Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

Also known as Swinger’s Massacre and Super Swinging Playmates, this is the kind of scuzzy, ugly and dingy movie that doesn’t even try to make its sex sexy. Instead, it’s just an excuse for a man to lose control of his perfect life and gradually become a killer.

Charlie is an older suburbanite lawyer who has been married to his gorgeous wife Amy for about ten years. He feels like their love life has been stilted, despite her claiming that she’ll do anything he wants. And what he wants is to swing, because it’s 1974, and heads to a party thinking that once he’s there, his old man body will turn all the ladies on. Well, shockingly he gets one willing lover but can’t perform while his wife does more than enjoy herself. She soon becomes the one asking him to engage with other lovers.

Before you know it, anyone who has ever touched Amy must die.

Shot inside Filthy McNasty’s, a bar on the Sunset Strip where Evel Knievel, Phyllis Diller, Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger once were regulars and would one day become the Viper Room, many years after this movie was forgotten.

Directed by Ron Garcia and shot back-to-back with most of the same cast and crew as Don Jones’ Abduction, this movie somehow has Uschi Digard, Marsha Jordan and Rene Bond in its cast and still comes off as one of the unsexiest sexual films you’ll ever see. Garcia also made The Toy Box, which plays in a very similar space but is somehow even stranger. It’s like he wanted people to think that his movies were titilating and then, he’d club them over the head with weirdness or just plain brutal scenes of murder. No wonder he directed several episodes of Silk Stalkings.

Look, if you’re Charlie and you can’t rise to the occasion when you’re in bed with Jordan, who was in plenty of Harry Novak movies and Count Yorga, well I guess that your only choice is to start killing all your swinger friends. Good thing Viagra finally was created.

The thing is, Charlie is presented as sympathetic when he’s the one that wanted to be part of the free love scene, talking his wife into it and just because she’s enjoying pleasure and just because others are enjoying her, well, be careful what you ask for. Sure, it’s problematic, but if you’re looking for a great message in a 1974 exploitation movie that Something Weird release, maybe you should sit and spin.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

This is the first appearance in a Russ Meyer movie of Charles Napier. He plays Harry Thompson, a California border sheriff and marijuana smuggler who also somehow — spoiler warning — comes back from the dead to die again in Supervixens.

But as for this movie, it starts with a narration that blames marijuana for so many evils in society. Harry has ignored all that as he Harry works his sheriff job in between illegal activity. He lives at the site of a close silver mine with his English nurse girlfriend Cherry (Linda Ashton). As for Raquel (Larissa Ely), she’s a writer who has an interest in sexually pleasuring men. The two women learn of one another but Harry doesn’t want them to make love for some reason. When we first see Raquel, she’s in bed with Harry’s partner Enrique (Bert Santos). The two men work for Mr. Franklin (Frank Bolger), the town’s main politician, to move drugs. One of their other associates, the Apache (John Milo) is screwing everyone over. Franklin asks for him to be killed, but he gets away and steals Harry’s Jeep.

Now, Enrique knows too much and he must be killed. But the Apache gets to him — and Mr. Franklin — first. Raquel finds his body and is so upset, she must be hospitalized. Good news. Her nurse is Cherry and they finally get together to make love, all while Harry and the Apache do the exact opposite and kill one another.

But ah — it was all a story that Raquel was writing. This strange ending may be because a lot of the film’s footage was accidentally ruined by the color lab. Roger Ebert said, “The result is that audiences don’t even realize anything is missing; a close analysis might reveal some cavernous gaps in the plot, and it is a little hard to figure out exactly how (or if) all the characters know each other, but Meyer’s subjective scenes are so inventive and his editing so confident that he simply sweeps the audience right along with him. Cherry, Harry and Raquel! is possibly the only narrative film ever made without a narrative.” Uschi Digard, the lover of the Apache, was also added Linda Ashton quit and you have to admit that she adds a lot to the film. Meyer claims the other actress quit over her pomeranians ruining the carpets of the motel they were staying in and the owner getting upset.

He also said, “The picture is the most successful film I have on cable television-or hotel-vision-because you never have to come in at the beginning. It doesn’t matter. It could be a loop.”

It also has one of the first instances of mainstream full frontal male nudity, which made it a controversial movie all the way back in 1969.

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!

