Oriental Blue (1975)

Debatably the most discreet of dirty movie directors, as far as pornographers of a particular prolificacy are concerned (let’s say those whose body of work totals upwards of five films), Bill Milling had good reason to keep a low profile.  Like the decidedly more exhibitionist Shaun Costello, who brazenly performed on camera as well as behind, he kept up an active “real world” existence alongside his walk on the wild side.  A respected professor of film and television at NYU, boasting degrees in English Literature, Philosophy and Cinema Studies (to name but a few…), Milling forged a fecund career in TV production that would extend well into the ’90s and famously encompasses NBC’s multi-Emmy Award winning kiddie show Unicorn Tales !  Currently, he’s resting on his laurels as CEO of the American Movie Company, maintaining four fully equipped and well-frequented sound stages in Manhattan, whose website brags about Bill being the director of some 20 movies but stays conspicuously schtum about their exact nature, excepting latterday straight to tape fare like his solid actioner Wolfpack or the low rent Porky’s wannabes Lauderdale and Joker’s Wild.

Were the world a more enlightened environment, Milling might have really wowed the masses for his prime achievement arguably lies in porn, contributing some two dozen carnal classics over a ten year period.  To cover his tracks while supplementing his income, he hid behind a multitude of adult aliases, going as far as imbuing a trio of the more extensively employed with a distinct directorial style each.  Hence, as “Philip T. Drexler Jr” he would craft the type of thoroughly plotted, lavishly produced erotic epics so characteristic to the industry’s Golden Age (which roughly spans Milling’s term of gainful employment) when porn labored under the illusion that it coulda been a contender.  His bedrooms and boardrooms saga Satin Suite, bodice ripper A Scent of Heather and marvelous Mary Poppins muck-up Delicious provide excellent examples thereof.  In the guise of “Dexter Eagle” (who, to quench confusion once and for all, is NOT the late Armand Weston of Take Off and Defiance fame), he would strut his funky stuff with a series of freewheeling, train of thought fuck film farces that includes the likes of sex cult sizzler Ecstasy in Blue, off the wall spy spoof Blonde Velvet and the truly one of a kind Virgin Snow.  “Bill Eagle” represents his West Coast alter ego from the final stages from his fornication cinema career, responsible for plotlite paeans to pulchritude as Blonde Goddess, In the Pink and the All American Girls series, which showed him a dab hand at inserting travelogue stock shots to create the impression of opulence.  As an added bonus (for us, anyway !), Milling would remain intimately involved with Distribpix throughout most of his industry itinerary, meaning that virtually his entire body of work’s available from Video-X-Pix.

As he’s yet to speak publicly about his stint in the sex industry, there’s little to go on with respect to goals and ambitions – if any, apart from monetary gain – Milling may have hoped to realize during porn’s prosperous decade.  If it weren’t for the occasional cameo appearance in friends’ and former pupils’ projects like Ulli Lommel’s Blank Generation and especially Romano Scavolini’s cult horror Nightmare, few would be able to pick him out of a police line up !  Tall, thin, bearded with large hornrimmed spectacles typically too big for his gaunt visage, an unassuming man with a hint of milquetoast, he looks the spitting image of actor Michael Gross back when he was playing Michael J. Fox’s dad on ’80s sitcom Family Ties.  If the ’60s spirit persists in any way, one would undoubtedly dub him a “square”, which makes it all the more jarring to discover that this most classically trained professional of cinema and man of culture in general holds such convincing credentials for the sinful side thereof.  Cliché dictates such respectable background to preclude pornographic pizzazz, higher learning nipping all lustful manifestations in the bud, so it’s heartening to realize that someone of Milling’s social stature still harbored enough of a dirty mind to generate such fine filth.  Which brings us to Oriental Blue, Bill’s early entry in the Drexler canon and highly praised hardcore follow-up to his first fuck film foray When a Woman Calls (made as the no less pompous sounding “William J. Haddington Jr”), technically a “roughie” as it deals with white slave traders shipping kidnap victims to brothels worldwide though filtered through a sensibility diametrically opposed to the alleged demands of such penny dreadful tabloid trash.  As a result, and although the material hardly seems to warrant as much, the movie shapes up as an intensely erotic ride from start to finish.

Kicking off with great nighttime footage of Manhattan’s bustling Chinatown district, we’re hurled straight into the action as evil Madame Blue (the single most memorable star turn bar none by seldom seen Peonies Jong, also appearing in Beau Buchanan’s glossy American Sex Fantasies and David Secter’s vastly entertaining Blowdry) orders her obedient henchman Conrad (Alan Marlow) to drag unwitting Kim Pope into the back of her blinded Limo.  Stifling the girl’s anguished cries with an immediately administered dose of her homebrewed “Love Juice”, Blue transforms her from struggling victim to willing accomplice in no time.  The scalding threesome that ensues in the stylishly attired restaurant basement Blue calls home sets the tone for its slew of sex scenes.  Talk about better living through chemistry !  Former sexploitation starlet Pope (from Jerry Denby’s Pleasure Plantation and Doris Wishman’s screwy even by her standards The Amazing Transplant) shines as she obsessively gobbles Marlow’s member as well as Peonies’s pudendum in a total turnabout from the more tender trysts fans fondly remember from Gerard Damiano’s Memories Within Miss Aggie and, of course, playing Jamie Gillis’s crippled wife in Costello’s seasonal The Passions of Carol.  Much of the movie’s carnal content follows the established template of Madame Blue barging in uninvited to partake in the indoctrination already in progress of yet another sorry slut sloshed on Love Juice by one of her underlings.  Another under the radar performer, pretty black chick Maureen Anderson (also in Claude Goddard’s contentious Barbie’s Fantasies and the private dick parody Sherlick Holmes, a minor effort by Victor Milt a/k/a “Tim McCoy” of Sex Wish and The Erotic Dr. Jekyll notoriety), switches Ashley Moore’s wellworn penis for Peonies, who subsequently unwinds with the equally elusive Cedar Houston, something of a Carter Stevens regular (in both Lickity Split and The Hot Oven) but appearing in Milling’s French Shampoo as well.

