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| Even mainstream critics couldn’t say enough kind things about The Devil in Miss Jones. |
There are other culturally significant films, though, that I’d regret not seeing before I die. So, to that end, I watched the 1973 porno chic classic THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES.
The Devil in Miss Jones is directed by Gerard Damiano, who in 1972 directed a little movie called Deep Throat. While both movies had a huge impact on the culture, to put it mildly, they couldn’t have been more different. Deep Throat is a dirty joke of a movie that owed its mainstream notoriety as much to highly publicized obscenity charges as it did to its graphic celebration of fellatio. The Devil in Miss Jones, on the other hand, is way more polished, its tone serious and somber. Like, really somber, as in the titular Miss Justine Jones (Georgina Spelvin) slits her wrists within the movie’s the first eight minutes.
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| If this makes you horny, please seek help. |
Justine’s suicide lands her in purgatory, which looks like a Gothic-themed dining room (in actuality, Harry Reems’ house). Waiting for her is Abaca (John Clemons, affecting the demeanor of an effete bureaucrat). Abaca informs Justine that though she’s done nothing bad while alive—why, she’s still a virgin!—the rules dictate that suicides go to hell, a surprisingly Catholic worldview for a porno movie. Abaca is sympathetic to Justine’s plight (he delicately refers to her taking her own life as an accident), but rules are rules. “It’s not as though I’m on a commission basis,” he says. “It makes no difference to me which way they go.”
For someone condemned to spend eternity in hell, Justine is surprisingly accepting of her fate. What irks her is she didn’t do anything in her life to make hell worth it. Abaca thinks she wants to be returned to the living to steal and murder, but Justine has something far less criminal in mind. “If I had my life to live over, I would live a life filled…engulfed…consumed by lust!” Abaca, clearly tickled—possibly aroused—by the idea, decides to let the poor dear spend her time in purgatory exploring her hitherto ignored sexuality.
Passing through a door, Justine is transformed from looking like a Depression-era school marm to a hot-to-trot divorcée plotting to seduce the UPS deliveryman. Waiting for her is Deep Throat stud Harry Reems, wearing nothing but a mustard-colored bathrobe and a lecherous grin. He introduces himself as the Teacher, and then releases her from her inhibitions in much the same manner faith healers “cure” cancer, albeit without all the shouting and begging for money.
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| Or similar to an chimpanzee trying to tear a person’s face off. |
Then the Teacher begins his lesson, starting with inserting a finger-like dildo up Justine’s ass, also similar to a faith healer, except consensual. Afterwards he gives Justine a crash course in penis appreciation, specifically sucking and riding one (“Please, I want to know what it feels like in my cunt,” begs Justine). A rapturous Justine asks the Teacher to “take that thing out of my backside” and give it to her. She then rubs the lil’ dildo across her face and sticks it in her mouth. (I don’t care if ass-to-mouth is a popular porn category, I still think it’s gross, though given the constraints of shooting on film it’s a safe bet that dildo was washed between the shot of its removal and the shot of Georgia sucking on it. I need to believe this is true.)
After Justine’s first orgasm, she finds herself in a basement, reclining on a plastic-covered bed. Judith Hamilton (billed as Clair Lumiere) arrives, rubbing some gray-silvery oil all over Justine’s naked body before rubbing her face in Justine’s nethers. Fun fact: Judith Hamilton used to be Spelvin’s roommate and frequently co-starred with her, including a lesbian scene in the movie 3 a.m. edited by Orson Welles.
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| Judith Hamilton also kind of resembles Kristen Stewart, though there are striking differences. For example, one of these women has charisma, while another starred in the Twilight franchise. |
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| Most guys probably wanted to give themselves a furious tugging during this scene, but I just wanted to give that tub a serious scrubbing. |
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| Justine prepares to orally traumatize a snake. |
That snake, incidentally, was the pet of Marc “Mr. 10 ½” Stevens, whose 10 ½ is slobbered over by Justine—now wearing garish eye makeup to emphasize her “whorish” desires—and another woman, Sue Flaken. Flaken was originally cast as Miss Jones’ lead until an impacted wisdom tooth took her out of commission (she kind of looks likes Spelvin, actually). Perhaps her recent oral surgery accounts for all her drooling and slurping. Seriously, she gives the boys at Raging Stallion Studios a run for their money when it comes to sloppy BJs [link NSFW; also, gay].
