Bibi (1974)

One of the exasperating things about exploitation movies of the 60s and 70s is that so many of them were released under so many different titles. Joe Sarno’s Bibi, the subject of this review, has also been released as Confessions of a Sex Kitten, Confessions of Sweet Sixteen, Vild på sex and on DVD as Girl Meets Girl. They’re all the same movie. And, as was more or less standard for such films, there were different cuts of the movie for different markets.

After making some extremely interesting sexploitation features in new York in the 60s Sarno started making movies in Europe. This allowed for much higher production values and also allowed him to shoot in colour. His first European movie, Inga, had been a major hit and Sarno enjoyed working in Europe. Around 1973 Sarno discovered a young Swedish actress named Marie Forså and cast her in his first (and only) horror film, Vampire Ecstacy (AKA The Devil’s Plaything AKA Veil of Blood). His next and very obvious movie was to put her in something a lot raunchier and the result was Bibi. A year later he starred her in the even raunchier Butterflies (AKA Butterfly, AKA Broken Butterfly).

Bibi (Marie Forså) is an innocent young girl who goes to stay with her aunt Toni. Only Bibi isn’t as innocent as she looks. She proceeds to seduce absolutely everyone in town, male and female. Along the way she builds up her trophy collection. Bibi looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth but she’s quite the sexual predator.

This sounds like it’s just an excuse for an endless series of sexual encounters. And we are in fact treated to an extraordinary array of sex scenes. This is however a Joe Sarno film. Sexual liberation is a fine thing but if you go around having sex with everyone you meet there are going to be emotional complications. There is no such thing as consequence-free sex in the world of Joe Sarno. And love always has consequences, which can be good or bad. Sarno was no moralist. He wasn’t saying that sex is bad, he was merely pointing out that it isn’t free.

There are plenty of consequences for Bibi’s sexual partners. The setup here is a little bit similar to that in his superb Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town. There are some complicated and unconventional relationships (such as a foursome all living under the same roof) but they’re relatively stable. At least they’re stable until a new player (in this case Bibi) is thrown into the game. Then these emotional houses of cards start to topple. And, as in Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town, the effects of Bibi’s arrival are indirect as well as direct.

Bibi was shot in and around Munich, and on 35mm, and there’s plenty of location shooting (in other words there’s plenty of sex outdoors with pretty scenery in the background as well as indoors). With his European movies Sarno was aiming for a classier and much less seedy look compared to his early American films. While personally I love the seedy quality of 60s sexploitation there’s no doubt that in this case Sarno’s commercial instincts were correct, and mostly he succeeds.

Despite being made entirely in Europe Bibi was shot in English (Sarno and producer Chris Nebe being well aware of American audiences’ intense dislike of dubbed or subtitled movies). The European accents do however help to give it that European Sex Film vibe which probably also helped at the box office (where Bibi did pretty well).

It was shot almost entirely in the house of a friend of producer Nebe and the setting conveys a feeling of upper middle class elegance, and upper middle class decadence.

Marie Forså is perfect, managing to seamlessly combine innocence and licentiousness. She was apparently verry enthusiastic when it came to filming the sex scenes.

This movie is softcore, or at least it was edited as softcore, although it seems possible (according to Chris Nebe’s recollections) that at least some of the sex is non-simulated. Certainly in Butterflies the sex is not simulated.

There’s an astonishing number of lesbian sex scenes but plenty of heterosexual scenes as well. There’s a touch of S&M which actually works because the character involved really does seem like a woman who would be into something like that. And there’s at least one seriously kinky scene involving the same lady.

There are even a couple of humorous touches which you don’t expect in a Sarno movie. The lecherous birdwatcher not only adds a few laughs it also adds yet another sexual kink, voyeurism.

Retro Seduction Cinema have done a fine job with the DVD release. The transfer is generally very good with strong vibrant colours. There’s an interview with Sarno and producer Chris Nebe and Nebe is also featured in a very informative audio commentary.

Bibi is a good example of mid-70s Joe Sarno, pushing the edge of the envelope as far as softcore is concerned but with Sarno’s trademark touches - it has some emotional depth and some melodrama it’s sexy without feeling sleazy. Highly recommended.

The Love Merchant (1966)

The Love Merchant, which came out in 1966, is a fairly early Joe Sarno sexploitation outing. It’s been released on DVD by Something Weird, paired with a 1969 Sarno film, The Layout.

Sarno has been described as the Ingmar Bergman of sexploitation films. That might be hyperbole but Sarno certainly did approach the genre in a surprisingly thoughtful way. 

Sarno’s career falls into two distinct periods, the early black-and-white sexploitation films made between  1961 and 1969 and the later glossy colour softcore films of the 70s. His 1970s movies have their virtues but personally I think his 1960s output is more interesting. 1960s Sarno is more about the price of decadence than the glories of free love.

Sarno approached sex as something that went far beyond the soulless mechanical couplings that characterise so much of so-called erotic cinema. Sarno was interested in the emotions unleashed by sex, and in the effects on personal relationships. Despite the ultra low budgets and the often rather dodgy acting there’s always a certain intelligence to Sarno’s work. People in his movies have reasons for doing the things they do.

The Love Merchant introduces us to Bobbi (Joanna Mills), a small-town girl who has transformed herself into a bohemian New York artist. She’s not a major artist but she makes a living. Her old school friend Peggy (Patricia McNair) comes to visit and to show off her new advertising executive husband Roger (George Wolfe). Bobbi’s boyfriend Click (Louis Waldon) is a far cry from the ultra respectable Roger. The leather-clad Click is a grifter with ambitions.

