Young Playthings

Christina Lindberg...

Young Playthings is a 1972 piece where, of course a very young Christina Lindberg plays an important part. I first watched this film from an awful VHS quality digitized edition. As you can probably guess, it was entirely spoken in Swedish with no subs of any kind. Years later, I found another digitized version, with a better audio/video quality but with the same Swedish language, so I had to do some schooling, and thanks to the internet I was able to figure out the most difficult parts of the plot, you know, there's a lot of talking in this movie and it's not like you can take a wild guess at the content of every conversation.In addition, a good friend of mine provided me with an awful looking copy that was dubbed in English so, thanks for that!

Although this was directed by American (semi-)cult director Joseph "Joe" W. Sarno, it is also 1970's vintage softcore Swedish erotic, which means that the attitude toward sex is a little more laid-back and wholesome than in American sex films of that era, and the girls are less skanky (and a lot less artificial than the kind of girls that are in these kind of films today). The most familiar and impressive of the actresses involved is obviously Christine Lindberg, who was later in other notorious flicks. But Lindberg and the other actresses are either speaking in sync sound or have dubbed their own voices, so that there thick Swedish accents kind of hamper their performances. The initial plot is pure softcore porn contrivance--Lindberg's friend is having a secret affair with her boyfriend and the two of them plot to turn the arrangement into an treesome with Lindberg. The boyfriend goes out of town and the friend convinces Lindberg to stay in an apartment with her where she picks up random guys in an effort to seduce Lindberg into three-way.

Living the good life.

Friends and then some.

The plot takes a strange turn though when both girls fall under the spell of an alluring female toymaker who lives next door. The movie then turns into a bizarre, surrealist fantasy (apparently based on a Swedish folktale) and it really manages to lift itself well above the usual level of mind-numbing Swedish erotica. This is one of those rare sex movies that have interest beyond the mere "weasel-milking" aspect. It is largely the movie that made Sarno's reputation (he made only a couple other less interesting ones, then a lot of softcore and hardcore stuff). It also confirms his reputation for finding beautiful Swedish women willing to romp around in the nude (besides Lindberg, Sarno also discovered Marie Lilljedahl and Maria Forse, and did much to advance the exploitation career of Swedish-American bra-buster Uschi Digardt). I can say that is literally one of the few sex movies that is truly worth seeing whatever one's reason for watching it.   

Anyways, Young Playthings is the story of Nora Holmkvist (Eva Portnoff) and Janne Bergman who is happily married to Gunnila Bergman (Christina Lindberg), who additionally happens to be Nora's BFF. In order to lead Gunnila into a treesome, Nora and Janne devise a plan.

Things get weird.

Things get even weirder!

While Janne is away on business, Nora rents an area in a boarding house and intends to initiate the timid and innocent Gunnila to the pleasures of lesbian sex. However, Gunnila freaks out and decides to run away as soon as she can. Accidentally, while running away she meets Britt (Margaretta Hellstrom), manufacturer of sex toys and master of all things casual sex. Britt's place mysteriously bedazzle everyone who enters, even changing their will and ability to make decisions, so once you're in, you never get out.

 

Gunnila and Nora soon become hopelessly dependent on Britt's sex pleasures, they even show Britt's place to Janne thus allowing the long awaited threesome to take place.

Lovely Christina.

"Of course I swallow"

Gunnila is no popcorn girl though; soon she realizes Britt's follwers once had a "normal life" a successful attorney gone pimp; two profession girls turned into sex workers and so on. All these people have actually sacrificed their lives, their identities to become Britt's sex toys. Gunnila decides to warn his friends that they could share the same fate if they don't leave ASAP. Nora goes berserk and tells Britt that Gunnila & Janne are planning to escape so Britt hands her a blade and orders her to kill Gunnila!

Once Nora encounters Gunnila she fucking stabs her to death (or at least that's what she thinks, since she's become twisted by Britt's strange ways) Luckily for us and Gunnila, the blade was a fake, allowing her to finally get out of Britt's apartment with his husband.

Let's try anal now.

Yeah! take that!

Joe Sarno specializes in languid, introspective sex films. This is one of his best. It's a slow film, and as the action gets more and more bizarre, the tape recording that the players are following gets harder to understand, until by the end it takes a couple viewings to catch what's being said. Definitely not for most people's taste. 

Going back to our homework of reviewing the most obscure and/or rarest films in which Christina Lindberg play a role I gotta say, it hasn't been easy, and to make matters worse, we only have one film left to review, which is a 1974 action packed thriller called "Smoke". In such film, Christina plays a minor role but, the movie is very good. She did appear in more films but not even the dark world of the internet downloads have allowed us to grab them so, time will tell.

No trailer but, here's Joe Sarno himself giving his impression about Young Playthings: