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Joe Sarno has never quite achieved the respect or notoriety of other sex/genre directors like Jess Franco or Russ Meyer largely because he was a very workman-like director without a really distinctive style of his own. However, unlike Franco, who only made movies in Europe, or Meyer, who only made movies in America, Sarno was able to go back and forth across the Atlantic making low-budget classics like "Sin in the Suburbs" in the US and "Inga" and "Young Playthings" in Europe. Like Franco and Meyer, he definitely had an eye for pretty girls. In America he helped discover several bra popping ingénues like Uschi Digart, Marsha Jordan, and Audrey Landers while in Sweden he discovered some truly impressive beauties like Marie Lillejahl, Christine Lindberg, and the star of this picture, Maria Forse.

Forse, the only Swede in an otherwise German cast, plays a schoolgirl who is lured with her friend to a remote castle as part of some plot by a coven of witches/vampires to snare a brother and sister in order that they can resurrect the siblings' ancestor, a long dead witch (or something like that). Her friend becomes a vampire while she falls in love with the brother. Much nudity, ritualistic dancing, and softcore groping ensues. The plot really isn't that important though--this is another European film where the producers apparently had access to an old castle and some actresses willing to disrobe so they decided to make a movie. The results kind of resemble a Jean Rollins film like "Requiem for a Vampire" but less arty, or a Renato Polselli like "The Reincarnation of Isabel" but less insane. It's more a sex film than a horror film, but interestingly, judging from some of the footage in the DVD supplements, Retroseduction did not include the strongest possible cut sex-wise. This is probably just as well as this barely qualifies as horror film as it is. If you want to see a pure Sarno sex film I'd recommend either the arty but barely legal (if that) Swedish film "Inga" or the godawful American bored housewife romp "Pleasures of Woman" (which Retroseduction also recently released on DVD-- along with a shot-by-shot "remake" with their in-house silicone cyborg girls just in case you want to watch it twice). Pick your poison.

Next to the very hard-to-find "Young Playthings", this is probably Sarno's best film though--for whatever that's worth

I bought "The Devil's Plaything" under the alternative title "Vampire Ecstasy" uncut on British DVD release, set in a German castle it is a tale of vampires, rituals and lots of sex. I won't beat about the bush (pun intended, ha, ha!) but this is a soft core skin flick dressed up as a horror movie. Erotic horror if you like, director Joseph Sarno was apparently one of the pioneers of this sub genre. The Gothic castle is set amongst beautiful German mountain scenery, impressive but the female vampires seem immune to sunlight (though not garlic or crosses), and there's not a set of fangs in sight. Barely any blood either. The cast consists of European actors who appear to have been speaking in English. If this were the case then credit to them for doing this, however their performances do come across as very wooden and would probably have been better filmed in German with English subtitles or dubbed into English. Apart from a disfigured, creepy male servant all of the cast get naked and this probably makes up about half of the move's running time. The sexy female vampires perform rituals in the castle's dungeon, gyrating to a repetitive drumbeat and doing suggestive things with phallic shaped candles! There are also several sex scenes though nothing of the hardcore variety. My problem is that after a while this just became very repetitive and lost its eroticism, not helped by a running time of 103 minutes. As a horror movie this is lame, as a European sexploitation flick then it's worth a look.

Well, there you have it, another disillusion on my account. Two, actually! First of all, even though I like to think of myself that I know a little something about 70's euro-exploitation and its most prolific contributors, I never heard about Joseph W. Sarno before. Here's a guy who made over seventy rancid and cult-laden exploitation movies and I haven't seen a single one! How? Why? What happened here? Secondly, and even worse, just when you think to have found a new source for obscure cult movies, that director's most famous and supposed "masterpiece" turns out to be an irredeemably dull and irritating film. Admittedly, lesbian vampire movies form a pretty insignificant sub genre as a whole, but some of them bath in ominous atmosphere and curious sensuality (like José Larraz' "Vampyres" or Harry Kümmel's "Daughters of Darkness"). Joseph Sarno's film has nothing to offer, except copious amounts of gratuitous nudity and even that becomes boring rather quickly. The events take place in a secluded old castle, hidden deep in the German mountains, where five centuries ago lived a malicious and bloodthirsty (literally) baroness. Her loyal disciples still throw naked dance parties in the castle's catacombs, which are lit by penis-shaped candles…AUCH, and hope to resurrect the baroness any time soon now. Suddenly (don't even ask how) the castle is full of young and sexy female guests, so even more erotic rites ensue. Sounds delicious and entertaining enough, but "The Devil's Plaything" contains a massive number of sequences where literally nothing happens and where the cast members' ignorant facial expressions are simply unendurable! Sarno isn't capable of creating suspense or building a Gothic atmosphere (or maybe he just didn't bother to) and the actresses' capacities restrict themselves to standing in front the camera topless and pull a really pathetic face. Please do yourself a favor: no matter how desperately you strive to see all lurid lesbian-vampire movies of the 70's, this one isn't worth a penny! Even the repertoires of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin are pure art compared to this dud.

Yet another sapphic blood cult's on the loose in an old castle as the female descendants of a sixteenth-century vampire get together to receive their sanguine inheritance. There's also a brother & sister whose car break down, a Mrs. Danvers-type housekeeper, garlic crosses, puncture wounds on the neck, and other familiar horror trope in this CARMILLA-esque yarn that's short on hetero coupling and long on lesbianism and incest. Sarno borrowed Mario Bava's colored lights as well as the plot of BLACK Sunday (more-or-less) to spotlight a castle full of T&A, mostly from a naked coven, and even has a woman getting her clothes torn off by bats. From an American director who filmed in Germany to make the very essence of Eurotrash.

... than this has a lot of Horror in it! Like almost way too much of it. Full frontal and everything. There is no explicit intercourse being shown, but other than that it feels like at least 50% of the movie plays in the nude. A lot of women who may not be able to convince you of their characters motivation, but seem to be able to convince others to obey them (through singing as is suggested and their bare bodies).

I wonder if some thought: who needs Viagra, when you can chant and make people horny just like that. Of course Viagra was not a thing back then. But Horror movies were. Not that there is much evidence of that here. I mean it get eerie from time to time, but this puts the Horror mantle on to let you watch a soft-core movie and not feel bad about it. Here's the thing: you can have fun with this, because it's so bad it gets entertaining. You can't be prude (I think I thoroughly established that) and don't expect too much Horror out of it ... Fancy an ... old castle with hot women dying to get into your pants? (on a serious note: the best thing is the location itself, really puts value to the whole thing)