Click sees his big chance when he meets Kendall Harvey III (Judson Todd) in a night club. Kendall Harvey III is very very rich. He likes exquisite things. When he sees something exquisite that he likes he buys it. This includes women. Now Click does some thing. Bobbi paints lots of nudes and she has a reputation for finding exceptionally beautiful models. She has a whole roster of these beautiful models. By making use of this convenient fact Click should be able to supply Kendall Harvey II with all the feminine pulchritude he could possibly desire. Click might be able to turn this opportunity into a full-time job supplying the millionaire playboy with pliant bed companions (and Bobbi’s models are mostly very broad-minded girls).

All goes well until Harvey decides he’d like Peggy as one of his bed companions. Peggy and Roger are rather old-fashioned. They believe in marriage. Peggy is not to be bought. Kendall Harvey III however firmly believes that everybody can be bought and he’s sure he can take certain steps that will persuade Peggy to see reason. Harvey’s passion for Peggy will have momentous consequences.

Harvey’s private secretary Polly (Patti Paget) has her own problems, involving her obsession with the statuesque blonde Dixie (Penni Peyton). Polly will discover that her willing participation in Harvey’s woman-collecting will have consequences for her as well.

The performers in a Sarno movie had to do more than take their clothes off. They were required to act as well, and this they attempted to do (with varying degrees of success). In this case Patricia McNair does a pretty fair job. Judson Todd as Kendall Harvey III has the most demanding role in the film and he gives a very creditable performance. Harvey is superficially a bit of a monster but there’s an edge of despair to his character. He’s a man who thinks that everything can be bought - sex, beauty, happiness, fulfillment. There is a part of him though that has its doubts about whether life can really be so simple. There’s a key scene in which he has just spent the night with a luscious young ballet dancer but in the morning, instead of triumph, he feels only emptiness. Todd really proves himself to be quite a capable actor.

One of the joys of 60s sexploitation cinema is the women. They don’t look like models or pornstars. They look like real women. They don’t look like they’re more silicon than woman. They’re pretty but they still look like the sorts of women you could actually meet in the real world. 

This is by later standards very mild stuff. The sex scenes are brief and very very tame and there’s not much nudity, just the occasional topless shot. Today the film would have no difficulty getting a PG rating at most. What it does have is emotional intensity. Buying and selling women has emotional consequences, both for the woman who is being bought and for the man who is doing the buying. 

The movie has intelligence and emotional depth but it has one other major asset - it has go-go dancing! Lots of go-go dancing. Bliss!

Something Weird have demonstrated their usual uncanny ability to find excellent prints of obscure 60s sexploitation titles. The Love Merchant looks pretty good. It’s fullframe but it’s probable that the movie was shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio.

The Love Merchant is most certainly not a softcore porn film. It’s all about sex but it’s really a psychological melodrama and a fairly effective one. The low budget is very much in evidence but Sarno’s characters are complex enough that the viewer is unlikely to be bothered by this. On the whole this is a fine Joe Sarno film. Highly recommended.

Inga (1968)

Joe Sarno’s Inga (Jag - en oskuld) was the director’s biggest ever hit and became one of the iconic erotic movies of the 1960s. It’s also something of an oddity, being an American sexploitation movie shot in Sweden with a mixed American-Swedish crew. The result is a surprisingly successful blending of the European art-house movie with Sarno’s distinctive style of very American sexploitation.

By the mid-60s it was becoming obvious that the Hollywood Production Code was no longer viable and it was replaced by a ratings system. As an afterthought the Motion Picture Association of America added an additional rating, the “X” rating. For various reasons (possibly to do with their reluctance to be seen as active censors) the “X” rating was unofficial and left to the discretion of distributors.

At the same time it was becoming obvious that sooner or later sex was going to break out into mainstream movies. Plenty of movies had dealt with sex obliquely or peripherally but eventually it was going to be dealt with directly. Sex is too interesting a part of the human experience to be shunted off to one side indefinitely.

Although it was most certainly not their intention, in retrospect it is clear that the MPAA’s “X” rating had finally opened the door. In 1968 two American sexploitation movies would begin the process of kicking that door wide open - Russ Meyer’s Vixen and Joe Sarno’s Inga.

Something that wasn’t clear at the time was that if a film-maker was going to tackle sex directly and intelligently that film-maker was more likely to come from the shadowy world of the grindhouses rather than from the mainstream. In general mainstream movie-makers, both then and now, had the unfortunate tendency to take sex much too seriously and try to make it much too arty. They also were never going to be able to realise that if you want to make a movie about sex it has to be genuinely erotic. A movie about sex that lacks an erotic charge is like a movie about romance that isn’t romantic, or a suspense movie that isn’t suspenseful. Inga in fact provides the basic template for all future serious movies about sex - it has a strong narrative structure (a feature that always distinguished Sarno’s exploitation movies), it’s very character-driven, the emphasis is on sex as an emotional experience and it’s sexy without being tacky. And, not surprisingly, it made a great deal of money.

The setup is typically Sarno. We have an emotional/sexual situation that seems stable but is in reality a ticking bomb, and then someone comes along and lights the fuse.

