“I thought you said she was working…!”

Maniac/Vigilante director William Lustig helmed this dreamy-creamy ode to the slut in all women (it’s one of two XXX titles he made before jumping to exploitation in the ‘80s), and while the tone leans a little too heavily towards the arthouse – Luis Bunuel’s Belle du Jour weighs heavily on the story – it doesn’t diminish Sharon Mitchell’s slinky-sexy performance as a wife who takes a dive into Lake Wild Side as a means of warding off the boredom of married life. Jamie Gillis is the tennis instructor who untangles her tingle by fist-fucking and doggy-banging her on a massage table, then offers the promise of more substantial kink by joining his stable of uptown working girls. Mitch is of course reluctant at first, but after picking up and fucking an underage high schooler, she can’t help but let her freak flag fly and signs up for Daddy Jamie’s trick squad. Her first assignment is a nebbishy senator (minor celebrity skin Ira Wohl, who turned up in plenty of ‘70s commercials and sitcoms), who turns her into a human sundae before dipping his chocolate-coated cock in her lush-lipped mouth. Cool, thinks Sharon, but then her next john is a major-league queen who wants to introduce her to golden showers. All of a sudden, the whole hooker thing feels wrong, wrong, wrong to her, and she makes tracks for the relative normalcy of home – where a very ugly surprise awaits her.

The Violation of Claudia isn’t the most novel fuck flick (V – The Hot One, with Annette Haven, put a more inventive spin on the same premise), but Sharon Mitchell’s lithe and androgynous presence keeps things on the hot and heavy side when the premise starts to show its seams. She’s featured in every scene, from a slow-mo group grope (amputee sex symbol Long Jean Silver is among the gropers) to the massage table rough-house with Gillis, and her spectacular peach ass and streamlined body are irresistible crotch magnets. And as for the surprise ending, let’s just say that I didn’t see that one coming (if you’ll pardon the pun) from miles away, and its sucker-punch impact seems right in line with the ferocious ugliness of his later horror and grindhouse work.

Video-X-Pix’s DVD lists Violation’s running time as 85 minutes, but the feature itself clocks in at under an hour, so either this is a cut print or they’re counting the two trailers (the by-now inevitable double shot of Blue Jeans and Female Athletes) as part of the whole package.