Joe Sarno week (June 16 – 22) Joe Sarno was called the Bergman of 42nd St, but don’t let that stop you from watching his movies! He was able to shape dramatic stories that were entertaining and of-the-moment while working with tight budgets and inexperienced performers but he never lost sight of why people were buying the tickets – HOT SEX!

Bobbi (June Colbourne) is the kind of person who could only appear in a roughie directed by Joe Sarno. She’s a combination exotic dancer and fortune teller who uses a Haitian voodoo amulet to remain young and oh yeah, she can control almost any man, like her lover and bongo player Dave (Derek Murcott).

Her daughter Julia (Dian Lloyd) doesn’t want to live in the world her mother dominates. She’s also a dancer and doubles as a possessed woman during her mother’s psychic flim flam shows, raking in money from the marks and rubes.

After a night getting sodas, she gives her body to Ben Furman (Charles Clements).  But soon, Dave decides to steal the amulet, putting everyone’s lives in a tailspin. Didn’t Dave already know that every one of Bobbi’s lovers has died horribly?

There’s no nudity or sex in this, but it feels just plain scuzzy and that’s the kind of filth that I wallow in. The promise of a carnal inferno and the delivery of entropy, so to speak. Then again, you get a lot of dance scenes that were volcanic in 1963 and could play on prime time TV today.

Like how Andy Milligan really only wants family members to lose their minds and scream at one another while the horror elements are just window dressing, so many Joe Sarno movies are about sadness and how people fail to connect. At the end, Bobbi remarks just how old and tired she is, despite all the magic. We don’t see her as younger — there’s no money for special effects — and have to become part of her illusion, hypnotized ourselves with the black and white starkness.

Sarno took over when original director Anthony Farrar left. Sure, it drags despite being 66 minutes, but then you remember that this is a sexless sex movie that has become a voodoo noir and you figure, well, it’s good enough.

One review on Letterboxd said, “The people are not very attractive nor appealing.” Maybe you’ve never seen pre-1970s adult films before. For shame.