Also known as Kvinnolek, this Joe Sarno-directed and written movie is about Lisa Holmberg (Gunbritt Öhrström), who is the latest Sarno leading lady to be gorgeous and at the same time emotionally unsatisfied, no matter how well the rest of her high fashion life may be.

She heads to the country to rest and meets Ingrid (Gunilla Iwansson), a young girl who she convinces that she could escape her normal life and become a model. Of course, she also has her own designs on her young charge. Can Sapphic May and December — more like February and June — romance blossom?

This was brought to the U.S. by Cannon, which seemingly carried everything Sarno was making.

I love that when this played Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Press drama editor Thomas Blakely said “Yes” draws no from one critic: Swedish import is cheap, shoddy, ragged sex romp. They sent the drama editor to a Joe Sarno movie!

Meanwhile, I Am Curious (Yellow) was playing in New Kensington at the Dattola Theater.

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!

After her mother dies, Inga (former ballet dancer Marie Liljedahl, who really hit the trifecta of late sixties sleaze being in this Joe Sarno movie and its sequel The Seduction of Inga, Massimo Dallamano’s Dorian Gray and Jess Franco’s Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion; she retired from acting by the time she was 21) goes to live with her aunt Greta (Monica Strömmerstedt), who only wants to set her up with a rich older man named Einar (Thomas Ungewitter) and make money off of her. Yet once Inga meets Karl (Casten Lassen) — her aunt’s younger lover — she runs from this rich world of decadence.

In November of 1969, the police busted into the Dakota Theater in Grand Forks, ND and arrested the manager and the projectionist, charging them with running an obscene film. They were found not guilty, which was a major step toward legally showing pornography.

That said — this is quite tame by today’s standards. And it’s filled with so much story and emotional content, it’s hard to compare it to what pornography has become.

There’s a gorgeous scene in the beginning of this as Inga, nude but for a diaphanous nightgown, takes a series of wind-up toys and lets them race across the floor in front of her. Inga continues to return to these toys as her sexuality is awakened and her innocence left behind.

The film is just as much about Greta, a gorgeous yet aging woman clinging to her youth by dating increasingly younger men which comes with it a price: these young men need money to stay around, not love or sex.

Sometimes, the feeling of sin is better than the sin itself.

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!

A lot has changed in the decade between Joe Sarno’s monochromatic sex without sex movies. Porno chic has already arrived, movies need to be in color and sexual liberation was already growing boring to some but the specter of AIDS had not yet come to haunt us.

Quite literally, Abigail Leslie (adult star Jennifer Jordan, who used the name Sarah Nicholson and who also appears in Sarno’s Misty)is indeed back in Baypoint, a small town where her carnal nature is still whispered about.

Also: Baypoint is actually Sarno’s hometown, Amityville.

Abigail left after her scandalous affair with married man Gordon (Jamie Gillis). Now that she’s here again, his wife Priscilla (Rebecca Brooke, who is also known as Mary Mendum) wants her to leave all over again and is not shy about telling everyone just how much she absolutely loathes our heroine.

So what does Abigail do? Well, like some hurricane of sexual force, she sleeps with anyone and everyone she wants to, including Chester (Eric Edwards) and her Aunt Drucilla (Jennifer Welles, who left adult after marrying a rich fan but not before Sarno directed her film Inside Jennifer Welles). By the time she’s done with her old town, everyone is having sex with everyone. Even Priscilla gets over her anger.

Oh yeah — if you’re wondering who Drucilla’s man is, that’s Sonny Landham from Predator.

I think that every movie made — even today, not movies but scenes on adult websites — that has a woman watching in the doorway and getting worked up owes a debt to Sarno. Yet he also takes it even further, creating a movie where a woman’s orgasm is the most holy sacrament in all of reality and really, isn’t it?

That said, I don’t buy Abigail falling in love with Priscilla and getting her heart broken by her. Sure, it adds a twist to the ending — that I just spoiled, apologies I swear — but the Abigail who arrives in town and instantly begins getting everyone to be more open and less worried about morality would pick herself up and get under or on top of someone immediately.

Also: Every single woman in this movie seemingly is both gorgeous and has red or strawberry blonde hair. I respect Sarno for who he chose to be in it and that he would try with all his power to not go full adult when the rest of the world was showing everything.

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!

Cannon was making money on Joe Sarno’s films, getting them into theaters as Sarno divided his time making movies in the United States and in Sweden, Germany and Denmark. His early films are stark black and white affairs and life is never easy for anyone within them. Also, the phrase Deep Inside is the greatest adult title ever and would eventually be used along with the names of actresses, such as Sarno’s uncredited X-rated Inside Jennifer Welles and Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle.

