Behind the Green Door

For the EP by Laurel Halo, see Behind the Green Door (EP).
Behind the Green Door

theatrical release poster
Directed by Artie Mitchell &
Jim Mitchell
Produced by Artie Mitchell
Written by Elliot Wax (original story), Artie Mitchell (screen adaptation)
Starring Marilyn Chambers
Music by Daniel Le Blanc
Cinematography Jon Fontana
Edited by Jon Fontana
Distributed by Mitchell Brothers Film Group
Release dates
 December 17, 1972
Running time
 72 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $60,000
Box office $50 million[1]

Behind the Green Door is a 1972 American feature-length pornographic film, widely considered one of the genre's "classic" pictures and one of the films that ushered in The Golden Age of Porn.[2][3][4][5] Featuring Marilyn Chambers, who became a mainstream celebrity, it was one of the first hardcore films widely released in the United States and the first feature-length film directed by the Mitchell brothers.[6] It was adapted from an anonymous short story of the same title, which was circulated by means of numerous carbon copies. The story's title makes reference to the 1956 hit song "Green Door".[7] Though the main focus of the film, Chambers does not have a single word of dialogue in the entire film. The film is possibly the first U.S. feature-length hardcore film to include an interracial sex scene.[8]

Plot

A wealthy San Francisco socialite, Gloria Saunders (Chambers), is taken against her will to an elite North Beach sex club and loved "as she's never been loved before". There she engages in lesbian sex with a group of six women, for some reason all dressed in black, before being brought out wearing a white dress on stage through the green door.

The silent, largely masked audience become increasingly aroused[3] as her white dress is removed and she is stroked, kissed and given cunnilingus by the women. Her first heterosexual sex is with the African-American boxer Johnny Keyes, accompanied by a jazz soundtrack.[9][10] Over 45 minutes, he gives her more cunnilingus and then they have sexual intercourse, while Gloria continues to be stroked by the other women. When she has an orgasm, the sex stops and he is not shown to ejaculate.

Gloria then mounts a trapeze contraption suspended from the ceiling and then engages in vaginal intercourse with one man as she performs oral sex on another and masturbates two others.[11] The audience become further aroused and begin having sex with each other in what becomes an orgy.[12] In a psychedelic key sequence, an ejaculation is shown with semen flying through the air for almost seven minutes. The film features several multicolored, optically printed, slow-motion close-ups of money shots.[9] This is the only ejaculation sequence in the film. The narrator then runs from the audience onto the stage and carries Gloria off through the green door.[9] The film ends with him and Gloria making love alone.[9]

Impact

Along with Deep Throat, released the same year, the movie launched the "porno chic" boom[7] and started what is now referred to as the "Golden Age of Porn".[2] Along with Deep Throat it was the first hardcore porn film to reach a mass mixed-sex audience.[9] Prior to Behind the Green Door, most of the Mitchell Brothers' 200 or so films had only been shown in their O'Farrell Theater.[13] Made with a budget of $60,000, it achieved a nationwide theatrical release which earned over $1 million.[2][7] The movie ultimately grossed over $50 million[14][15] including its video release, which was controlled exclusively by the Mitchells out of their headquarters in the O'Farrell Theatre, San Francisco. It was the one of the biggest box office successes of the 1970s, alongside Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones.[7] It was even screened at the Cannes Film Festival.[6] After its release, organized crime figures used extortion in an attempt to obtain the rights to the film.[16]

Marilyn Chambers

Chambers was relatively unknown at the time; however, the film made her a star.[16][17] Immediately prior to the movie's release she was the "Ivory soap girl",[17] having modeled for the Ivory Snow soap and detergent packaging holding a baby.[6][16][17][18] The brand was sold under the slogan "99 and 44/100's % pure".[6][9] The Mitchell brothers saw a publicity opportunity, and distributed press releases describing Chambers as "99 and 44/100's % impure".[6] After the release of the movie, the advertising industry was scandalized,[9] and Procter & Gamble recalled all Ivory Snow products and advertising materials featuring her, unintentionally adding to the movie's hype. The staid Procter & Gamble subsequently required of all of their advertising agencies that they thoroughly screen the background of any female model employed for print advertisements or commercials. That Chambers's image was so well known from Ivory Snow boosted the film's ticket sales, and led to several jokes on television talk shows.[18] Critics have since debated whether she was really having orgasms in her scenes or just acting.[17]

Critical reception

Upon its release the film received positive reviews in mainstream media.[16] According to writer Peter Michelson there is, "a relatively small corpus of pornographic films – e.g., Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Behind the Green Door – that have a minimal but still sufficient artistic interest to distinguish themselves from the rest of the genre",[19] and the film is "more artful than most smut films".[20] It was the second film to be inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame, following Deep Throat.[21]

Legal troubles

The Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California decision adversely affected the mainstream release of porn films, including Behind the Green Door. The Miller decision redefined obscenity from that of “utterly without socially redeeming value” to that that lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" and substituted contemporary community standards for national standards, as some prior tests required. Miller continued to hold that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment, which gave leeway to local judges to seize and destroy prints of films adjudged to violate local community standards.

