Another classic for you folks today - Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers. This is a movie we have talked about in other reviews but recently we realised we had never actually reviewed it so we bunged it in and watched it again. Behind the Green Door is another Golden Age film. Released in 1972 (arrgh it's as old as I am!) it was hugely successful and has become one of the must-see porn films. Apparently Marylin Chambers' salary for the film was $25,000 plus 1% of earnings which was the highest amount ever paid to a porn performer. It was still bringing in $2,500 per month for her even two years later in 1974. That gives you some idea of just how huge this film was back then.
Despite its reputation, and huge popularity, Behind the Green Door would never be made today. Its plot (by today's standards) is more than a little creepy. Gloria (Marylin Chambers) is abducted forcefully from the street and dragged into a car. She arrives in a seedy back alley where she is dragged into a building to be greeted by a woman in evening dress who tells her not to worry (huh?). "You're probably frightened" she says (no shit, Sherlock) "there's nothing to worry about" (you mean apart from the abduction?) "you are going to experience something wonderful" (obviously a definition of wonderful I'm not familiar with) "you are here to be ravished" (ahhh right.. that makes it all OK then). Anyway, let's gloss over the decidedly non-PC beginning. It was the 70s, they hadn't invented civilised behaviour yet and they were probably on a lot of drugs. Let's skip forward a bit to where Gloria has calmed down a bit and is being given a massage by the mysterious woman in evening dress....
After a quick massage she is dressed in white and lead onto a stage by six women. She is in a sex club where she will be ravished for the pleasure of the audience (yep... still a bit creepy but let's go with it). You know how we have commented on classic films having lots of short sex scenes? Well this one is different. Pretty much the rest of the film is one long sex scene. And what a scene it is. First Gloria is pleasured by all six women. Then out struts Johnny Keyes (also in SexWorld), a very well-endowed black man wearing tribal face-paint who proceeds to pleasure her very thoroughly. I'm not sure but this may have been one of the first interracial scenes ever seen in a mainstream porn. This really shocked the audience at the time and was one of the contributors to the films huge success.
After Mr Keyes has finished, she then pleasures (and is pleasured by) six men on a kind of trapeze arrangement climaxing on a 7 minute long psychedelic slow motion money shot. The best I can do for a description is to say it's like the really trippy ending to 2001 A Space Odyssey only with less aliens and more cum.
While all this is going on, the audience (made up of a collection of the beautiful, not so beautiful, the freaks and the weirdos) becomes more and more aroused until they are milling together with the on-stage performers in a free for all orgy. This really is one of the all-time classic scenes in porn. Ms Chambers really gets into it (forgetting the abduction very quickly in true porno fashion). The other performers give it their all. Johnny Keyes literally sweats off his tribal make up and watching the slow arousal of the audience, from bored and jaded to full-on orgy really adds to the scene. This is the reason this film stands the test of time and should be a must have in every-one's collection.
If you can get past the seedy, non-PC beginning of this film it really is worth a watch. Actually it is worth buying and adding to your collection. It is one of the absolute classics and deserves to be.
You can buy Behind The Green Door here through Good Vibrations in the USA.
You can buy Behind The Green Door here through Uncut DVDs in Australia.