Justine’s lust-filled time in purgatory cums to an end (sorry, the genre demands at least one of those puns; I think it’s a law or something) in a Levi Richards and Marc Stevens sandwich, though the two men could’ve been billed as Cock #1 and Cock #2 for all we see of their faces (the men in this movie aren’t much more than life-support systems for dicks).
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| Then again, given some of the Groucho-esque close-ups of Harry Reems, maybe it was best that the camera focused on the male performers’ lower anatomy. |
This scene also hypes up the homoeroticism. “Your cock in my cunt is so hard,” Justine breathlessly tells Stevens. “Can you feel him in my ass? Can you feel your cocks together?” She then implores the men to pull out so she can feel them cum outside her. “I want to feel the juice run down my leg,” she says. The two men cum on each other’s ball sacks instead. Oops!
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| “Can you feel your cocks together?” |
After that misdirected money shot, it’s straight to hell for Justine. Her hell is a white-walled cell, where her only companion is a man babbling about dust and flies. A furiously masturbating Justine begs him too fuck her. “I’ll suck your cock,” she says. “I’ll suck your balls. I’ll suck your ass, your beautiful ass.” I had to question that last line, considering the ass in question belongs to the film’s director. I mean, did Gerard Damiano really have a beautiful ass? I somehow doubt it. I wouldn’t rim him, is all I’m saying.
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| Then again, maybe I shouldn’t judge a man’s ass based on his toupee-like hair. |
It doesn’t matter. The man ignores her pleas for sexual release, condemning Justine to an eternity of sexual frustration. Or, as I knew it, college.
‘Miss Jones’ Owes Classic Status to Spelvin
Though its story is as slight as Deep Throat’s, The Devil in Miss Jones seemed a whole lot more substantial, like it was almost a real movie—well, a real movie with DPs and cumshots. Seeing Justine’s transformation from a sexually repressed wallflower to insatiable nymphomaniac is something to behold. The movie also has something to say about patriarchal attitudes toward female sexuality, i.e., a woman has to be punished for indulging her desires, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.
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| Justine Jones’ look goes from frumpy to slutty. |
It’s always a risk when a porn movie attempts a more serious tone, largely because much of its success hinges on having a cast with some acting skill. Had non-actress Linda Lovelace been cast as Justine Jones, The Devil in Miss Jones would’ve become an unintentional comedy. Luckily, Damiano cast Georgina Spelvin, initially hired to run the set commissary. If Spelvin, described by Roger Ebert as “the Linda Lovelace of the literate,” was only half as good a cook as she is an actress, Damiano still came out ahead in the deal. Damiano definitely deserves props for his writing and directing, but it’s Spelvin’s committed performance that elevates The Devil in Miss Jones to its classic status.
Though she had the talent worthy of mainstream movies, Spelvin seldom ventured outside the adult genre, appearing in a handful of soft core (Career Bed, Wakefield Poole’s Bible!) and exploitation (Girls for Rent, Bad Blood) films, with Police Academy being her most prominent mainstream title. According to Sam Sherman, producer of Al Adamson’s Girls for Rent (a.k.a. I Spit on Your Corpse), after completing one scene Spelvin turned to him and said, “This is too hard. I’m going back to making fuck films.” In an interview with Mr. Skin, Spelvin simply said, “I’m not very motivated”— a statement belied by her tour-de-force performance in Miss Jones.
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| When Georgina Spelvin first heard there were plans to make a sequel to The Devil in Miss Jones, her response was, “Why?” Nevertheless, she reprised the role of Justine Jones in Henri Pachard’s 1982 sequel, The Devil in Miss Jones, Part II. Like so many hit movies, DMJ spawned a franchise, with Paul Thomas’ 2005 reboot, featuring a cameo by Spelvin, the most recent iteration of the title. |