Greta (Monica Strömmerstedt) is a 33-year-old widow who has been having a somewhat one-sided relationship with a much younger man named Karl (Casten Lassen). Karl is an aspiring writer. He is selfish, self-centred and shallow but he is also young and very good-looking. Greta is hopelessly in love with him. Karl is very fond of Greta’s money. Unfortunately Greta is nowhere near as wealthy as she would like Karl to think. In fact she is partly dependent financially on her late husband’s friends Einar Nilsson (Thomas Ungewitter) and Einar’s sister Sigrid (Sissi Kaiser). Karl is a very expensive boy-toy to maintain and Greta is starting to feel the strain. She is also keenly and painfully aware that although she is still a beautiful woman she is in her mid-thirties and the clock is ticking.

Sigrid has a problem as well. The problem of what to do about her brother Einar. Einar is a wealthy, successful and highly respected editor who is very much at home in the very cultured and rather artistic circles in which he and Sigrid move. He is in early middle age but is still a rather handsome man. But Einar has a taste for young girlfriends. Very young girlfriends. Not young enough to cause any legal problems or scandals but young enough to cause plenty of other headaches. Teenage girls soon become bored with middle-aged lovers and Einar always gets hurt. And humiliated. And made to look a fool. Even worse he has very poor judgment in the girls he chooses and their behaviour causes constant embarrassment and anxiety to Sigrid.

Sigrid is the elder sibling and she is fiercely protective of her brother. She now comes up with a plan. Einar generally has no interest in women of Greta’s age but he has always had a bit of a thing for her, and she is still an extremely attractive woman. Most importantly Greta is the sort of woman who could move comfortably in Einar’s world. Greta is unimpressed by Sigrid’s idea until Sigrid lays her cards on the table. Greta needs the financial support she gets from Sigrid and that money could disappear if Greta refuses. On the other hand if Greta does agree to manoeuvre herself into being Einar’s concubine the financial support could become rather more lucrative.

Greta’s life is complicated enough but it’s going to get very much more complicated when she finds herself having to act as substitute mother for her 17-year-old niece Inga (Marie Liljedahl). Inga is not your average 17-year-old girl. She is a quiet, studious, serious-minded girl with a taste for the classics and a passion for opera. She is intelligent, well-educated and highly cultured. Her idea of a good time is to curl up with a volume of Strindberg’s plays. Greta was initially less than enthusiastic about having Inga come to live with her but now she’s starting to see a way in which Inga could solve her problems for her. The key to her plan is that Inga combines her serious nature and highbrow tastes with the body of a 17-year-old sexbomb. Wouldn’t that make her the ideal mistress for Einar? Sigrid would be delighted by Inga’s intelligence and civilised behaviour. This is a girl who would not cause any embarrassments at dinner parties. Einar would have himself a stunning little nymphet as a bed partner. Greta’s services as Einar’s official mistress would no longer be required so she could concentrate on her boy-toy. Everyone would be happy. And for creating such universal happiness surely Sigrid would be more than willing to pay Greta generously for her services as procuress. Sigrid sees the logic in Greta’s scheme and the deal is cut. There’s just one tiny detail Greta has overlooked. She hasn’t thought it necessary to consult Inga about her feelings in regard to this splendid plan. And a beautiful teenage girl just starting to discover her sexuality is just the very thing to light the fuse to explode that ticking bomb I mentioned earlier.

While the awakening of a teenage girl’s sexuality is clearly going to be potential commercial dynamite it’s subject matter liberally littered with extremely dangerous pitfalls if you happen to be a writer-director who wants to make a serious and intelligent movie that will be artistically successful without being sleazy. Sarno happened to be that kind of writer-director, and with this movie he was making a bold move to capture both the exploitation markets and the European art-house markets.

The chief danger of course is that if you veer too much one way you will end up with a movie that is tacky and exploitative while if you try too hard to be serious and tasteful you can end up diluting the erotic charge. And given that the central theme is the emotionally and sexually explosive effects of Inga’s awakening the erotic charge has to be there, otherwise there’s absolutely no point to the movie. In fact there was never any serious cause for concern. Sarno was always able to get that kind of balance right. And he was always able to ratchet up the eroticism without ever losing sight of his main preoccupation - that sex always has emotional consequences. Greta loses sight of that truth while Inga must learn it quickly.

There is also the very real danger of drifting into Lolita territory and if that happens shipwreck is almost inevitable. Inga navigates these waters quite safely, keeping well away from those dangerous reefs. Lolita was a child. Inga, for all her youth and innocence, is unquestionably a woman. That’s really the whole point. Greta’s miscalculation is based on her failure to appreciate that fact.

Sarno, as usual, manages to deal with serious issues without losing his lightness of touch. While serious European art-house directors were remarkably successful at making erotic movies that are mind-numbingly dull and miserable Sarno was unlikely ever to commit such an error. Sarno was unafraid of the darker sides and consequences of sexuality but he had a certain fundamental optimism. People make mistakes but sometimes they do learn from them. Sex is powerful because it’s both dangerous and joyous.

Sarno gets fine performances from a cast composed of a mixture of stage actors, film actors and complete newcomers. But then he always had the ability to get the emotional intensity he wanted from his casts. As in most of his movies the women get the more complex and demanding rôles. Monica Strömmerstedt is wonderfully edgy as Greta. She always seems on the verge of psychological disintegration, which of course she is. Despite the appallingly manipulative and destructive (and self-destructive) behaviours in which she indulges we can never quite bring ourselves to despise her. Sarno had little interest in straightforward heroes or villains. He wanted characters who made disastrous mistakes not because they were evil but because they succumbed to very human weaknesses. Strömmerstedt captures Greta’s desperation exceptionally well.