Millicent Redmond (Peggy Steffans, the Findlay Flesh trilogy) is a woman who is frigid in bed and therefore gets her pleasure manipulating others, like seeing what kind of trouble she can get Lina (Mary Park) into; plays around with the relationship between her old lesbian roommates Neva (Tia Walter) and Jean (Sheila Britt, The Swap and How They Make It); heats up older lesbian who loves younger women Mavis (Bella Donna, not the Belladonna whose retirement still makes one wistful) and gets Pam (Lara Danielli) involved with the absolute wrong man.

Sarno’s movies have an existential sadness that I absolutely love. I can only imagine what raincoaters felt about these movies, already worried about being in public watching filth, worried about the cops coming in and then the movie they went up against so much just depresses them beyond comprehension. They are sexy without sex, a fascinating idea that feels like the ruined orgasms that so many unfortunate of today’s cyber perverts are so obsessed by.

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!

In the sex films of the 60s and 70s, the line between sex and the occult is as thin as the flimsiest of garments. Carla (Laurene Clair, who was also known as Patricia McNair and is also in director and writer Joe Sarno’s Deep Inside) goes from visiting a Tarot card reader with her friend Enid (Carol Holleck, who was in Sarno’s The Swap and How They Make It) to joining The Cult of Pan,a coven of sexually open ladies led by card reader Martha (Helena Clayton, Suburbia Confidential) and who draw on the power of red roses for their psychosexual energy.

What she doesn’t know is that Enid and Martha have worked together to bring her into the orbit of these women, all to get her away from living with her dominating Aunt Julie (Liz Love, also known as Bella Donna — and not Michelle Sinclair — and who was in Sarno’s My Body Hungers and the Joseph Marzano version of Venus In Furs) and cousin Tracey (Laura London), who is constantly reminding people that she’s met a nice boy and plans on marrying him.

That’s not the life that Carla wants but she has no idea how to get there.

“Once you have tasted the wine of Delphi and touched a rose from the garden of Pan to your breast, you will forever be a priestess of Pan.” That’s what the ladies say and soon, they’re drinking, rubbing flowers all over their barely clothed bodies and everyone gets as kinky as a one room shot 1966 softcore movie can get. I mean, the very idea that women had that secret garden and weren’t dependent on men for their pleasure, much less could get even more orgasmic bliss alone or with another woman, takes the very idea of fantasy and makes men force head on that they really aren’t necessary unless they rise above their normal roles and become enlightened.

Even the suburban women so ready to spend the rest of their lives in a minute every few nights of the missionary position soon realize that striking one another with thorned blooms and committing blasphemy as they praise Pan. Before the end of this movie, Aunt Julie and Tracey have abandoned their chaste ways and are after every man they can get, as well as becoming addicted to those roses that come every day to their door.

How amazing is the world of Sarno, another below the Hollywood budget filmmaker who created black and white worlds of dubious women who are content to not live in the world of black and white, no matter how they’re shot, and become something else, something other?

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!

The title of this movie is awesome and then I found out that it’s also called  All The Evils Of Satan and I don’t know if I could be more enthusiastic about a film.

New York City shutterbug Henning (Dan Machuen) is supposed to shoot some nudes for his agent Paula (Peggy Sarno) but is obsessed with shooting the evil that lives inside all women. To capture this, he takes images of Leslie (Maria Lease, who would go on to be a director of adult films as well as Dolly Dearestand being the script supervisor on Better Off Dead) as she hangs from the ceiling of his studio. After, they make love, and while Henning usually never sees another of his conquests again, she feels different. She’s also mindblowingly gorgeous, which helps.

He also meets another model named Joyce (Marianne Prevost) who he feels sorry for. She’s homeless and needs a hand up. He invites her to stay in his studio and assist him, but when he grows angry that he can’t capture with his camera what he sees with his eyes, he learns that she’s the perfect muse for his images of base morality. Paula even tells him that she sent Joyce his way, claiming “”I sent her to you because she is what you’re looking for. If I ever I saw it, she’s the daughter of Satan.”

That means that things aren’t going to end well for anyone. Again, this is in stark black and white and while the lovemaking scenes are quite erotic, they’re mostly clothed. Then again, when they were made by Sarno, this burned the celluloid.

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.