Have Yourself Straight-Friendly Gay Christmas

Another holiday, another obligatory post about holiday-themed entertainment. My original plan was to review a Christmas-themed gay porn movie from the 1970s, except I couldn’t find one. Oh, there are plenty of Christmas-themed scenes, but no one seemed to think there was a market for a holiday-themed gay feature during porn’s Golden Age. There’s the new shit, of course, but I really wanted to review something that had a little more narrative than “Santa fucks an elf.”

Maybe later.

So, I went in the opposite direction, checking out instead three TV movies released this year that feature LGBTQ storylines. And while the networks releasing these movies are getting much praise for including LGBTQ characters, it should be understood that these movies go to great lengths to scrub away all the sexual from homosexual. Though, to be fair, the straight characters aren’t exactly dripping with erotic intent. In the world of these movies, romance just means, to borrow a line from a friend of mine, holding hands and thinking pure thoughts.

Let’s start with the Hallmark Channel’s THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE, which premiered this past November. Last year, Hallmark sparked the ire of One Million Moms (which is, reportedly, significantly fewer moms than that) when the network aired an ad for the wedding planning site Zola featuring (gasp!) a lesbian couple. Hallmark pulled the ad, then faced an even bigger backlash. Hallmark, no doubt flustered by the discovery that homosexuals buy shit, too, re-instated the ad and committed itself to creating more inclusive content, of which The Christmas House is a direct result.

Hey gays! Here’s a movie just for you from your
friends at the Hallmark Channel.

Psyche! The Christmas House is really about these two.

However, I wouldn’t nominate Hallmark for a GLAAD Award just yet, for while The Christmas House includes gay characters, its primary story is decidedly hetero, and very, very white. The white hetero in question is Mike Mitchell (Robert Buckley, of iZombie and One Tree Hill fame), the lead actor of a cheesy TV legal drama Handsome Justice. The Christmas House even opens with a scene from the fake show—a daring move, as the self-aware cheese of Handsome Justice is barely distinguishable from the regular cheese of the Hallmark Channel. After the show wraps for the holidays, Mike learns its current season might be its last. He barely has time to process this news before getting a call from his parents, Phylis (yes, just one ‘l’) and Bill (Sharon Lawrence and Treat Williams, respectively), insisting he move his visit to upstate New York up a couple weeks to help them transform the family home into one big gaudy holiday display, the titular Christmas House. It’s a tradition the family hasn’t kept up in years, but Mom’s just retired from her teaching job and wants a project. (Dad retired a few years earlier—from what, we don’t know, but he must’ve been making bank to afford his wife’s facelifts and transform his home into Busch Gardens’ Christmas Town.)

Also roped into this project are Mike’s brother Brandon (Jonathan Bennett) and his husband Jake (Brad Harder). Brandon and Jake are trying to adopt a baby, but fuck them, what about Mike getting back together with his childhood crush, Andi (Ana Ayora)? The recently divorced Andi, with her pre-teen son Noah (Mattia Castrillo) in tow, has moved back to her mother’s place next door to the Mitchells. She’s also Mike’s parents’ real estate agent, a revelation that suddenly has Mike getting nostalgic for his childhood home and re-examining his choices. What’s the life of a C-list actor when he could live an upper-middle class life in suburbia with the just-remembered love of his life?

Jonathan Bennett and Brad Harder wait for a seat at the table.

The Christmas House is pretty much everything I expected from a Hallmark movie: a big bundle of clichés slathered with a glistening glaze of schmaltz. And yet, I didn’t hate it. Buckley is an engaging lead (not to mention very easy on the eyes), well-matched by smoky-voiced Ayora. Lawrence manages a passable Florence Henderson-as-Carol Brady impersonation, while Williams, whose character is fond of bad jokes (“What do you call a Christmas tree that knows Kung Fu? Spruce Lee.”), is endearingly goofy. Bennett and Harder, both out IRL, are fine, but they’re just there to help Hallmark earn brownie points with the LGBTQs and not much else. Their characters could be cut and the story wouldn’t be affected in the slightest.

At least the Paramount Network had the decency to make its gay cast members the leads of DASHING IN DECEMBER. Too bad that’s like if Lehman Brothers named their first Black CEO on September 14, 2008.

Speaking of heartless financial firms, one of Dashing’s main characters, Wyatt Burwall (Peter Porte) works for one. A conversation with Wyatt’s hard-ass boss during an office Christmas party reveals that Wyatt’s on track for a Big Promotion, provided he puts together one more Big Deal, because at this firm, promotions are transactional. To hammer home that Wyatt’s got no work/life balance (and that he works for an asshole), his boss is slightly miffed that Wyatt’s going to Colorado for the holidays to see his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in two years, but is calmed when Wyatt explains he’s taking his laptop along. Happy Holidays! Then Wyatt cruises the party’s hunky bartender. I’m sure they later sneaked away to snort coke and blow each other in a supply closet, but the movie chose not to expose audiences to such trashy behavior. Maybe they’ll include that part as a Blu-ray extra. (Note to Paramount: You most definitely should include that part as a Blu-ray extra.)

“Meet me in the supply closet in 15 minutes.”

Though Wyatt hasn’t seen his mother in two years, his reason for returning home isn’t entirely sentimental. It seems the family’s horse farm has been in dire financial straits since Dad died, and Wyatt wants to convince his mother to sell before she sinks all her retirement savings (and his financial assistance) into this money pit. He’s so determined, in fact, that he presents his mother Deb (Andie MacDowell, aging naturally and looking all the better for it) with a sales proposal during dinner on his first night home.

Andie MacDowell’s part is more like a spokesmodel
than a character.

The moment Heath knew he
would destroy that ass.

Employed by the ranch are Blake (Caroline Harris), who dated Wyatt in high school before he came out and is seemingly the only Black person in Colorado, and Heath (Juan Pablo Di Pace), who may be Colorado’s only gay person. Or so I assume, given his masochistic pursuit of Wyatt. Though the two men exchange interested glances when Wyatt first arrives, Deb’s son is clearly more interested in establishing himself as an insufferable douchebag than pursuing a holiday romance. He keeps “accidentally” calling Heath “Hank,” insults the wine Heath brings for dinner (“You can’t drink this!”) and shows little concern for the employees who will be displaced should Deb decide to sell. Heath is understandably put off by Wyatt’s negging, but…dat ass! Wyatt eventually becomes a little less resistant to Heath’s charms, though for much of the movie he seems to view Heath more as a rival for his mother’s approval than a potential romantic partner. More perplexing is Heath’s continued interest in Wyatt. I, for one, think personality counts for a lot, so if, say, Chris Hemsworth were to treat me like shit, he’d immediately go from a 10 to a 4. I would be open to one night of hate sex, however.

Because the Christmas movie genre mandates that there be no surprises, Wyatt and Heath not only become a couple, but Wyatt manages to save the farm, too, his solution so simplistic and obvious that you’ll question how these characters hadn’t driven the farm into bankruptcy years earlier.

Dashing in December is a prime example of why “TV movie” is a pejorative in so many people’s minds. These movies usually trade in clichés, but few are so nakedly insincere. Dashing looks so much like a 90-minute commercial that I half-expected Andie MacDowell to turn directly to the camera and urge viewers to wrap themselves in savings at Kohl’s while modeling one of her shawls. In fact, it’s remarkable that in this movie that appears specifically crafted for product placement has only one moment that’s blatantly shot to appease a sponsor.

Subtle.

Dashing isn’t all bad. Di Pace manages to manufacture a dimension-and-a-half more for Heath from the single one supplied by writer-director Jake Helgren. Plus, he gets bonus points for making the line “You could use some holiday spirit” sound sexually suggestive. And unlike the other TV Christmas movies I watched, Dashing at least acknowledges that its gay main characters have carnal desires, such as when Wyatt, dressed only in holiday-themed boxer briefs, walks into the bathroom and surprises a freshly showered Heath in his holiday-themed boxer briefs. The POV camera pan from Wyatt’s crotch to his rippling torso makes it clear Heath has more in mind than holding hands.