Marie Liljedahl is the crucial ingredient. She had to be both innocent enough and sexual enough to be convincing without crossing over into disturbing territory and she strikes the perfect balance.  

Visually the movie looks like what it is - a blending of European and American sensibilities. It was shot in black-and-white, always Sarno’s preferred medium. The danger was that the Swedish locations might have looked too bleak in black-and-white but the movie manages to be both stark and beautiful. The budget was considerably larger than usual for a Sarno film and the extra production values are apparent.

The sex scenes were shot the way Sarno always shot them, with the emphasis on emotions rather than body parts. While the actual sexual content is tame by later standards the intensity that Sarno always strived for makes this movie far more erotic than what passes for erotica these days. This being 1967 it goes without saying that the women look like women rather than pornstars. The nudity is far from explicit but Marie Liljedahl certainly sizzles.

Retro-Seduction Cinema have done their usual splendid job with the DVD, with an excellent transfer offering both the original Swedish version and the English dubbed version. The extras include a commentary track featuring both Joe Sarno and his wife and perennial collaborator Peggy. One of the more interesting, and startling, revelations on this commentary track is that the sex scenes were real rather than simulated. Even Marie Liljedahl’s solo performance was apparently quite real. This would have been quite unusual even in fully-fledged early 70s soft porn; for a film shot in 1967 it’s extraordinarily bold.

Inga tries to be both an art movie and a sex movie and in general the results are remarkably successful. Highly recommended.

Laura's Toys (1975)

Laura's Toys, released in 1975,  is fairly typical of Joe Sarno’s mid-1970s softcore sex films. Anyone familiar with Sarno’s work knows that this means they’re in for something that is a good deal more than just softcore porn. Sarno’s perennial preoccupations with the emotional consequences of sex are on full display, there is real acting, an intelligent script and sensitively drawn characters.

Sarno started his career in American sexploitation movies in the 60s and right from the beginning his movies were unusual in their emotional sophistication. For those unfamiliar with the genre American sexploitation movies combined extremely mild erotic content (many would easily qualify for a PG rating today) with an extraordinary amount of quirkiness and often downright weirdness. As long as they contained at least a moderate amount of the required content of nudity and sex the film-makers working in this field were more or less free to do anything they wanted to do. The result was a fascinating output of movies that displayed the unconventional visions of some interesting low-budget film-makers.

When these movies started being taken seriously (at least by some movie fans and even scholars) a couple of decades ago Sarno was one of the two singled out as the directors most worthy of respect (the other being Radley Metzger). Sarno’s specialty was the psychological sexploitation movie. Some have gone so far as to see him as a sort of low-budget American Bergman. While it might be going too far to describe Sarno as a great movie-maker he was undeniably intriguing, distinctive, intelligent and often provocative. At the very least he was an important minor, but very genuine, talent.

By the end of the 1960s sexploitation was essentially dead as a genre, having been replaced by softcore porn movies. The main difference, apart from the considerable increase in the amount and explicitness of the sex, was that these softcore features generally lacked the appealing campy oddness of the earlier sexploitation genre. Metzger and Sarno however continued to pursue their personal obsessions and their movies of the early to mid 70s are as interesting and as worthwhile as their earlier films. Sadly the softcore erotic movie proved to have a very short lifespan. By the end of the 70s hardcore porn and video had killed the softcore erotic feature.

1970s softcore porn feature films were also notable for their surprisingly high production values and visual quality. Being intended for theatrical release they were shot on film, and often on 35mm, and were made with considerable care and attention. Directors like Sarno and Metzger would invest a quantity of time and effort on getting the lighting right that would be imaginable in a porn movie a few years later. And these movies had scripts. The actors were real actors. Almost all were trained actors. They needed to be since they had actual dialogue. In a Sarno movie, a great deal of dialogue.

Which brings us to Laura's Toys. Sarno’s script (he acted as writer-director on all his movies) presents us with a fairly typical 70s Sarno setup, although love triangles are a little unusual in his work. We have a group of people, in this case a man and two women,  who inhabit what seems to be a stable situation but there are major tensions underneath. The arrival of an outside character sets up the sexual and emotional powderkeg. Eventually, as in so many Sarno movies, a new stable system comes into being but since the characters have been forced to do some growing up the new system is more stable than the original one.

The initial system in this film comprises three people - Walter (Eric Edwards), Laura (Rebecca Brooke) and Anna (Cathja Graff). Walter is an archaeologist searching for an ancient village site on a tiny island off the Swedish coast. He is married, apparently very happily, to Laura. The one minor problem in their marriage is that Laura has no interest in archaeology. Anna is Walter’s assistant, a fellow archaeologist. The tension comes from Anna’s infatuation with Walter, an infatuation that Walter is aware of and which flatters him.

Anna can offer Walter something that Laura cannot - a girlfriend who shares his passion for his work. Laura on the other hand is far more beautiful than Anna, far more sexual, and she is amusing and charming. Walter and Laura are deeply in love and the sexual chemistry between them is intense. Appearances would suggest that Laura has Anna fairly comprehensively outgunned and that her marriage is in little danger.

Then Hanni (Anita Ericsson) reappears in Laura’s life. Hanni and Laura had had an intense long-term lesbian relationship some years earlier. The two women had lived in an atmosphere of non-stop sex, not just with each other but with a succession of other women and men whom they drew into their little circle. For Hanni and Laura sex was a playground and other people were sex toys. Laura had tired of this. When she married Walter it was a serious step for her into the adult world. She intended to make her marriage work. It’s not that Laura grew tired of sex. Far from it. She simply became tired of sex that didn’t mean anything. 

