The Seduction Of Inga

Sweden - U.S.A. | 1971 Directed by Joseph W. Sarno Starring Marie Liljedahl Inger Sundh Tommy Blom Color | 86 Min. ("Grindhouse Cut") | R Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC | 2-disc set) E.I./Retro-Seduction Cinema

Watch the Trailer   My Name is Inga... Windows Media - 5.0 MB

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The 1968 Original

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5     8   10 = Highest Rating

Back in the day, Marie Liljedahl was one HOT little Euro-vixen.     I'm talking the late 1960s/early '70s here. The Swedish sex starlet (born 1950) appeared in just a handful of motion pictures but she made quite an impression. (Until now, I'd only seen her in Jess Franco's Eugenie... The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion.) Her debut role was in 1968's Inga, produced in her native Sweden and filmed in that language but directed by American sexploitation auteur Joe Sarno. Although the film was a big international hit, especially in the U.S., it would be almost two years before a sequel could be put together. Like the first flick, The Seduction Of Inga was filmed in Sweden, financed with American money and directed by Sarno. In the interim the still very young Liljedahl had grown as an actress; the promise of hotter action, this time in color, would seem to bode well for the project's success. Inexplicably, American distributor Jerry Gross sat on the film for almost another two years, not releasing it until 1971. (Upon which Playboy magazine named Liljedahl "Sex Star of the Year" — by which time she'd already retired from acting at the ripe age of 21!) The opportunity to cash in on the popularity of the first film had passed. Seduction did disappointing business in the States, where exploitation fare was continually pushing sexual boundaries far beyond Sarno's comparatively restrained erotica. The movie fared better in Europe, however. Its Italian title, which translates as A Young Girl With A Hot Body, couldn't be more appropriate.     The Seduction Of Inga apparently picks up where the first film ended. (I haven't seen the original, but Inga herself brings the uninitiated viewer up to speed with a few short lines of narration.) When she was 16, Inga discovered the pleasures of sex in the arms of her older sister's boyfriend, Karl; the couple eventually ran away together to the city. But the joys of first love and freedom from parental control proved short-lived. Karl split for France, ostensibly to find a steady job, and Inga hasn't heard from him since. Now, at 18, she finds herself abandoned, living alone in a cheap flat without any money for the rent. Her rooming house is populated with hippies, whores and dope addicts. Bored, lonely and withdrawn, she rarely speaks to any of her neighbors.     Inga's at the end of her financial rope when introduced to middle-aged Stig (Lennart Lindberg), a well-to-do novelist. He hires her as his secretary — though its quite obvious he has much more than dictation in mind. Glad to be snapped out of her desperate funk by the older man's flattering attentions (and money), Inga grows fond of Stig and enjoys having sex with him. He may be a bit kinky — insisting she wear certain (very short) dresses without panties — but is otherwise a kind lover and benefactor. His departure on a lengthy business trip, however, soon has Inga brooding and moping again.     Her depression is relieved by Rolf (Tommy Blom), the young rock musician living in the flat across the hall. He's been carrying a torch for Inga for awhile now even though previously she'd barely speak to him. They strike up a friendship. He takes her clubbing to dance and hear his band play, and they knock boots. Young love is in bloom. (Stig who?) Then, at the club one night, Inga notices a sexy, mysterious blonde chick staring at her intensely. Who is she? Later, while awaiting Stig's return at his villa in the country, Inga finds out... The mystery girl (Inger Sundh) knocks on the door and invites herself in. She introduces herself as Greta. Seems she knows ol' Stig pretty well — he's her father. And it always turned him on when his daughter wore short dresses with no panties...     Little more than a thinly-plotted soap opera, The Seduction Of Inga doesn't rank among the best Sarno films I've seen to date — it certainly lacks the erotic charge of, say, Vampire Ecstasy and Abigail Leslie Is Back in Town. Inga's listless boredom with her dreary existence may at times be transferred to the viewer through cinematic osmosis. Populated by few characters and with not much of a story to tell, the film seems longer than it is, taking its sweet time to go practically nowhere. There isn't a whole lot of sex, either, unless you're watching the extended "Grindhouse Cut" (see below), which clumsily inserts scenes of obvious body doubles groping and humping. (This spicier footage was not shot by Sarno, who vehemently disavows such post-production tampering.) The main setting, a gray, gloomy urban environment in Baltic winter, doesn't help, either. Parts of the film are the visual equivalent of listening to an old clock tick in an otherwise silent, empty room.     How, then, can I justify giving the pic a '5' Film Rating? Shouldn't it be lower? Allow me to assume my Squeezy McFeelpants persona for just a moment... I personally find Marie Liljedahl — in her barely-out-of-her-teens heyday — extremely sexy. "An angel's face with a body built for sin" may be a well-worn cliché but it fits the Norse beauty to a "T". (Something Franco was able to capitalize on much more effectively in Eugenie/Perversion.) This film supposedly contains her finest performance; she's actually quite good in it. Since there isn't a great deal of dialog Liljedahl has to convey almost all her character's emotions with her face and eyes; hers is a countenance I'm content to gaze at. (She had a fabulous ass, too, it must be said.) Liljedahl doesn't even get naked in her sexiest scene: Inga, hiding behind curtains, secretly watches Greta seduce her own father and get it on with him. Accompanied by a driving acid-rock instrumental, we watch her as she watches them; in the space of a few moments her facial expressions register in turn shock, revulsion, and yes, even voyeuristic excitement. When a gal can get a rise out of me just looking at her from the neck up — well, that says a lot. (Perhaps more about me than Ms. Liljedahl...)     In much the same vein I'd be remiss not to highlight the presence of Inger Sundh. Never having seen her in anything before, after The Seduction Of Inga I'd really like to remedy that situation. I'm not normally much for blondes but Sundh is simply ssssssmokin'. Even through the sometimes clumsy English dubbing she shines as a wicked nymphomaniac with the sexual power to get her guilt-racked, remorseful father into bed — and then seduce Inga on top of that! Her Greta may be a psycho-bitch but you'd still want to bang the livin' hell out of her, consequences be damned.     With The Seduction Of Inga, your mileage will vary depending on how much Scandinavian ennui you're willing to endure to enjoy the physical charms of Liljedahl and Sundh. Gorgeous, ripe, natural young women (the only false thing about them are their eyelashes) — these ladies are my kind of eye candy. There's also the pop-rock music score, featuring a couple of songs contributed by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, future members of Swedish supergroup ABBA. Parts of it are infectiously groovy; "Inga's Theme" will be stuck in your head for days, if not forever.