Or maybe Dashing in December was just trying to sell boxer briefs.

Finally, there’s Lifetime’s LGBTQ Christmas movie offering, THE CHRISTMAS SETUP. I’ll confess that I didn’t go into this with an entirely open mind. I, like a lot of people, don’t hold Lifetime TV movies in high esteem. This is the network that gave us Liz & Dick and Drew Peterson: Untouchable, after all. Granted, I enjoyed both those movies, but only because I watched them ironically. I fully intended to watch The Christmas Setup ironically as well.

There’s certainly nothing about The Christmas Setup’s story that makes it unique. Once again, we have a New York-based gay son with a demanding career — an attorney this time out — angling for a promotion. And once again, that son, Hugo (Ben Lewis), leaves town for the holidays to visit his mother, who resides in a slower-paced, gentler town (I’m not sure if that describes Milwaukee, but it’s not Manhattan, so sure). He brings along Madelyn (Ellen Wong), his BFF, because what else is she going to do, visit her own family? Oh, fuck no!

Patrick (Blake Lee) sells Christmas trees
and creates wood.

But if Hugo and Madelyn think they’ll have relaxing visit, Hugo’s widowed mom Kate (Fran Drescher) has another think coming to them. She’s chairing the neighborhood Christmas festival and she’s already volunteered her visitors to assist in setting it up. I can relate; this is the kind of shit my mom likes to do. However, unlike when she volunteered my brother and I to assist at one of her church events, Hugo does not yell at his mother about having no respect for his time, as well as saying a lot of things that he’ll regret later, and Kate does not scream things like, “Well, I’m sorry I’m such a horrible mother!” before bursting into tears and then locking herself in the bathroom for an hour. No, Hugo just makes a few halfhearted protests before doing what his mother asks.  

One of the things Hugo’s asked to do is take a Christmas tree delivery from Patrick (Lewis’ real-life husband Blake Lee), and I’ll have to admit that would make me pretty agreeable to having my Christmas break hijacked. Patrick is one of those impossibly perfect people that only exist in fiction: handsome, financially independent (he created an app, sold it and was able to retire in his early thirties), and genuinely nice. I’m sure he has an eight-inch cock, too. The attraction between the pair is immediate, but Hugo can’t seem to get out of his own way. At one point I found myself shouting at the TV, “C’mon, does he have to slap his dick in your face for you to get a clue?” Also: “Can that be in a scene, please?”

“So, are you two ever gonna fuck?”

I wasn’t the only one waiting for Hugo to get a clue. Kate has been steering Hugo into Patrick’s orbit, hoping her son will get a boyfriend for Christmas, hence the movie’s title. She’s not as overbearing a matchmaker as she is a Christmas festival chair, and her restraint pays off as the two guys find their way into a sweet romance. She even gets a bonus match-up when her older son Aiden (another out actor, Chad Connell, who really does a pair of pants justice) comes home and takes a liking to Madelyn. 

Halfway through The Christmas Setup I was suddenly struck with the realization that, holy shit, this movie is actually good. It’s no holiday classic (in my book, that would be Christmas Evil and/or White Reindeer), but it was by far the best of the 2020 Christmas LGBTQ movies I watched for this post, and that’s largely attributable to the cast’s performances. Real-life partners don’t always have the same chemistry on screen (#Bennifer), but the romantic sparks between the charmingly adorkable Lewis and the oh-so-fuckable adorable Lee are palpable. Drescher is an actress I generally prefer in small doses (I can take only so much of her foghorn of a voice, which sounds a bit rusty these days), yet even though The Christmas Setup exceeds that dosage I enjoyed having her around. I just wish writer Michael J. Murray had given her a sarcastic edge to take full advantage of Drescher’s strengths. (We’ll overlook that someone who fought to ensure The Nanny reflected its titular character’s Jewish heritage is playing a character who’s positively moist for Christmas.) 