The central focus of the plot is the three-way power struggle between Laura, Anna and Hanni. Walter is the stake but he’s not really a player in this game. All three women are much stronger characters and all three are determined to win.

Commercial demands in 1975 were such that a softcore erotic movie such as this had to include a very great deal of nudity and sex, and had to have the requisite quantities of straight sex, lesbian sex, threesomes and group sex. That had become the established formula and if you wanted financing you had to follow that formula. At the same time such movies had to have a plot. If you were a director motivated by a desire for a quick buck that was no problem. You simply constructed the flimsiest of plots and got on with shooting the sex scenes. But if you were a Joe Sarno and you wanted to make a movie that would be both a successful softcore porn movie and a proper movie you faced a major challenge. You had to find a way to include the required sex scenes whilst still telling a coherent story about real people, you had to integrate the sex scenes into the story so that each sexual encounter actually advances the plot, you had to make the sex scenes mean something to the characters. Sarno had no interest in simply stringing together random couplings.

In this respect Laura's Toys succeeds surprisingly well. Each sex scene does advance the plot and it does advance the charter development. When the characters in this movie have sex they do so for a reason, and the reason is not mere lust. As a result the sex has the extraordinary emotional intensity that the sex scenes in Sarno’s movies always have, and this emotional intensity is the ingredient that gives them their very considerable erotic charge.

Several of Sarno’s mid-70s softcore films were in fact edging close to the borderline of hardcore, featuring real rather than simulated sex. In effect they were shot as hardcore but edited as softcore. The sex in Laura's Toys was certainly real. Given that Sarno was more interested in the emotional impact of sex than in the mechanics and that he was always more interested in showing us the faces of people having sex rather than body parts this might seen an odd choice. In fact it works. The fact that the sex is real gives it the intensity Sarno wanted.

The sex scenes involving Hanni and her friends are particularly interesting. There’s something very cyclical and repetitive about them. Since Sarno was very good at filming sex scenes in an imaginative way this would appear to be a deliberate choice on the director’s part. It certainly has the effect of emphasising the futility of Hanni’s incessant pursuit of pleasure. Hanni is simply going around in circles on a non-stop sexual merry-go-round. As Laura tries to tell her, Hanni has become a sexual Peter Pan. She refuses to grow up and accept emotional responsibility. Laura is tired of playing Wendy to Hanni’s Peter Pan.

Eric Edwards was a competent actor but was perhaps just a little too young and pretty to be an entirely convincing eminent archaeologist. He does however handle the extended and sensitive flirtation between his character and Anna extremely well. There are a couple of wonderfully subtle moments that capture the growing intimacy between Walter and Anna and the nervousness of both characters abut where this might be leading. There’s a particularly nice moment when he takes Anna’s glasses out of the breast pocket of her shirt. It’s an almost harmless action but it’s just a little too intimate to be appropriate between a man and an attractive young female assistant and it gives us the first faint hint of the sexual tension between them. Cathja Graff’s reaction is superbly subtle.

Cathja Graff is generally excellent. It’s also worth saying that her orgasm scenes (which everyone involved in the film confirms were most certainly not faked) are among the most erotic moments you’ll see in any sex movie.

Anita Ericsson has the trickiest rôle, Hanni being the least sympathetic major character. Ericsson manages to make her something more than a mere destructive manipulator.

It’s Rebecca Brooke (whose also acted her real name Mary Mendum) who dominates the movie. She was a talented actress who appeared in quite a few of Sarno’s movies and always gave him fine performances. Laura is the most grown-up and complex of the characters and she’s a woman determined not to slip back into her adolescent persona. She understands that while the pursuit of sex might bring a great deal of pleasure it’s emotional commitment that brings happiness. Brooke is superb and handles her character’s growing emotional maturity with consummate skill. It doesn’t hurt that she was also a remarkably beautiful woman with the ability to project an extraordinary sexual power.

Retro-Seduction Cinema have done their usual magnificent job with this DVD. The anamorphic transfer is superb. Picture quality is crisp, the colours are bright, contrast is good and print damage is very close to non-existent. The company also packed this DVD with some very worthwhile extras. There is a brief interview with Joe Sarno and his wife Peggy (who acted as assistant director on this film) and another interview with star Eric Edwards. There’s also a commentary track featuring Edwards and Sarno biographer Michael Bowen. The commentary track is a major plus. Eric Edwards proves to be a charming and amusing man and his insights into the adult film industry then and now are perceptive and provocative. This is the sort of DVD that reflects a genuine respect for both the movie and the DVD purchaser.

This is not a perfect Sarno movie, not quite in the same league as the superlative Abigail Lesley is Back in Town, but it’s still a Sarno movie and it’s a pretty good one. Its minor defects are more than outweighed by its strengths and Rebecca Brooke’s performance alone is enough reason to buy this one. Highly recommended.

All the Sins of Sodom (1968)

All the Sins of Sodom was made by Joe Sarno in 1968 after his return to the US from Sweden where he’d shot Inga, one of his biggest successes.

