Desire Under the Palms

Right off the bat I have to say this is a difficult movie to watch. The print is pretty bad from Something Weird Video. Looks like it was either transferred off some other electronic version or the film was blown up from 16mm. It's got a granular haze over it that makes it never look in proper focus.

Not that that matters all that much considering how bad the acting is. Guess Sarno did think he needed the Bard when the sex scene click in 8 minutes into the flick. Including some significant lesbian action.

Can't imagine who found this titillating -- even back in the day -- when Russ Meyer was making way better movies.

This later-period Sarno feature is a lot more explicit than his earlier, more significant work, and eschews the social commentary that made them so trenchant. Nonetheless, his artistry is on display to a high degree. The film is made quite mesmerizing through the Dreyer-like chiaroscuro photography, the playful jazz score and the dreamlike editing. The performances are enthusiastic and the premise a sly dig at Sarno's own beginnings. The lead actress is quite striking and believable as an enthusiastic innocent. Not a major work, but perhaps his finest contribution to straightforward eroticism. Clever title, too.

Justly forgotten, DESIRE UNDER THE PALMS demonstrates the low ebb of Joe Sarno's soft porn formula of the '60s. Cranked out during a period when he was shooting at a pace of nearly a film a month, it plays like an unfinished film hastily slapped together to feed the adult movie house circuit briefly -and out.

Joe's story premise is serviceable for porn, a young Southern Florida housewife Betty (played by Joe's usual Fla. leading lady Barbara Lance) has hopes of a career as writer, pounding out short stories on her Underwood. Her friend and agent Stacey, plus her other girl friends, claim her material is not spicy enough for the market, so they give her stroke magazines to read and suggest she learn more about sexual practices to jump-start her career.

Sarno fails to develop this premise, falling back on motifs from his earlier films to fill out the running time. There are perfunctory lesbian dream sequences (novel for their full-frontal nudity this time), but he failed to shoot enough footage. An all-purpose shot of Betty, bathed in Steve Silverman-lensed shadows, is inserted from time to time to indicate she's in voyeur mode, doing research. Random shots of her wandering around outside are used for transitions between scenes. Steve Hawkes has a bit part in one of the fantasies and later reappears (to save a casting buck) as a boy friend.

And most alarmingly, a lengthy cunnilingus scene of Lance's faked ecstasy is repeated later in the film, just with rainstorm sound effects added to make the padding seem new and "different".

Acting is truly miserable here. Lance was employed as usual merely because of her amazing headlights when she disrobes, but her facial expressions (or contortions) do not fit the character. At least she tries; the rest of the cast has trouble spitting out their lines in a general monotone and look understandably bored throughout. Sarno's famous gimmick of grouping the women in the foreground for intimate conversations near the camera plays very tired this time out.

Despite Lance's groaning at times like a water buffalo in heat, the sex scenes are not stimulating. One latter scene of Betty seemingly raped by lesbian pal Doris with the handle of a whip is so fleeting one wonders why it was retained in the film, other than as an attempted "wake-up" moment for the drowsy audience. Overuse of Joe's fetish, a noisy vibrating massage device, is irritating.

Notes on the SWV DVD-R box typically mislead and misidentify the characters, confusing Doris with her young student sister Penny, but the subplot of Betty falling under the sway of a Svengali type named Jarman (Orlando Childs, who played her husband in ODD TRIANGLE) and his coterie of the sisters and sexy (but silent) Latina Diane is pointless. Similarly, Betty's sudden urge to make amends to her checkers-fanatic hubby Walter (bored Chuck Traynor, who played the other man stud in ODD TRIANGLE) by having Penny seduce him makes no sense and goes nowhere. Just like ODD TRIANGLE, film has a false and unconvincing, tacked-on "happy" ending pretending to give closure.