Joseph W. Sarno, a trailblazing director, is renowned for his distinctive economic style and profound interest in crafting tense, psycho-sexual character development, earning him recognition as one of the true geniuses to emerge from the sexploitation film genre.
Prolific and versatile, Sarno continued to direct under various pseudonyms throughout the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the hardcore-sex feature genre. However, his enduring legacy lies in his pre-pornographic masterpieces, including Sin in the Suburbs (1964),Moonlighting Wives (1966),The Bed and How to Make It! (1966),and Inga (1968).
Alongside Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger, Sarno is one of the select few sex-exploitation auteurs to garner critical acclaim. In recent years, his work has been celebrated with retrospectives at prestigious film festivals, such as the New York Underground Film Festival, the Torino Film Festival in Turin, Italy, and the Cinémathèque française in Paris.