All the Sins of Sodom is classic Sarno. A photographer named Henning is obsessed by the idea of capturing the essence of female evil in a photograph. When he meets Leslie (Maria Lease) he believes he’s found what he’s looking for, a model who can portray Salome, the priestesses of Babylonia, the priestesses of Sodom and Gomorrah. She will be the centrepiece of a book of artistic nudes that he believes will propel from from nudie photo shoots into the world of serious photography. He already has the contract for the book - all he needs are the right photos.

As well as photographing her he begins an affair with her. Not that that’s unusual - he ends up in bed with most of his models.

His agent also introduces another model to him, a woman named Joyce. He isn’t interested in photographing her but she’s homeless and he feels sorry for her so he lets her stay in his studio (where he also lives).

His obsession with his photographic sessions with Leslie leads to frustration. He just can’t get her to quite capture the look he wants. Then he gets one of the ideas that seem inspired at the time - he will introduce Joyce into the sessions. Joyce will caress Leslie in order to get her into the right mood. Unfortunately Joyce becomes increasingly sexually obsessed with Henning, while Leslie is finding that for her the affair with Henning is more than just a fling - she is falling hopelessly in love with him.

This is a typical 60s Sarno movie, the sort of movie that elevates Sarno above the ranks of the average sexploitation film-maker. He is not interested in sex as a mechanical act. He is interested in sex as an emotional catalyst, a dangerous psychological game and an obsession. He is more interested in what his characters are feeling than in what they’re doing.

Sarno’s movies required his actors to do real acting, and he chose wisely. And sometimes one suspects that he got performances out of actors that no other exploitation director would have got because he challenged them to find the emotional depths in the characters they portrayed.

He was particularly fortunate in finding Maria Lease. She is both sexy, in a slightly exotic way, and a fine actress. And she has a genuine presence. The actor who plays Henning (all the players are uncredited and most of the perfotmers who appeared in these types of movies used pseudonyms anyway so identifying them is often quite a challenge) is also very good. The actress who plays Joyce is less proficient but she certainly has the right qualities of danger and evil.

Steve Silverman’s moody black-and-white cinematography complements Sarno’s directing style perfectly (he worked with the director quite a few times). The lighting setups are extraordinarily bold and imaginative for such a very low-budget movie with excellent use of light and shadow.

All the Sins of Sodom was shot in New York in early 1968, back-to-back with the excellent Vibrations and the sadly lost Wall of Flesh. It’s an object lesson in low-budget film-making with minimal sets used with great skill.

You can see the ending coming up a mile away but it works, and works well, because Henning can’t see it. And that’s the point. Had he been less obsessed with his pet project, had he remembered (if he ever knew) that models are more than just materials with which a photographer works, then he should have seen it coming. This is movie that is as much about artistic obsession as sexual obsession. Henning might well have been a true artist with the camera but he is a failure as a human being.

Retro-Seduction Cinema have done the same sort of very fine job with this movie as with the other Sarno movies they’ve released. The widescreen transfer is excellent, there is a commentary track by Sarno’s wife Peggy, and a number of other extras. Very few sexploitation directors have been fortunate enough to have their productions treated with this kind of respect.

Butterflies (1975)

Butterflies is one of three movies that legendary American sexploitation writer-director Joe Sarno made in Germany in the mid-70s. The first of the three was Vampire Ecstacy which was a bit of a departure for Sarno. Butterflies is less interesting, but still it’s a Sarno film. All three movies were shot in English.

Denise (Marie Forså) lives on a farm and she’s bored. She dreams of being a fashion model. Even the regular sex with her boyfriend Freddie (Eric Edwards) isn’t enough to break the monotony of rural life. So she decides to head to Munich to try to get her modeling career started. She hitch-hikes and develops a simple but effective technique for getting lifts. She lifts her skirt, and since she never wears underwear it works pretty well. First she is picked up by a rather creepy guy who sells kinky women’s underwear but she soon ditches him. Then she gets a ride with Frank (Harry Reems).

Frank is exciting and she figures he’s the sort of man she needs to meet. He runs a club in Munich and lives a glamorous lifestyle revolving around women, booze, women, expensive clothes, women, night-clubs and women. Frank already has a live-in girlfriend named Verena but he doesn’t let that cramp his style. The sex with Frank is hot, and Denise enjoys sex. Verena warns her she’s going to be just one of a long line of women that Frank picks up and then discards but Denise convinces herself that that won’t happen to her.

Frank doesn’t do much to further her modeling career but he does provide her with the lifestyle and excitement she craves.

Of course Verena’s warnings soon turn out to be all too true. Frank is chronically incapable of keeping his pants zipped up. When Frank meets the glamorous Natascha Denise finally realises what the score is.

It’s not much of a plot but in Sarno’s hands it has a rather bitter-sweet quality to it. Like his earlier American sexploitation movies Butterflies has a dark edge to it. Sarno’s movies never explode into violence but the passions aroused by the pursuit of pleasure do have their price. The idea that you can pursue sex and pleasure without becoming emotionally entangled always proves to be an illusion. It’s not that Sarno’s movies are conventional warnings about the wages of sin. He avoids simplistic moral judgments but he’s always at his strongest when dealing with emotions and when emotions are aroused people do get hurt.

The acting is reasonably impressive. Marie Forså is quite effective at portraying Denise’s odd blend of overwhelming sexuality and rural naïvete and she’s also able to make Denise a real person. Denise wants sex but she wants love as well, and she’s not going to get that from Frank. Forså has to do real acting and she manages pretty well. One might also add that she’s rather stunning.

