After a boring hour of this filler a "five years later" epilogue has now glamorously coiffed Donna strolling along the beach in her mink coat as the voice-over informs us of her selling out by marrying a French director, hence the film's ironic title. Closest to this would be the attractive Donna masturbating with a vibrator in a nearly hardcore segment, but generally the sex footage in MINK is dull and mechanical. Unfortunately absent are the trademark patent leather boots and other fetish paraphernalia that Nick's fans dote upon. Brother Philip is shooting random footage, but like sis, aiming at sexy stuff, ultimately capturing lesbo action that is Nick's forte in cinema. It is evident he was just grinding out product with this one. Nick very sloppily presents these segments out of sync, typical of the haphazard construction throughout MINK. It's meant to be amusing but comes off as retarded. She interviews all sorts of people on the street, asking inane questions a la Lena Nyman in CURIOUS: "What are your views on America today?", and the answers are even dumber. Donna is recording ambient sound as a femme version of Ben Burtt (!), randomly but aiming at collecting sexy tracks. release by the Supreme Court but I'm sure Nick saw it in Europe where he frequently shot movies of his own. That Vilgot Sjoman film had yet to be cleared for U.S. Too-heavy narration (a Nick trademark, executed miserably this time with mainly a male voice instead of the seductive femme voice-over) states the date of production as October 27, 1969, and the format is lifted from the international hit from Sweden, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW). MINK is about a pair of siblings, defying their rich Hollywood dad and making an underground movie "of the streets". Unlike his contemporary Joe Sarno, drive-ins had no use for his stuff either, and let's face it, he wasn't "underground enough" to qualify for the Cinema 16 midnight movie packages that spotlighted Andy Warhol, the Kuchar Brothers and Curt McDowell. To put things in perspective, a Russ Meyer hit like VIXEN grossed on the order of 100 times the usual takings for a Millard one-day wonder, and the fact that he was making basically silent films didn't impress the local film exchanges. I never saw his films theatrically, as I was a Cleveland-resident film buff in the late '60s through the '70s, and his marginal efforts didn't get local bookings. The master of cinematic fetish has turned in a disappointing self-satire. I'm a latter-day convert to Nick Millard's porn oeuvre, but MINK is something of a train wreck.
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