Swedish Wildcats (1972) from Tuna

Producer/Director Joe Sarno wanted to make erotica for US distribution in the seventies, but realized that while he could get away with releasing it in most places in the US, he could easily be arrested while actually making the films. He tried filming in Sweden, and fell in love with the Swedish casts and crews. Sarno's Swedish Wildcats is part of a major effort by the Retro arm of Seduction Cinema to bring his works to DVD. With each Sarno film Seduction is presenting a nice package with an interview about the film with Joe and his wife, and also a featurette produced by Seduction Cinema based on the same story.

Swedish Wildcats is the tale of two sisters who work for their aunt in a high class brothel. One of the two enjoys a rich fantasy life during the day, and begins a romance with a young man who claims to be a test pilot. She tells him she is a ballerina. Meanwhile, her sister meets someone, a rich architect from a good family. Both want to escape from their aunt, played by Diana Dors.

So, this is a romance, right? Not exactly. Part of it plays like a romance, and it seems very much like Sarno's usual work. However, many of the brothel scenes involve violence and S/M, which is not like Sarno at all.

The interview explained.

Sarno had a concept of the girl who doesn't like her real life, and lives by day in a fantasy world that ends sort of like a Cinderella story. When he shared it with producer Vernon P. Becker, Becker wanted to make the film, but with a few minor changes to make it more commercial. It was Becker who added the violence and S/M, and the Sarnos to this day are not comfortable about that, although Joe admitted that it probably did make it more marketable. To me, it also made it schizophrenic.

On the positive side, the first brothel sequence has all of the women in body paint as exotic animals, resulting in some great imagery. Overall, this is a solid genre effort from a master, and the animal makeup is worth the price all by itself.