Behind the Green Door is a 1972 porn classic starring Marilyn Chambers I just finished watching for the first time. Times have changed, and so has porn.
It’s surprisingly easy to imagine my grandfather (who was 35 years old at the time) sneaking discreetly into a dark theater to watch explicit videos. Still, I wonder if I would have had the balls (as a lesbian woman) to go in myself. I hope so because it would have been totally worth it.
The movie starts with a wealthy woman, Gloria, being kidnapped in San Francisco. Gloria was blindfolded and driven to a club where a woman welcomed her and gave her a relaxing massage.
The massage was very sensual! It was slow and, in my opinion, felt more organic (for lack of a better word) than what a lesbian scene in a primarily hetero movie looks like today. The woman started massaging Gloria’s feet and worked her way up to her tits, but it wasn’t exaggerated visually nor audibly.
That was true throughout the movie. I must admit that the unenhanced faces and bodies and the lack of theatrical moaning made a big difference to me.
I enjoyed that it all started on a stage where spectators were, initially, just watching and enjoying the show. If you enjoyed it too, make sure to attend a modern-day sex show ASAP.
I believe that the primary thing that makes this film so historically significant is that it has the first interracial sex scene in mainstream porn. And it’s not just one.
African American wrestler Johnnie Keyes came into the stage after the lesbian orgy to please Gloria. I loved that at this point in the movie, the audience starts kissing and masturbating because it’s almost inevitable as a spectator.
I can almost imagine the men in a dark theater watching the movie after it came out… did they start stroking their dicks at this point too?
Gloria goes on to please three men simultaneously in another interracial scene. She was blowing one while she stroked the other two. So, if they still hadn’t, the massive orgy that followed made it inevitable. The audience engages in this enviable lesbian, heterosexual, and interracial orgy that is quite different from what we see today.
What happens in porn is a reflection of our society. So while this sensual, erotic orgy seems kind of vanilla (for an orgy), I’m sure that threesomes, blowjobs, and even certain positions like doggy were considered much more risque than what they are now. I MUST admit, I found the lack of deep throating, sloppy oral sex, and purposefully exaggerated slurping sounds and moaning almost artistic.
It’s like the scenes were about a show, a fantasy, or theater, not simply fucking and cumming. It seems to me that it was meant to do more than get the audience off and still appeals to women just as much as men.