In the late 1960s, New York based director of melodramatic soft erotica, Joseph W. Sarno, set up shop in south Florida to make three films, each connected by Sunshine State locale and the buxom brunette who appears in each film, Barbara Lance. Almost nothing is known of Lance. She worked on four projects with Sarno, the three I will be focusing on in this piece, and Marcy, a film not altogether dissimilar thematically from the suburban Florida set trilogy, but with an entirely different farm life setting.
The three film’s I’ll be looking at here are not generally seen as Sarno’s greatest work, but are nonetheless indicative of the style he had honed during his B&W years, but further push the envelope with regard to frontal nudity, the depiction of female pleasure, and the frank use of massage tools as sex toys. The loosening of censorship restrictions across the country allowed Sarno and his main photographer during this period, Steve Silverman, to push the camera right up to the literal pubic line of what was allowed to be seen. Things were changing rapidly.
Unlike the “nudie cuties” (chaste, asexual nudist films) shot in Florida by pioneered exploitation filmmakers Doris Wishman and Herschell Gordon Lewis, this trio of Sarno films are aggressively sexual, with lengthy scenes of squeaky bed bumping and grinding; never explicit (at least not in the frame), but definitely intended to arouse.
The films of Joe Sarno will likely never be as well-known as many of his peers, yet we are living in a time where his career, especially during this period, has never been easier to see, and never looked better, much thanks to the 2013 documentary by Wiktor Ericsson, A Life in Dirty Movies, as well as the restoration work being done by Film Movement, who have released two of the three films highlighted here in gorgeous high definition.
Now, pack the sunscreen, leave your inhibitions at home, prepare to be vibrated, and join me for a brief look at Joe Sarno in the Sunshine State.
Odd Triangle (1968)
“Honey, do we have good sex?”
Welcome to Joe Sarno’s waterlogged, Sunshine State. The land of skinny-dipping, pool boy affairs and houseboat cabin cunnilingus. With Odd Triangle, it definitely feels like Sarno is moving into new territory: the nudity feels more blatant, the girls more top-heavy, the camera panning just a little further down the torso during love scenes. But it’s still Joe Sarno: still fascinated by those same suburban swingers, and the same hot sexuality bubbling underneath the surface of every mundane, daily interaction.
Sadly, despite what you might think about this sort of “throwaway” sexploitation, the cast can really make or break the film, and our main leads here, Susan Whitman as Janet, and Barbara Lance as Allison, are not some of Sarno’s most aesthetically striking leads (unless, in the case of Whitman, you’re really into teeth). Nor are they very good actresses.
The plot feels like even more of an afterthought than usual, angles and footage are reused and recycled, despite the narrative telling us they take place at different times. This lackadaisical approach is unusual for Sarno, as he was never one to sleepwalk through a production. My unverified theory is that Florida sapped him of inspiration. He missed New York. And he just wanted to go to Sweden.
What stands out about Odd Triangle, though, is that more than any other previous Sarno film, it is gleefully pro-oral sex. It’s also set around a dockside boat used for clandestine group sex, so that’s at least different from the usual New York apartments that Sarno loved so much. What’s not different? More of that chiaroscuro lighting, more of that electric, corded massager, and more of the push and pull of guilt vs. pleasure. Like Vibrations, it all becomes too much of a good thing for our nervous lead, reaching an echoed cacophony of inhibition, and an abrupt climax of breakup and betrayal.
“I stayed up all night long and masturbated.”
Desire Under the Palms (1968)
“Perhaps you should look into the subject of sex with more depth.”
Joe Sarno’s Sunshine State sojourn continues: soaking up the rays in hot and sweaty south Florida, this time focusing his lens on sticky men’s magazines, erotic stories, more suburban boredom and…checkers? Besides the locale, the through-line with Odd Triangle is actress Barbara Lance, who I personally find to be one of the less interesting (looking, acting) of all the 1960s Sarno leads. She is once again playing the “square” wife, unfulfilled and unwittingly in need of new bedroom adventures.
What Desire has over Odd Triangle is some wonderfully moody and shadowed dream sequences that play with sex as horror, and horror as sex. The kind of thing a bolder writer might even call “Lynchian.” Sarno would eventually take these mostly femme-focused fantasies, with multiple bodies in sinewy embrace (“like one long daisy chain”), to their nightmarish limit with his Gothic-in-color, Vampire Ecstasy (also known as The Devil’s Plaything) from 1973.
This time around, the focal point for the journey of sexual self discovery (in both its pleasurable and objectional forms) is Betty (Lance), a writer who keeps getting her manuscripts turned down because they are “naïve, immature and unexciting.” She gets a frank assessment from her friend that she needs more sexual experience to give honesty to her stories, so, as they say, three in a bed, but four would be better.
The negatives: the character of Penny (by an uncredited actress) is dreadful, constantly stumbling over her lines to the point where I started to get excited each time she showed up on screen, just to see what name she would flub next. Where did you find her, Joe? Or better question, why not do a retake? The sex scene angles are redundant, especially if you watch this in close proximity to Odd Triangle, where you see a lot of overlap in Sarno and photographer Steve Silverman’s shadow-lensed framing. That said, the images are consistently Sarno-esque, there’s no mistaking them.
The almost positives: there’s the exciting introduction of a “big black snake whip” with only a few minutes left in the film, but unfortunately, its given no real payoff. The aforementioned sex dreams do have a sort of hypnotic pull, and the ending is much more hopeful than Odd Triangle, with our two distant male/female lovers rejoining hands…under the palms.
“How’d you like the book?”
The Layout (1969)
“I want you to do something crazy to me…hurt me, damn you, hurt me.”
The tan lines are strong in this one. More sunny sexploitation, with adventurous women gal palling around, reminiscing about their wild High School days, stepping out with their best friend’s husband, and falling into bed with each other. In The Layout there’s a lot of talk about adolescent experimentation, and in a way, the rekindling of said groping is a way for these stressed ladies to recapture a more innocent and carefree time, when there were no bills or husbands or social unease. It’s a theme that Sarno would return to in later years, specifically in the Mary Mendum and Eric Edwards starring film, Laura’s Toys, from 1975. The idea being that those awkward, formative early sexual years are never that far away, no matter how much older we get.
Based on the year and shared cast, The Layout appears to have been shot in Florida around the same time as the sadly lost Joe Sarno film, Karla. Sarno would often sign multi-picture contracts and knock out several scripts in a few weeks—and spend about the same amount of time shooting the films. The Layout appears to be the result of one of those deals, a DeLuxe Pictures production, part of a three-film package that also included Marcy and The Indelicate Balance. What makes this package deal interesting is that Marcy was shot in upstate New York, Balance was shot in Sweden and The Layout was shot in Florida. DeLuxe Pictures really got a potpourri of Sarno content!
The suction massager introduced in Vibrations makes an appearance again. And once again, pleasure and pain blend together in the chiaroscuro shadows of small bedrooms. The endless hum of the vibrator is more frightening than arousing—because if you’ve seen enough Joseph W. Sarno, you know that the come down will not be without a physical and emotional ache.
“There’s nothing left to do but run.”
New restorations of Odd Triangle and Desire Under the Palms can be purchased from Film Movement. all three films are currently available to stream via cultpix.
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