This will be a rare post about a pornographic movie. Don’t really watch porn and if I did, well, read on.
Cannonball Run did this to me. There’s a scene where the Asian Team is driving through a boring area, one of them falls asleep and the other (played by none other than Jackie Chan!) throws a video tape into the dashboard VCR (remember, this was 1981 or so, this would be seen as amazing at the time). While it could have just showed scenes from any type of fuck film, it clearly shows the film’s title before getting to the almost nude part. The name of that film: Behind the Green Door.
I’ve constantly made jokes over the years using this film’s title as it’s much more subtle than The Devil in Miss Jones, etc., for a porno, as most people don’t know what it is and then go look it up on their phones to catch the reference. Someone that knows Cannonball Run well will really have a laugh.
While I saw Cannonball Run when I was a little kid, I watched it again years later when I became a big fan of Jackie Chan. At the time, there was really no normal way to see the Green Door, so I forgot about it. I made the joke to someone a few weeks ago and decided then, if I’m going to joke about it, I better actually watch this fucking thing: and it’s a doozy.
The film begins with some guy going into an all-night diner and meeting an older guy. In the first scene you may be asleep already as it shows a woman fixing up coffee and tinkling dishes for a shocking amount of screen time, fixed camera. Then the chef comes out asks about telling ‘the green door’ story and the guys reluctantly say OK. Then it cuts (fucking finally) to a girl driving a car with the top down while showing the opening credits. It looks like it’s raining as she has the windsheild wiper on. While this is likely a staple in all later porn films, the actress looks and is dressed a bit like Francois Hardy rather than in a bikini or something like that. Next there are these guys from the diner, which must be a flashback, talking at a table outside at a hotel about some nonsense with bananas, it makes no sense and after about 2 minutes I skipped over this part. Then it shows the very young and quite pretty Marilyn Chambers (who starred in David Cronenburg’s Rabid a few years later) in a cool hat sitting nearby drinking a beer. This is the lady from the car. She’s listening to the nonsense story of the guys at the table nearby. Then some music is playing. This goes on and on and on with some focusing in and out on the same shot to the girl and to the guy babbling at a table. fucking glacial.
Then it’s night and the woman is dressed up walking down some stairs outside. She gets grabbed by a couple of guys in a brown station wagon and taken away.
Next is some scene in a bourdois and a guy with a handlebar mustache crushes a football until it pops and then he leads the guys from the diner, now dressed up in tuxes and wearing masks into some theatre. The handle bar mustache man laughs after they walk away and sit down in the theater. This MUST have been the MAIN influence for EYES WIDE SHUT, certainly.
Then there are some mimes on a stage. That’s right, mimes. This is 10 minutes into the film. I’m going to skip to the important parts as there aren’t very many at this point.
The mime goes on for awhile and then they bring out the girl they stole from in front of the hotel, who comes out if, you guessed it, the GREEN DOOR. A bunch of other women strip her down and rub her… then the magic happens. A black guy comes out on stage wearing only some sort of white cotton chaps with a shell necklace and his face is painted up. The music switches to African drums and the guy prances around showing off his half mast-wang. Then there’s a sex scene which consists mostly of close up shots of the actors faces with a few shots from behind where you can mostly see the guys ass in those strange white cotton chaps. This goes on and on and then just stops.
Then they take the lady and put her on a harness swing thing and she jacks off a couple guys, blows another one, and takes a cock from another, all while on some odd swings. This, amazingly, gets the audience all horny (instead of falling asleep…) and they start having an orgy. This is where the film could have gotten mildly interesting, but one of the guys makes the mistake of shooting his load and, I shit you not, the film devolves into what can only be described as a psychedelic sequence constantly showing this one cum shot in different colors with different film effects with funky music playing for a FULL SIX MINUTES. Think about that for a bit– SIX FULL MINUTES. Even stoned off of your ass you would still get up the energy to fast forward this on your VCR– probably all the way to the end or even just rewind to the beginning and give up.
After this sequence, one of the guys from outside the hotel runs up and escapes with the girl, and then they have sex. The end.
I now have suffered through (most) of this and can, with a perfectly clear conscious, make jokes and references to the movie forever anon. Thanks a lot Cannonball Run for queuing me in on this absolute porno masterpiece.
