Joseph W. Sarno is one of the pioneering directors of the sex-exploitation or "sexploitation" film genre. Known for a distinctly economic style and an abiding interest in tense, psycho-sexual character development, Sarno has also come to be recognized as one of the true geniuses to emerge from the sexploitation form.
He continued to direct under various pseudonyms in the hardcore-sex feature genre of the 1970s and 1980s, but is best remembered for such pre-pornographic classics as Sin in the Suburbs (1964), Moonlighting Wives (1966), The Bed and How to Make It! (1966) and Jag - en oskuld (1968). Along with Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger, Sarno is one of the few sex-exploitation auteurs to receive critical attention. In recent years his work has been the subject of retrospectives at the New York Underground Film Festival, the Torino Film Festival in Turin, Italy, and the Cinémathèque française in Paris.
