Who are we kidding here? If you have half a brain stem you know at least a little about this movie. Fratricide? Ivory Snow? Dig the claw end of a hammer into your head if you don't.

Background:
Back in the day, there were no DVD players, VCRs or even a Betamax in sight. If you wanted your smut, you hoofed it down to the local pervert shop and sat in a small theater with other similar degenerates, watching assorted Scandinavians have sex on film loops. Lord only knew where the nut butter would fly, so you brought your raincoat. Well, without going Archie Bunker up in here, this was one of the very first films to appear in larger, more legitimate film houses, and was the first produced by Left Coasters Artie and Jim Mitchell. You must have seen some documentary about these guys who started the O'Farrell Theater in San Francisco's "Tenderloin" district. I imagine most of it was shot inside the O'Farrell Theater, which I know from experience is dark and dank and all those "seedy sex palace" adjectives. The Mitchell Brothers produced this film and arranged for its distribution for $60,000. The film grossed over $25 million, making Artie and Jim quite wealthy. One fine day in 1991 Jim killed his brother Artie, served a whopping 3 years in the pokey, then got out as if nothing had happened.

Anyway, if you've ever wondered what it was like to sit in a room with 50 other guys, all of whom were serruptitiously masturbating to the same thing, start here. It was released the same year as Deep Throat. Together they generally began the "Golden Age of Porn."

Basics:
Title: Behind The Green Door
Year: 1972
Studio: Mitchell Brothers
Director: Artie Mitchell and Jim Mitchell
Distributor: Jartech, Inc.

Cast:
Marilyn Chambers: Gloria the abducted sex object
George McDonald: Barry

The rest of the cast can be viewed at IMDB. It's one of those limited instances where the data there is more complete than at IAFD. Some cast notes: Besides Marilyn Chambers, most of the cast were one-hit wonders in porn. I highly suspect a lot of these people were connected in some way with the O'Farrell. Jim and Artie have bit roles, Artie's wife plays a non-sex role, as does former Oakland Raiders defensive lineman Ben Davidson.

Plot:
Two perverts recount their tale of a day at a pleasure resort, where they witness the sexual defilement of a young woman abducted and brought to the resort. An orgy ensues.

Relevance:
Well, it's one of the first porn "films" as opposed to the "loops" of prior years. The emergence of a female performer with some say over what she did and did not do--a first. Not to mention Chambers' first modeling gig--as the Ivory Snow laundry detergent covergirl. The whole saga of the Mitchell brothers' fucked-up lives which ended up in Artie's murder at his brother's own hands, and as one horrible movie of its own starring whoremonger Charlie Sheen and brother Emelio Estevez.

Review:
This is one of those "I will have seen the screen shots and I'll know something about the movie" reviews. I'm not going to lie...it's limp, don't go buy it. If you really want to see it, maybe we can arrange a trade or something. While all the non-sex scenes look straight off a SAG set, the sex scenes are framed poorly, lit poorly, and edited poorly. There's really only one continuous sex scene in this one, so I Won't even bother to break the scenes down. I say all this with the benefit of hindsight. Heck, I was only two years old when it came out, this may have been the height of eroticism at the time.

The urban legend goes that Marilyn Chambers was the baby on the Ivory Snow laundry detergent box. Not so: she was the young woman holding the baby. The baby is in fact Brooke Shields.


So in this picture, Marilyn is holding Marilyn who is holding Brooke.

George McDonald and Jon Martin in an old coffeehouse on Market St., late night. The cook and waitress finally persuade the two to tell their story of a strange experience (fade to the past...)

Barry driving his Karmann up the Pacific Coast Highway.


You know this is shot on-location in NoCal because (i) it's foggy (ii) a man is driving a Ghia, which no chump would do in L.A. (iii) the supposed NoCal Green Party has deforested much of the Marin Headlands, so it's a dead giveaway (iv) Barry is smartly driving within the painted road stripes--crossing the center line on the PCH is a major-league moving violation.

Barry and Jon (he is never given a name) coffee it at the resort, which appears to be in Stinson Beach, dicussing the sexual antics to come. Gloria eavesdrops in the background.


Rumor has it that the Titleist Golf Company used this picture to try and find the perfect day-glo colored golf ball, before giving up and going back to white.

The two captors (Jim and Artie themelves) abduct Gloria at gunpoint. Jim has a way with firearms even back then, who would have known?

Barry and Jon are led to the show room by Porter, played by Ben Davidson.

Funny that ol' Ben demonstrates his strength by popping a football. Was any HGH involved in that scene?


I guess the Raiduuhzzz defensive stats for that year should read: points allowed=278, penalty yards=832, intreceptions=23, porn=1

Gloria is...errr...escorted to the pleasure resort. Look in the back and see the camera light reflecting off Jim & Artie's retinas...spooky.

Gloria is now "behind the green door," being set into a sexual trance by some assorted females who will assist in the debauchery.

There's that infamous green door...and a damned pantomime sucking up to the crowd as they wait for the defilement to begin.


I wonder if people hated mimes as much back then as they do now. I'd lay a bet that even Gavin Newsome would take a swing at one in Union Square in broad daylight if one of these filthy humans started pretending to be behind some glass wall...but I digress.

Hey! We're halfway into the film and the sex is about to begin! The female attendants bring Gloria onto the stage and tongue her briefly in anticipation of the stunt cock. Nice bush, but Marilyn was one of the first to shave it off completely, unheard of back in the day.

Gloria is on the receiving end of a seriously long pounding from Johnny Keyes, dresses as some Zulu warrior with cutout white leggings. She would later say that the length and intensity of the scene almost made her pass out.

The sex now morphs into a type of trapeze fellatio-fest, where 4 or 5 males sit on suspended trapeze rungs and take turns using Gloria's mouth. It's a great concept, but the camera angles are very bad. I struggled to find an extended sequence of oral fufillment here.

Things now begin to unravel completely. The patrons are starting to massage themselves, and each other. Here two of Gloria's female attendants pleasure each other.


Semi-interesting side note: lesbianism was considered a mental health defect by the American Psychiatric Orhanization until 1973. So you may or may not be looking at two retards here.

It's now a full-on orgy.

I mean full. I doubt some of these women would qualify for a Dick Nasty video.

We then get a bunch of these kaleidoscopic moments where faces and jizz swirl around the screen like a lewd take off of "White Rabbit." Interesting, possibly even erotic for its time.

In the final vignette, Barry is driving home and fantasizing about a personal own one-one with Gloria.

I don't really trust snopes, but you could be right. The whole story of Ivory Snow dumping Marilyn cemented her status as a whore.

Interesting stories behind Behind the Green Door. Thanks, William!

When did JM Productions start up? Was Max Hardcore in porn in 1972?

Behind The Green Door was the first real porn flick I ever saw.Good stuff.