Prior to making the fairly competent, if not wacky, Child's Play (1988) cash-in Dolly Dearest in 1991, Maria Lease made a string of fuck-films in the '70s and '80s under the noms-de-porn Joanna Williams, Joanna Ray, Wray Hamilton and Jack Williams.

Maria Lease was a figure fully immersed in the microcosmic world of exploitation filmmaking, beginning with an uncredited role in Joseph W. Sarno's All the Sins of Sodom (1968). She would go on to meet founder of Olympic International Films, producer and writer, Bob Cresse, likely through the production of Lee Frost's seminal nazisploitation film, Love Camp 7 (1969), in which she would also star.
Maria additionally worked as a script advisor on several titles including: The Dirty Dolls (1973), Schoolgirls in Chains (1973) and the Willard (1971) inspired Kiss of the Tarantula (1975); as well as making a few on-screen appearances in the alike such as the aforementioned Lee Frost flick and Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971).
Eventually, Maria Lease would marry Daniel Cady, a writer and producer of numerous exploitation and hardcore movies, including Expensive Tastes, under the pseudonym - William Dancer.

Distributed by Norm Arno's VCX, Expensive Tastes is one of three titles released in 1978 helmed by Maria, the two others being Soft Places and Little Girls Blue.



The poster art and tagline for Expensive Tastes sell the movie as an innocuous love fest, however that's very misleading when in reality it's anything but. Expensive Tastes is a scummy BDSM-laden rape fantasy roughie filled with deeply misogynistic dialogue, deplorable antagonists, and heinous acts of ruse and subterfuge.

Starring: Joey Silvera (credited as Joseph Nassi), Elaine Wells, Fanie Essex, Phaery Burd, John Leslie, Ken Scudder, Eileen Wells (credited as Mary Ann Evans) and Dan Egan.

The plot starts off with a young girl, Alex (Elaine Wells), excitedly talking to her landlady (Fanie Essex) about an upcoming date with a guy named David (Joey Silvera).
The couple settle down with a drink at David's apartment, but the doorbell rings. Upon opening the door David is greeted met by ski-masked psycho's fist crashing into his nose. "Hi", utters the masked man while another two other masked intruders burst into the apartment.

Launching into a prolonged and gruelling assault on the young couple; a ski-masked John Leslie brings bravado and insouciant swagger to his roughie villain, whilst Ken Scudder laughs like a deviant hyena throughout the scene, and a third assailant who doesn't have very much to say, but seemingly can't keep their lips off David. It's an unpleasant sequence for sure, but perversely riveting, and how emaciated does Joey Silvera look during that scene?
Following the attack Alex and David discuss calling the police, David insists they should report it, but Alex decides against it at as it might be "embarrassing" if their story ends up in the papers. During the very next scene it becomes apparent that David is a total scumbag who was actually in on the attack all along and that he's part of a gang that go around raping young women. It also becomes clear that one of the masked intruders is actually a woman who is also David's true love-interest (Eileen Wells). Dementedly, she tells David "I really got horny watching that rape." It's one of many staggering lines of dialogue present in Expensive Tastes that presses me to think about the approach to, and views of, such issues as well as the whole cultural zeitgeist of the 1970s in general.



"What about next week? Hell, I feel cheated if we don't have a rape every week" - Howie (Ken Scudder)

Alex tells her landlady about the ordeal and she reports the crime to Paul (Dan Egan), a police Lieutenant. Paul notices similarities between Alex's story and another case he worked on, in which a 19 year old girl committed suicide after reportedly being raped by three masked men at her dates house. Paul sets a trap to catch the deceptive David.

The conclusion, in my humble opinion, is wholly unsatisfying. I really hoped the gals he set-up and attacked would get a more just revenge, instead David ends up getting arrested and lead away for a  forensic investigation. His three scumbag pals appear to get-off (pun intended) scot-free and it's not even inferred that David would implicate them, or give up their names to the authorities either which kind of leaves the film with a morally unfulfilling finale. I was kind of hoping for a similarly sensational ending to Armand Weston's The Taking of Christina (1976), an X film which uses the more "traditional" conclusion seen in rape-revenge flicks; wherein an abductee plays the long con her captors and when the time is right she blows them away with a shotgun.



For such a low-budget fuck film there's a handful of well crafted scenes that make great use of lighting/shadows and silhouettes. There are also playful moments with the cinematography too, including a standout moment during a "love" scene with David and his real girlfriend, the unnamed female rapist, in a darkened room where there's a hardcore loop being projected onto a wall. As David's girlfriend starts to give him head, the shot changes and the loop is now being projected onto the side of her face with the participants of the loop also engaged in an act of fellatio. Bravo!

Cast performances are good, but nothing to shout about. The blokes are credible as the aggressors; Joey Silvera's character, David, has a sociopathic dichotomy - operating as an attractive lure for the group and hiding the malicious intent behind an otherwise outwardly charming persona to the girls he picks up. It's cool seeing John Leslie in a villainous role; Ken Scudder (a porn legend of San Francisco) brings menace to his character, similar to his role in the earlier John Hayes flick Baby Rosemary (1976). The chicks also manage to deliver credible performances as the victims too, enough to garner sympathy and empathy from any sensibly minded viewer.



Aside from the scene mentioned above with Joey Silva & Eileen Wells and one other moment, the rest of the sex scenes are uncomfortable gang bangs, though narratively they would actually be gang rapes. Objectively, there's little to no tenderness in Expensive Tastes which makes the poster choice all the more confusing. It's as deceptive as the motives of the antagonist, David. All the moments of "love-making" are underpinned by either a negative or morally questionable (or reprehensible) aspect.

Maybe I'll come back to Expensive Tastes again and catch something on a rewatch that I didn't see before that might alter my opinion. It almost goes without saying that it would benefit from a remastering job, as if that would ever happen, and who knows if a negative, or even a print still exists. The copy I watched looks like a VHS rip plonked on a DVD and consequently during some of the darker scenes a lot of detail is either blurred or lost altogether. A bit of a shame because as I mentioned there are a handful of well lit scenes that suffer tremendously from the poor quality of the transfer.

When it comes to hardcore roughies there are many better efforts out there, I don't want to write this one off folks because if that's your bag and you've yet to check out Expensive Tastes give it a shot and see what you make of it.