Retro-Seduction Cinema's 2004 release compensates for a disappointing source print by providing two versions of the film and a buttload of extras — among them a "lost" feature-length Sarno pic — spread across two discs. And you'd better dig the main title/theme song, because not only is it used multiple times in the film itself, the DVD set is literally saturated with it, from menu screens to supplements.     Disc 1: The standard theatrical cut of the film is presented cropped fullframe, damaged and littered with dirt; colors are often out of whack. It's not unwatchable but does get irritating. The flat mono sound of the dubbed English track is adequate but doesn't do the groovy music any justice. Extras: Innocence Lost is a 20-minute featurette comprised of clips from both Inga films interspersed with interviews of the elderly Sarno, his wife and collaborator Peggy, and a significantly plumper, 52-year old Liljedahl. A second featurette, Memories of Inga (11 min.), is really more of a mini-audio commentary. Over a selection of film clips, American producer Vernon Becker details many of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the production not touched on in the longer doc. (I'd like to see more DVD releases go this route, as it's a nice alternative to full-fledged commentary tracks — which often lapse into long stretches of silence when the participant runs out of things to say.) A music video of the groovy theme song also uses scenes from the Inga films. There's also the trailer for Lust For Laura, Sarno's 2004 DTV film, produced by E.I, which will finally be getting a (much delayed) release this fall under the new title Suburban Secrets.     Disc 2 contains the "Grindhouse Cut" of Seduction Of Inga, which runs some five minutes longer. It may not be what director Sarno intended but it's the best way to the watch the movie. (At least for now.) While the audio is on par with the Disc 1 feature, the letterboxed print, although a bit rough-looking in the opening minutes, is far superior in terms of image quality. Ironically this version, sexed up with inserts for the American raincoat crowd, is much nastier and kinkier than the original edit shown in the supposedly more permissive European countries. Besides the more explicit body double footage, a couple of key lines of dialog are changed — in the standard cut, Greta is merely Stig's former stepdaughter. The Grindhouse version makes it quite plain that the blonde sexpot is his "own flesh and blood." (To make things even more confusing, the American trailer refers to Inga as "hungering for the arms of her father" when it's actually Greta who's the incestuous slut.) Extras: An entire bonus feature film, the "lost" made-in-Sweden Sarno title Indelicate Balance (88 minutes; 1969), is included, along with an optional audio commentary featuring film historian Gary Huggins, E.I. producer David Fine and Peggy Sarno. (In all honesty I skimmed rapidly through most of this film; it seems to be a rather turgid psychosexual drama with very little sex in it.). The set wraps up with trailers for seven other Sarno films (to include two different trailers for the original Inga) and 13 for E.I. productions — 21 skin-filled trailers in all, with many of the latter prominently featuring former Seduction Cinema starlet Misty Mundae.     Finally, a 12-page illustrated booklet of liner notes by sexploitation scholar Michael J. Bowen imparts further info on Sarno, Seduction Of Inga and Indelicate Balance. 7/15/06

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