RIP Joseph Sarno

Posted by Daniel Metz

Monday, April 26, we lost a friend of the cinema, sexploitation director Joseph W. Sarno. At the age of eighty-nine, Sarno passed away having made a significant contribution to erotic and underground cinema.

Sarno directed some of the key films in the sexploitation cycle, offering beautiful and psychologically probing pictures that contrasted sharply with much of the dreck that his contemporaries produced. His work in New York and in Sweden, including Sin in the Suburbs, Flesh and Lace, The Bed and How to Make It, Inga, and Abigail Lesley is Back in Town, will long remain classics. His work in hardcore, including Inside Jennifer Welles and Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, also represents considerable accomplishments in that style.

Later in his life, he received the praise he deserved from a number of sources, most impressively through screenings at the Cinémathèque Française, and scholarly assessment of his work. He also took great pleasure from the attention and friendship of his biographer, Michael Bowen.

Here’s a video tribute to him, with footage from his trip to the Cinémathèque Française:

I had the privilege of meeting Joe on a number of occasions, and he was a funny and soulful man. I remember he was very proud of the many films he made, and was always interested in investigating human relationships and dynamics. This shows in his films and the legacy he has left behind.

Luckily, the Alamo Drafthouse will be showing Moonlighting Wives next month as a Weird Wednesday film, on May 12.

Rest in Peace