When Behind the Green Door opened in Suffolk County, New York in 1973, it was successfully prosecuted, as it was in New York City along with the 1973 porn film The New Comers. In addition to New York, Behind the Green Door was banned in California, Colorado, and Georgia.[22]

Sequel

In 1986, the Mitchells made a sequel to this film, Behind the Green Door: the Sequel, directed by cabaret singer Sharon McNight. The movie featured no famous performers, and starred an Elisa Florez who billed herself as Missy Manners. (Florez was Artie Mitchell's girlfriend at the time, and she reportedly demanded the role from him.) It was the first "safe sex"-themed porn film, and was produced as a response to the 1980s AIDS outbreak in San Francisco.[6] Hence, in it, all the performers used condoms, birth control, and other protection.[23]

But Behind the Green Door: the Sequel was a critical and commercial disaster, and it forced the Mitchells to eat hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost proceeds.[24][25] The O'Farrell Theatre contains a "Green Door Room" which is named for the two movies and was the principal set of the sequel.

Remake

In 2012, adult film company Vivid produced a loose remake/reimagining entitled New Behind the Green Door. The updated film stars Brooklyn Lee as the main character Hope, a wealthy young woman drawn into a seedy underworld while on an erotic journey to find her birth mother. The movie also includes footage of the original Behind the Green Door as Hope describes a sexual fantasy that recalls the plot of the 1972 film. Other cast members include Dana DeArmond, Penny Pax, Bailey Blue, Steven St. Croix and James Deen, with special appearances by original cast member Johnnie Keys and original star Marilyn Chambers' daughter McKenna Taylor.

In popular culture

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Behind the Green Door (1972)". Worldwide Box Office. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Williams, p. 320
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Williams, p. 299
  4. ↑ Shteir, Rachel (2004). Striptease: the untold history of the girlie show. Oxford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 0-19-512750-1.
  5. ↑ Langford, Barry (2005). Film genre: Hollywood and beyond. Edinburgh University Press. p. 269. ISBN 0-7486-1903-8.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 San Francisco: The Unknowao.uk/books?id=pXAsU1sQG1AC. pp. 238–241. ISBN 1-55152-188-1.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Pennington, Jody W. (2007). The history of sex in American film. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 56. ISBN 0-275-99226-8.
  8. ↑ Williams, Linda (2004). Porn studies. Duke University Press. p. 299. ISBN 0-8223-3312-0.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 Williams, Linda (1999). Hard core: power, pleasure, and the "frenzy of the visible". University of California Press. pp. 156–158. ISBN 0-520-21943-0.
  10. ↑ Williams, p. 300
  11. ↑ Williams, p. 173
  12. ↑ Creed, Barbara (2003). Media matrix: sexing the new reality. Allen & Unwin. p. 63. ISBN 1-86508-926-5.
  13. ↑ Williams, p. 380
  14. ↑ Worldwideboxoffice.com
  15. ↑ Porn King Jim Mitchell Walks Out of Prison Today. San Francisco Chronicle, 3 October 1997
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Robert J. Kelly, Ko-lin Chin, Rufus Schatzberg (1994). Handbook of organized crime in the United States. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 301–302. ISBN 0-313-28366-4.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 Falk, Pasi (1994). The consuming body. SAGE. p. 201. ISBN 0-8039-8974-1.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 David Smith Allyn (2001). Make love, not war: the sexual revolution, an unfettered history. Taylor & Francis. p. 235. ISBN 0-415-92942-3.
  19. ↑ Michelson, p. 235
  20. ↑ Michelson, p. 239
  21. ↑ Hall of Fame, X-Rated Critics Organization
  22. ↑ Green, Jonathon & Nicholas J. Karolides (2005). Encyclopedia of Censorship. New York, NY: Facts on File. p. 44. ISBN 978-0816044641.
  23. ↑ History, Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre
  24. ↑ Mitchell Brothers – Rotten.com
  25. ↑ Missy Manners – IMDb.com

Bibliography

External links