Top Ten Joe Sarno Movies

He’s had a career spanning five decades, working in every genre from drama to comedy, from softcore to hardcore.  So here’s our list of Joe Sarno’s best work.  We’re limiting ourselves to his softcore movies—after all, this is Softcore Reviews, isn’t it? These are the ten movies we like the best.

Often Sarno’s movies are known by multiple titles. We’re using the titles adopted by Seduction Cinema in their re-release DVDs.  Seduction has done a masterful job of bringing these movies to a wider audience. In many cases, they’ve saved them from extinction by taking the best-available prints and restoring them to their former glory.

10.  All the Sins of Sodom

A perfect example of the transitional period between 1960s Sarno and 1970s Sarno.  Unlike Sin in the Suburbs and Moonlighting Wives (three years earlier), when you couldn’t really show anything and had to hint at it, in this one you get plenty of action, albeit somewhat restrained.  But even this early, you have to question how real a couple of the scenes are, including one involving a state-of-the-art but scary-looking vibrating massager.

9. Confessions of a Young American Housewife

The sleepy suburbs once again, showing how much things had changed in 10 years.  Rebecca Brooke stars as a sexy young wife and Jennifer Welles is her mother, a stereotypical Jackie Kennedy kind of wife from the early 1960s, whose frigid world is challenged by her daughter’s free-swinging ways.  If only the two of them didn’t look the same age!

8. Vampire Ecstasy

Sarno mines the popular lesbian vampire genre with a tale of demonic possession set in a world of absurd European accents.  Marie Forsa makes her first appearance in a Sarno film, along with the gorgeous Ulrike Butz.  Blink and you’ll miss a hardcore blowjob moment that accidentally made it into the film.

7. The Seduction of Inga

Marie Liljedahl is back for another go around as Inga, only this time she’s actually of age.  The original Inga was a classic.  This one shows how the world of softcore matured in just two short years.  This time little Inga’s in full color and going further than you expect her to.  It makes you wish they had made an Inga trilogy, ’round about 1974.  By then you definitely would’ve seen Inga getting it on for real.

6. Girl Meets Girl

Maria Forsa in her breakout role.  There’s a heat in the Sapphic groping that marks a new chapter in Sarno’s softcore work—hardcore action,  carried on mostly offscreen. Focusing on the face and the breathing of women during orgasm, Sarno discovers what a treasure he’s found in Forsa.

5. Suburban Secrets

Though this movie comes long after Sarno’s glory days, it’s a remarkable work in many respects.  For one thing, it’s the first time ever that Sarno’s producers put no time constraints on him and allowed him to do what he wanted.  You may think that this makes for a boring movie, but it’s still hot, with plenty of sex to see over the course of its 2 1/2 hours(!). Starring some of Seduction’s lesser-known hotties, including Isadora Edison and Chelsea Mundae.

4. Inga

A groundbreaking film from 1968, this story of young Inga unwittingly causing havoc in the sex lives of a group of Swedes seems even more risque due to being in old-school black-and-white.  Marie Liljedahl’s scene of self-love in a see-through nightie is still a shocker.

3. Abigail Leslie is Back in Town

It’s not as explicit as the top two, but the plot and the acting are about as good as you’re going to find in a softcore movie from this period.  Rebecca Brooke and Sarah Nicholson star as former high-school enemies turned adult lovers.  And Sarno’s wintry hometown of Amityville, NY manages to out-Swede Sweden.

2. Laura’s Toys

A remarkable combination of Swedish and American erotic sensibilities. Rebecca Brooke and Eric Edwards star as a husband and wife who consider bringing another woman into their relationship.  Newcomer Cathja von Graff stars as the other woman.  Peggy Sarno, Joe’s wife and assistant director, notes that Graff’s very real orgasms are signaled by the little veins that pop up on her forehead.  So keep an eye out for them!

1. Butterflies

Completing his masterworks trilogy from 1974-75, Marie Forsa stars as a young German girl coming to the big city and finding more than she can handle in the impressive manliness of Harry Reems.  Sarno still focuses on Forsa’s angelic face, but he shoots full-body during the sex scenes more often.  All of the sex is very obviously real. So is it a hardcore film or is it a softcore film?  Who knows.  I’d say it’s a softcore film with a few hardcore peeks.  Whatever it is, it’s unlike any other movie in history in the way that it toes the line between the two genres, and does so both intelligently and non-gratuitously.