Harry Reems (best known as the star of Deep Throat) was a major star in hardcore films in the 70s. This time he has to do some real acting as well and he’s quite adequate. Frank is exciting but he’s not a nice guy, although in his defence he never really pretends to be anything other than he is - a man completely devoted to the selfish pursuit of his own pleasure.  Reems has to work on some actual characterisation here.

The movie is basically softcore but it was shot hardcore - in other words the sex is not simulated but most of the more graphic hardcore elements were edited out. Still, it does cross the line into mild hardcore territory at times.

As usual in Sarno’s 1970s softcore offerings the sex is actually erotic, the women (and the men) are attractive, and the sex scenes are filmed with a certain amount of care so it’s more than just the dreary mechanical couplings you’d expect in a hardcore feature. And, typically for a Sarno movie, the focus is on the emotions of sex rather than the mechanics. The sex is however rather stronger than in a typical 1970s softcore film so if that’s a problem for you you have been warned.

The Swedish DVD release from Another World in is English with optional sub-titles in all the Scandinavian languages. And since it was made by Joe Sarno you do need the dialogue! It’s a very good transfer in the correct aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and the two-disc DVD set includes both the director’s cut and the less interesting XXX version as well as a commentary track (in English) and various other extras. This is a case of an erotic movie that really does deserve the kind of DVD release usually reserved for art movies and happily it gets it here.

Not it might not be quite as good as Sarno’s best 1970s movies (such as Confessions of a Young American Housewife and Abigail Lesley is Back in Town) this is still streets ahead of what you expect in this type of movie. Highly recommended.

Confessions Of a Young American Housewife (1974)

What distinguishes Joe Sarno’s sexploitation movies from most of the other such movies of the 1960s and 70s is that Sarno appears to be more interested in the people than in the sex. Or rather that he’s interested in sex as something that involves the heart and the brain rather than just the genitals.

His 1970s movies, judging by the couple that I’ve seen, show a certain mellowing. The characters are more likeable and Sarno seems to have more affection for them. There are betrayals and jealousies but there are no villains. Even in Abigail Leslie is Back in Town where the title character seems like she might be a destructive force she turns out to be nothing of the kind. Disruptive and unsettling certainly, but in a positive rather than a negative way.

Which brings us to Sarno’s 1974 production Confessions Of a Young American Housewife.

Carole (Rebecca Brooke) and her husband are involved in a foursome with Ann (Chris Jordan) and her husband. When Carole’s mother Jennifer (Jennifer Welles) arrives for a visit Carole is convinced that Jennifer is going to be shocked by her lifestyle. Jennifer had been named Young American Housewife of the Year for 1963 by a popular women’s magazine and to Carole she represents the pre-sexual revolution world.

It’s just not possible however to prevent Jennifer from finding out what’s going on. Far from being shocked Jennifer is having a sexual awakening of her own and Carole is the one who finds herself faced by some disturbing revelations and some even more disturbing feelings. The incest theme is handled sensitively and subtly and it remains a suggestion (and an uneasy feeling in both women’s minds) rather than anything explicit.

There’s a prodigious amount of sex and nudity and that brings us to another feature of Sarno’s films - the sex is genuinely erotic. It’s strictly softcore, or at least it’s softcore in terms of what we see, although Sarno in the accompanying interview hints that some of the sex might not have been simulated. It’s erotic because it isn’t mechanical. It’s sex as an expression of emotions. These are people who sleep together because they like each other and the real affection between the characters comes through. Sarno was very much aware that it’s much more exciting watching characters having sex if you’ve first come to know and like those characters as people.

The dialogue is a little clunky at times although it may just be that it’s a reflection of its times. The acting is better than you generally expect in a sexploitation movie. Jennifer Welles is actually pretty good, Chris Jordan is amusing and while Rebecca Brooke isn’t the world’s greatest actress she has a genuine screen presence and the camera loves her. I’ve only mentioned the women because Sarno’s focus is mostly on his female characters.

This movie isn’t quite in the same league as Abigail Leslie is Back in Town but it’s still an engaging piece of stylish erotica. And there surely has never been a more attractive adult actress than Rebecca Brooke.

Sarno was one of the three great American auteurs of the sex movie, the others of course being Radley Metzger and Russ Meyer. Their styles were very different, Metzger being the more impressive visual stylist while Sarno’s movies were more character-driven and Meyer’s movies were almost a genre unto themselves, but if you’re going to try to argue that sexploitation movies deserve as much respect as any other genre than it’s on the works of these three film-makers that your argument is going to rest.

The Retro Seduction Cinema DVD release is reasonably good. There’s some print damage evident but most sexploitation movies survive, if they survive at all, in a single print and in most cases the negatives have long since been lost. The picture quality is mostly good and the sound quality is good. There’s a short interview with writer-director Sarno and a bonus CD with music from his 1970s movies. Retro Seduction Cinema are one of the handful of companies releasing these kinds of movies on DVD and they do a fine job.

Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town (1975)

Joe Sarno’s 1960s sexploitation movies were more psycho-sexual melodramas than anything else. His specialty was to lift the lid on respectable suburban or small town communities to expose the hidden licentiousness and hypocrisy. By the 70s though he’d mellowed somewhat, and Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town, released in 1975, is much less cynical and bleak than his classic 60s films.

What’s interesting is that the basic plot is very similar indeed to his 1969 film Passion in Hot Hollows, but the tone of this movie is very different.

In both movies a woman has left a small town community years earlier to escape the stultifying conformity and repression. When she returns she unleashes an explosion of sexual passions that rocks the town to its core. But unlike her counterpart (Norma Sue) in Passion in Hot Hollows, Abigail Lesley is a much more sympathetic character. She’s also a much more fully developed character.