Awwww! They’re so cute, I want to slap them.

Above all, even though The Christmas Setup’s story isn’t much different from Dashing in December’s and its script not much wittier than The Christmas House’s, it’s clear everyone involved is committed to the project, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Good job, Lifetime! But I’m still plan on making fun of your movies in the future.

Xmas Excess, Moms and Empty Cups

The three 2020 Christmas TV movies had a lot more in common than just including gay actors and characters. All three exist in a world where the so-called War on Christmas has been won and Santa has been named Dictator for Life, with Gretchen Carlson his second in command. In this world, if you don’t spend at least $75 grand on Christmas decorations you’re a motherfucking Grinch and should go back to whatever godless nation you came from. The characters in Dashing at least have a business reason for decking the halls so extravagantly, and yet they are the most restrained, creating what I imagine a Crate & Barrel holiday theme park would look like. And neighborhood Christmas festivals aren’t exactly known for their understatement, so The Christmas Setup also gets a pass. But the Mitchells in The Christmas House need to seriously re-think their priorities. How about dialing back the decorations a little bit, maybe donate the $50,000 savings to a food bank or homeless shelter? Or do I not understand the true meaning of Christmas?

I also found it interesting that while all three of these movies hyped their inclusion of gay characters and talent, both in front of and behind the camera, they didn’t strike me as being made for gay audiences. Instead, I think the target audience is their mothers. All three movies make visiting and helping mom the catalyst of their respective stories, and all three, with their sweet, sexless romances and mild humor meant to be cute rather than funny, seem designed to warm Mom’s heart more than truly reflect the lives of the gay characters. Granted, a lot of this is attributable to network branding (the Hallmark Channel isn’t exactly known for edgy content), but I think a truly gay Christmas movie would have more sexiness and sarcasm than straight sugary sentimentality.

Hallmark, Paramount and Lifetime were ready to present
LGBTQ characters, but still reticent about showing hot beverages.

Finally, what’s up with the empty cups? In every one of these movies characters drink from obviously empty coffee cups. In the rare instance liquids are poured into these cups at all, it’s a fraction of the amount a person would normally drink. I’m sure if any P.A. brought a producer or director of any of these movies a cup containing four tablespoons of coffee they would get a dressing down that would make Tom Cruise’s recent on-set tirade seem like a polite reminder about workplace safety. They might even be killed. The only time these movies — and TV in general — seems to show an interest in accurately reflecting how people consume beverages is when characters are drinking alcohol. Only then can characters pour liberally and often.

Think Twice Before Signing the Lease

Me thinks the cover artist
was working from a
one-paragraph synopsis,
not the actual manuscript.

“The bedroom doors were always open!” proclaims the front cover teaser copy for Charles Beardsley’s 1974 novel THE APARTMENTS. Signet’s back-cover copy ups the ante with a breathless description that’s just slightly more subtle than a guy intently staring at you while stroking his hard cock through his 501’s:

In a swinging California apartment complex where anything went, these desperate men and women sought to fill the aching void in their lives with the pleasures of the flesh — and the apartments exploded in an orgy of dark desires and scorching shock!

The Apartments is down to fuck! Well, how could a whore like me resist?

Alas, once I got the novel alone it never could quite get it up, for while the novel was promoted as detailing all the bed-hopping at a Bay Area apartment building, Kumquat Gardens (yes, really), the cover copy neglects to mention the numerous unsexy chapters about the building’s older residents grappling with aging, retirement, poor health and their imminent mortality. But I get it: old people bitching about the cruelties of aging doesn’t make for enticing promotional copy (“In a swinging California apartment complex, senior citizens grudgingly anticipate death”). Yet the cover copy also fails to mention the killer loose on The Apartments’ grounds, a pretty significant omission considering people like reading about murder almost as much as—if not more than—they like reading about sex.