Intrigue kicks in as the mysterious Max (carnal comedian Bobby Astyr resorting to his customary kvetching shtick), a representative for the NBA (standing for the National Bordello Association, of course !), orders a handsome selection of hussies to be exported to whorehouses around the globe.  A threeway with the Madame and her “best girl” Angel (C.J. Laing, who always suggested subservience well) seals the deal.  The proudly perverted Stephen, whose character name may have been intended to invoke The Story of O‘s Sir Stephen, picks up a French girl for proposed rough treatment that hardly ventures beyond vanilla in a somewhat shoehorned scene, eloquently excused by the mere presence of the luminous Terri Hall, fresh from Damiano’s Story of Joanna (confirmed by her becoming bob haircut) and teamed with real life paramour and Stuttgart Ballet colleague Steven Lark, incidentally also her dance partner in one of that magnificent movie’s many memorable moments.  While few of Blue’s gruntmen would dream of refusing her amorous advances, one of them (Jamie Gillis as Brock) defiantly does and since he’s the most prolific of pussy procurers there’s precious little she can do about it.  Luring a freshly mugged lass from the sticks – the appropriately named Anthea (Bree Anthony) – back to his bachelor pad, Brock substitutes his seasoned shlong for that of partner in slime Antonio, played by the starlet’s offscreen spouse Tony Richards, Tweedledee to his wife’s Tweedledum in Bill Osco’s adult musical Alice in Wonderland.  Careening towards an inexorable climax, Milling manages the estimable feat of piling up the pornographic encounters while simultaneously steering the storyline as Brock reluctantly hands Anthea over to Blue in exchange for Antonio whom she now holds hostage.  Making her move on the whiny wench, the Madame correctly figures this will draw the unwilling object of her affections to her lair, resulting in a double dose of death.

While subsequent Milling movies might strike a more successful balance between plot and porn, there’s no denying the director’s skill at making a “proper” picture that holds its own in the face of mainstream entertainment, something the fuck film contingent would increasingly if in the end fruitlessly attempt to become part of.  The searing intensity of the flick’s copious cavalcade of carnal encounters carries an unexpected electric charge from a man who was to get on Costello’s bad side (which may have contributed to his eventual “outing”…) when their conflicting temperaments resoundingly clashed over Milling’s stint as production manager, at the behest of worried co-creator Kenneth Schwartz (indeed a separate person instead of another Shaun alias as was wrongfully assumed for a long time), on the joint venture double whammy of Fiona on Fire and Dracula Exotica but that’s, as they say, another story.  Ironically, Costello was pressed into duty by “the Greeks”, who ran the notorious Capri theater, to create a sequel to his soon to be nemesis’s Oriental Blue in the Vanessa Del Rio showcase That Lady from Rio !   Bearing in mind Milling’s professional pedigree, it should come as far less of a surprise that the film’s consummately lit and photographed by Valentine Mu Rana who was to stand by his side through these early stages (doing a particularly fine job on his underrated Temptations, a movie Milling made as “Luis F. Antonero” !) and perhaps subconsciously recreates Joe Sarno’s cost-effective pools of bright light breaking up the surrounding darkness approach to startling success.  As with most ’70s porn, the soundtrack’s a fascinating grab bag of library tracks and mainstream sources (another coincidental Costello influence neither would willingly confess ?) with several cuts from Lalo Schifrin’s score for Bruce Lee’s breakout blockbuster Enter the Dragon as well as the unnerving use of some surprisingly wellknown chart hits.  Anthea’s initiation plays out to legendary chick combo The Chiffons warbling their indelible Sweet Talking Guy  in the sweetest close harmony ever heard by mere mortal ears as Brock butters her up for Antonio’s sudden intrusion and the score appropriately segues into Linda Ronstadt’s cooingly chiding You’re No Good !

Directed by Bill Milling (as Philip T. Drexler Jr). Written by Valentine Mu Rana (“based on the Chinese Stories of Lady Fang by Chio-Len Huk”). Produced by Lin Cho Chiang for Lotus Films. Photographed by Mu Rana. Edited by B. Art Ditmar. Starring Peonies Jong (Madame Blue), Bree Anthony (Anthea), Jamie Gillis (Brock), Bobby Astyr (Max), C.J. Laing (Angel), Tony Richards (Antonio), Terri Hall (Michelle), Kim Pope (Opening Kidnap Victim), Ashley Moore (Rocky), Alan Marlow (Conrad), Steven Lark (Stephen), Juliet Graham (Willing Blonde), Maureen Anderson (Kitty) and Cedar Houston (Anita). Running time : 85 minutes.

By Dries Vermeulen