Boasting tight scripting and direction, THE WALL OF FLESH is among the late Joe Sarno's best chamber films. I commend Something Weird Video for finding it and reviving the film on DVD-R in an excellent quality version.
With a cast familiar from other Sarno movies of the late '60s, such as VIBRATIONS and ALL THE SINS OF SODOM, this picture is notable for its somber, serious mood. Minus the oddball fantasy and campy soap operatics of his other pictures, it is often spellbinding.
Marianne Prevost (misspelled as "Provost" in the credits) stars as Lauri Horner, working on her anthropology thesis and living with her waif-like sister Nan (played by Nina Forster). Opening scene has Marianne stumbling a bit over strictly expository dialog, as she tells her friends (Art & Vera Coleman) about her experiences with group sex while living with and studying a tribe of Central American Indians.
Fortunately Marianne grows into the role in later scenes and, along with her sister, is quite affecting. Vera (well-played by Maria Lease, credited under her pseudonym Lita Coleman) is frigid, causing her hubby Art (Dan Machuen) considerable frustration; they even sleep in separate beds.
Main plot hook is Lauri convincing Vera to join the group therapy sessions run by her old college pal Jennifer (well-essayed by Cherie Winters) , as a way to deal with her sexual problems. Meanwhile, Laurie is also inveigling her way into the heart of Art. Both are writers, and she spends afternoons proofreading Art's unpublished stories while he helps her polish the writing of her thesis.
Nan is also in love with Art, murmuring his name as she masturbates in bed every night. Ultimately she gets to seduce him, after Laurie has already done so.
But WALL OF FLESH is about lesbianism, perhaps Sarno's favorite theme over the years (he resists tossing in his other pet motif, incest, as Lauri watches sis Nan masturbate at night but resists touching her). Jennifer gains control over both Vera and Laurie, as she stages therapy sessions with them which amount to group sex involving two other women plus her assistant Miss Walls (played by Janet Banzet).
Film climaxes with Vera admitting she is won over to the Sapphic lifestyle forever, contrasted with Nan & Art in the sack in what seems will be the first step towards their happy life together.
In the only significant male role Dan Machuen is rather flat, with little indication why all the women can't keep their hands off him. Sarno tosses in a couple of studs as extras during the therapy orgy scenes (as he did in the similarly plotted KARLA), including readily identifiable Alex Mann.
Structurally resembling Sarno's underwhelming '80s XXX videos' approach, film takes place entirely in claustrophobic interiors, as only Marianne is shown out of doors, wandering around Manhattan. She passes a billboard advertising the Peter Nichols play "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, indicating the film was shot in the first half of 1968.
Steve Silverman's shadow-play photography is excellent as usual, and film greatly benefits from the jazzy keyboards score by Pir Marini, including wonderful harpsichord work. Marini scored a half dozen Sarno films in the '60s, most of which are unfortunately still lost or out of circulation.
Film played as an "Adults Only" offering in 1968, and provides plenty of stimulation, particularly by the well matched, ultra-busty stars Maria Lease and Marianne Prevost, essentially an identical format to their teamwork in VIBRATIONS, also co-starring the rather bland (in such an irresitible stud role) Dan Machuen. There is only a brief flash of bush by Lease, and a couple of sexually promising scenes feature sudden quick cutaways which hint at possibly missing sex footage.