I can’t blame the Signet marketing team for taking the easy way out and just hyping the book’s sexier parts. Lord knows I struggled on how best to synopsize the book. On the surface, it looks like a Burt Hirschfeld-style potboiler, with a bunch of different characters brought into each other’s orbit by virtue of being in the same location, à la Aspen or Key West. However, the paths of Beardsley’s characters seldom cross. Making matters worse, they barely exist in the same genre, The Apartments bouncing from sexy soap opera to slice-of-life character study to supernatural thriller and back again.

In the sexy soap opera parts of the novel, we meet Phil and Peggy Carlin, a young-ish married couple whose libidos are so demanding they have turned, quite cheerfully, to swinging. Among their playmates are a pair of vacationing contortionists, Don and (groan) Donaldine (“The air of nonchalance with which Don gave a startling exhibition of autofellatio was enough to make the couple stars of the porno film scene—which is exactly what happened.”); Fran and Fred, whose excessive vocalizations during sex lead Phil and Peggy to refer to them as the Orals; and Pete and Phyllis Begley, whose marriage might not survive their swinging lifestyle (“I never realized when I voted yes on Proposition Orgasm that I’d feel soiled,” complains Phyllis).

Of course, there are rules to Phil and Peggy’s extramarital activities, chief among them being “no single sex for either partner outside the weekly quartets.” However, when Peggy encounters Ahmad, the hunky Iranian student who lives in Apartment 12, she begins to wonder if rules weren’t made to be broken.

Another sexy soap opera storyline involves young Midwesterner Lane Larrabee and the man of his dreams, Shaw Wing, whom Lane jokingly calls the Incredible Doctor Oh Man Screw, because Shaw is Chinese and political correctness hadn’t yet been invented when this novel was written. More significant than Shaw’s ethnicity (about which Beardsley makes a huge fucking deal) or sexuality (treated rather matter-of-factly) is his being an asshole. He not only agrees to an arranged marriage with Carol, to please his traditionalist parents, he does not tell Lane about it until after the wedding. Though marrying someone behind your partner’s back seems like a justifiable cause to burn all his shit on the front lawn, Lane agrees to continue a clandestine affair with Shaw, getting together for lunchtime trysts while Carol is at work. But when Carol gets pregnant, Lane realizes he’ll always be Shaw’s side piece. Again, Lane could just dump the bastard. It’s not like he couldn’t find another man (dude, you live just minutes away from San Francisco). Instead, Lane plots to get rid of Carol by any means necessary — only to discover Carol has plans of her own.

Moving to the novel’s slice-of-life dramas, we have middle-aged Beatrice Ohara, who’s been in a bad mood ever since her husband went to visit his family in Japan and never returned. Living and caring for her sharp-tongued 83-year-old mother, Miss Maerose, only makes Beatrice more embittered. Needless to say, she’s not pleasant company. Her mother, a former madam, is more entertaining: “I shall take my cane and rise and show all of you soft-ass idiots that I’m from tough pioneer stock and not daunted by the likes of old age.” However, a fall during a walk on the apartment grounds lands Miss Maerose in a convalescent home, where she—and Beatrice—awaits her death. But Miss Maerose isn’t going without getting the last laugh.

Also living amongst the middle-class residents of Kumquat Gardens is multi-divorced, fabulously wealthy Madeline Chabot, because, as we all know, rich people just love living near the less affluent. Madeline is also a busybody, and she’s decided to make retiree Shelby Dick her next project (and possible romantic partner), his poor heart and small bank account be damned.

Meanwhile, octogenarian Dean Meredith, a former reporter, gets sidetracked from writing a follow-up to his bestselling memoir when he receives threatening letters urging him to drop the project if he values the lives of his family. Though this story thread develops some real tension as Dean searches for the source of these threats, Beardsley quickly deflates it, choosing to emphasize Dean’s “betrayal” of his wife, Crystal, by keeping these threatening letters from her.

