Love Merchant/Layout

Joe Sarno movies have a well deserved reputation for doing sexploitation with real plots and tension. His better films are based on the plotting to corrupt the lovely and usually innocent heroine of the movie and then building tension as the other characters close in on her. This double feature is no exception. The Love Merchant is good Joe Sarno and The Layout is superior. The Love Merchant has a millionaire playboy buying and paying off with gifts whatever women cross his path. He becomes becomes attracted to the old school chum of a painter he sponsors. The painter does female nudes of course. The beautiful old school chum is happily married and not the least interested in the swinging night club/orgy scene the millionaire functions in. The tension follows as he schemes and closes in on getting his chance with her. As in all Sarno movies prior to his later porno flicks or excursions to Sweden, there is no actual graphic sex shown. What is suggested or obscured by close ups of the upper parts of the body is actually more erotic. The Love Merchant has almost no girl/girl scenes. The Layout is superior Joe Sarno from what has been called his "vibrator Florida era". It is on a level as far as building tension and entrapment with "All the Sins of Sodom" or "Passion in Hot Hollow". A younger cousin comes to visit the lovely heroine Susan Thomas. She is certainly one of the best looking and best built of any of the leads in Sarno movies. The younger cousin is convinced that there are lesbian tendencies beneath cool calm surface of her relative. She starts plotting to corrupt her cousin by seducing the surrounding friends almost immediately on her arrival. The scene of the cousins skinny dipping in the pool late at night is an example of Sarno's artistry as a director. The younger woman swims around her cousin and follows her around in the pool like a shark stalking its prey. Lots of nudity, girl/girl scenes, and lovely actresses with plot and sexual tension.

The Layout runs like a sexually-charged soap opera. The main character, Pam, operates a design firm with her business partner, Wendy. They live together in a posh apartment building, and enjoy an opulent lifestyle. Trouble begins, when the lascivious Wendy has a fling with their contractor, Rob. Meanwhile, Rob's wife plots to seduce Pam. Pam's cousin and roommate arrive, becoming eager participants in a piping hot lesbian orgy, between all of the gals. Though this movie does have a plot (albeit a thin one), it mostly consists of lengthy, lesbian love-making scenes between the women.

These women all look so sleek, with their mile-high beehive hair-dos, heavy make-up, and stylish clothes. But their elegant exteriors, mask their robust, earthy sex drives. Nearly half of this movie, consists of these women engaging in sexual gymnastics with each other. They all utilize a large, gadgetry-equipped vibrator, to give each other one ecstatic orgasm after another. These sex scenes were considered very racy, back when this movie was made in the 60s.

There's not much of a point to this film, besides the lesbian sexcapades of the female characters. This movie seems to have been made mainly to satisfy the wet-dreams, of males who are turned-on by watching exuberant lesbian sex between women.