critic likening the film to the works of Godard and Ozu in light of the brothers' documented film school training. Great, so at least I don't have to venture down a path that can logically only lead to ridicule ! More than just a hardcore history relic, GREEN DOOR actually holds up well for most part, save for its few dated aforementioned stylistic touches. By restricting their central heroine to complete silence throughout, the Mitchells adopted the "blank screen" approach onto which each viewer can project his or more specifically her private fantasies. There had been cute girls in porn prior to 1972, like Tina Russell for instance, but Chambers was without doubt the first truly beautiful woman to enter the industry, her until then minor real world recognizability facilitating audience identification. It may also be an important factor, as critic Danny Peary points out, that the sexual feats she performs are relatively modest in comparison to those achieved by Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin around the same time and therefore quite attainable for the average Jill Public. Further proof that the genre was still in its infancy and feeling its way is the haunting and utterly non-porno type music composed by Daniel Le Blanc which perfectly accompanies this timeless and still tantalizing classic.