Joseph W. Sarno – Moonlighting Wives (1966)

One of Joe Sarno’s first color movies, Moonlighting Wives is supposedly loosely based on a true story about a group of bored suburban women who ran a prostitution ring in their neighborhood. Interesting material for one of Sarno’s suburban psycho-sexual melodrama’s to be sure, but those expecting boat load’s of kink and softcore bump and grind action might be taken aback by how tame this film really is when compared to much of his other work.

Joan and Charles Rand are your typical American suburban couple, or at least it would seem that way at first glance. Charles works hard to make a decent living for his wife but she spends beyond their means and finds herself bored by her man. To spice things up a bit and bring in some extra income, Joan decides to coax her stenography business partner into starting a local prostitution ring. As Joan realizes the earning potential that her new career can open up to her, she soon finds herself having no trouble at all talking other like-minded suburban housewives into joining her little business.

The ladies soon decide that if they want to make real money then they’re going to have to go after some upscale male clientele and what better place is there for them to find what they’re looking for than at the local country club! Joan’s friend Nancy is having a fling with a man named Al who spends all his time at the club and before you know it, Joan’s talked him into bringing her client after client and before you know it she’s got a pretty solid roster of high profile clients paying to sample the goods that she and her co-workers have to offer.

With Joan bringing home the bacon, Charles starts hitting the bottle pretty hard. Though he’s unaware of what his wife has been up to, his fragile male ego can’t handle the fact that she’s bringing in more money than he is. Lorna, the perky teenage babysitter that the Rand’s employ, starts to feel sorry for Charles and before you know it he’s starting to pick up on some of the signals she’s been giving him. To complicate matters further, two cops named Ken and Hank are starting to put a few pieces of this puzzle together and aim to stop the prostitution ring – the problem is, they’re not at all sure who is responsible for what and they really only have a faint idea of what’s going down. But soon tension arises between Joan and Nancy and things take a serious turn into Melodrama City!

Sarno plays around with a lot of the same themes he has since become known for. His penchant for exposing the seedy side of suburban life plays a key role in what makes this film interesting, as we’re essentially playing voyeur as we peek into the lives of people who could very well live right next door to us. At times the movie feels more like a sixties soap opera than the kind of sexploitation that Sarno specialized in and the lack of any on screen nudity kind of solidifies this to an extent (seeing as most softcore films are really just soap operas with copious amounts of nudity this really isn’t much of a surprise) though the ending treads in kinkier waters than everything that leads up to it. Overall, this isn’t a classic by any stretch. The acting is a little hammy and the plot fairly predictable, but Sarno fills the film with some fun dialogue and keeps the action moving at a pace sufficient enough to ensure that the movie is an interesting one.

Moonlighting Wives.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 23 min
Size: 	1.20 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	720x480 ~> 720x540
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 800 kb/s
BPP: 	0.217
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/DD085ED58EFEC0C/Moonlighting_Wives.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/DE054AED4858284/Mlw_10-17-06-2.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None