At first she appears very much like Norma Sue - deliberately causing chaos and seducing everyone who can possibly be seduced. As the film progresses we learn that she has reasons for feeling a degree of bitterness. Most importantly though, whereas Norma Sue was intent on revenge and on leaving a trail of destruction behind her, Abigail Lesley wants to liberate the people of Bayport. And rather than being the somewhat vicious rednecks of the earlier film the people of Bayport are merely repressed.

Most repressed of all is Priscilla (Rebecca Brooke). Abigail had seduced her husband Gordon (Jamie Gillis). Priscilla is conducting a kind of extramarital romance with a rather shy fisherman, but they’re both too uptight about the whole thing to have sex. She is very embarrassed by her sexual feelings, even when those feelings are directed towards her husband. Her aunt Drucilla (Jennifer Welles) suffers from no such hang-ups, which simply embarrasses Priscilla even more.

Her friend Alice Anne has her own embarrassing little secret - she learnt everything she knows about sex from her brother. Lila and Tracy have a secret as well - a youthful lesbian love affair. And it’s been quietly smouldering ever since.

Abigail decides the best plan is to get everyone sleeping with everyone else. Once they’ve overcome their inhibitions they’ll be free and happy. Hey, it was the 70s, when people still thought sex was a good thing. The results are not quite what she expects, but they’re certainly not disastrous. Especially for Priscilla.

Sarno recruited his cast mainly from New York City porn stars, many of whom worked mainly in the hardcore area. But this was the 1970s, when porn stars had generally started their careers as legitimate actors. They knew how to act. And given an opportunity to do real acting they could produce the goods. The characters in this movie have real complexity, as do the performances.

Jennifer Jordan is delightful as Abigail. She’s a bad girl, but she’s a nice girl as well. Being a bad girl has worked for her and she believes it can work for other women. Rebecca Broke is outstanding as Priscilla. She’s so emotionally and sexually repressed it’s painful to watch. You really feel for her. Jamie Gillis as her husband Gordon is a bit like Abigail - he’s cheerfully immoral but good-natured. And Jennifer Welles is great fun as Priscilla’s enthusiastically lascivious aunt Drucilla.

Certain kinds of scenes were pretty much obligatory in the softcore movies of this era. There had to be some lesbian sex, and at least one female masturbation scene. Sarno manages to make these ingredients actually work as part of his story. The various lesbian couplings kind of make sense in a 1970 exploring-one’s-sexuality kind of way. And the scene where Priscilla watches two of her friends having sex then slinks off to her bedroom to frantically and tearfully masturbate is actually rather moving. For Priscilla sex is very very disturbing.

The sex is certainly more graphic than in earlier Sarno films but it’s still strictly softcore.

The mood is, surprisingly for a Joe Sarno movie, fairly light. These are mostly likeable people and while the events set in train by Abigail prove very unsettling nobody really gets hurt. And for at least two people there’s real love at last. Overall it’s like an early Sarno sovial/psychological melodrama crossed with a good-natured romantic comedy. And the mix works rather well.

Retro Seduction’s DVD release puts most mainstream DVD releases to shame. It’s packed with extras including some great interviews. Jamie Gillis, who passed away recently, is particularly amusing. And there’s a commentary track as well. The DVD transfer makes use of the last surviving print of the movie. It’s a theatrical print but in excellent condition and the movie looks terrific.

This is one of the finest examples of that strange 1970s phenomenon, the serious arty erotic movie.

Vampire Ecstasy (1973)

In 1973 legendary sexploitation director Joseph W. Sarno decided to try his hand at erotic horror, erotic horror being very big at the time. The result was Vampire Ecstasy (Der Fluch der shwarzen Schwestern, also released under the titles The Devil’s Plaything and Veil of Blood), and it demonstrates that making an effective erotic horror movie isn’t as easy as it looks. You really need more than just vampires and naked women.

The plot isn’t really a problem. Yes, it’s silly, but since when has that been a problem in horror movie? In the 17th century a baroness was burnt alive as a vampire. Three hundred years later a group of people, some of whom are descendants of the evil baroness and some of whom are descendants of the women who betrayed her, are summoned to her gothic castle. The castle is inhabited by various female retainers, servants, etc, who have kept alive a kind of vampiric cult. They believe that the blood of one of the baroness’s betrayers can be used to bring the vampire back to life, in the body of her descendant.

The guests at the castle include a brother and sister. The have a very close relationship. The sister would like the relationship to be even closer. Much much closer. The sister also serves as the obligatory scientific sceptic, a woman who studies peasant superstitions.

The vampire cult priestesses conduct rituals, involving hypnotic percussive music and lots of naked dancing. By this means they are able to exercise a form of mind control over their unwitting guests, forcing them to do their bidding by making them a prey to unbearable lusts.

Although made in Germany with a mixed German/Swedish cast, the movie was shot in English. It’s noticeable that most members of the cast aren’t entirely comfortable in English and this gives the acting a rather stiff quality. The pacing is also a problem. And although the potential is there for the wonderful weirdness that you so often get in 70s European erotic horror, it isn’t really developed the way it would have been with someone like a Jess Franco or a Jean Rollin directing.

Nadia Hekowa is however delightfully bizarre and perversely erotic as the leader of the vampire cult, and the movie has its moments. It’s definitely one to rent rather than buy.