Rounding out the slice-of-life dramas is Luise Gerber, a middle-aged college professor and obsessive dream interpreter about whom you will not give one fuck, and Noah Langford, an aspiring artist, paid by his wealthy parents to stay away from them, whose art projects include following random people then writing about what he witnesses—a stalker’s journal as art—and a gallery “show” during which he jacks off inside an enclosed wooden ramp as gallery patrons mill about.

Finally, under the heading of supernatural thriller/WTF, we have Fog, the spirit of a Costanoan (a.k.a. Ohlonean) out to possess someone so he can avenge the murder of his pregnant wife by Spanish settlers, a murder that occurred in the same spot where Kumquat Gardens now sits. It’s all pretty dull—until the killing starts.

A Literary McMansion

Beardsley has a gift for characterization, and there are moments in The Apartments that suggest he could’ve easily turned it into a biting satire of early ’70s culture. He’s not an untalented writer, but he is an unfocused one. The Apartments doesn’t read like a cohesive novel but rather like seven or eight different novellas spliced together and stuck under one roof, forming an ungainly literary McMansion. He’d have done better to jettison the more boring characters (bye-bye Luise) and make Fog’s murder-spree-by-proxy the narrative’s driver while expanding on the tawdry lives of the apartment building’s more interesting residents. Also, maybe reconsider Kumquat Gardens as the building’s name?

Perhaps my biggest frustration with The Apartments is its squandered potential as great trash. It’s as if Beardsley is trying to split the difference between his literary pretensions and commercial greed. As a result, many of the “dirty” parts are disappointingly tame (alas, the building can’t be dubbed Cum-Twat Gardens), while the more serious character studies are long-winded and pointless.

I bought The Apartments shortly after reading a positive review on Charles Beardsley’s 1978 novel, Marina Tower, on the now dormant The Ringer Files blog (are you OK, Kurt?). The Ringer Files’ high opinion of Marina Tower was enough to convince me to give Beardsley’s work a try. This was more than five years ago.

In the interim Joe Kenney posted a less enthusiastic review of Marina Tower on Glorious Trash. Though I don’t agree with many of the political views that creep into Joe’s reviews, his take on Marina Tower pretty much mirrors my takeaway on The Apartments (and thus, through trash fiction, common ground is achieved). In fact, based on the Glorious Trash synopsis, Marina Tower is pretty much The Apartments relocated to Los Angeles, so if you’ve read one you don’t need to bother with the other.

And I won’t be bothering with another Beardsley paperback anytime soon, no matter how hard the cover tries to seduce me. I didn’t hate The Apartments, but it didn’t exactly make me want to move in, either.

Cigars, Loud Jackets and Poontang

This an instance where you can judge
a movie by its don’t-give-a-shit cover art.

There were many ways I could’ve spent the U.S. Election Night: Obsessively checking my phone for updates, watching TV news to see how many different ways anchors could say, “No, not yet,” or just getting drunk. I chose to watch a shitty 1993 direct-to-video thriller, SOUTH BEACH.

Fred Williamson stars as Mack Derringer, a retired pro football player who now runs a private investigation agency with another ex pro football player, Lenny (Gary Busey). When we meet them, they’re playing a round of golf, smoking cigars and talking shit. The two pals are seemingly without a care in the world, even though they have plenty of reasons to worry. As Lenny points out, they haven’t had a case in five weeks, a payment is due on Mack’s houseboat and their bar tab at their favorite watering hole, The Sports Page, “is as long as a tapeworm.” Mack isn’t worried, though, telling Lenny that “big things can happen at any time.”

Then Lenny leaves for a Jamaican vacation, and though his timing is questionable his departure helps ensure the amount of Gary Busey in the movie is kept to a tolerable level. Mack then takes his wheelchair-bound mom (Isabel Sanford) to the mall. He leaves her parked outside a store while he goes shopping in what looks like a Hallmark card shop, but Mama Derringer just can’t stay put, rolling to the jewelry store next door, where she witnesses a robbery in progress. 

Fred Williamson chews more cigars in South Beach, but
Gary Busey chews more scenery.

An alarm goes off and Mack rushes out of the Hallmark store, his gun drawn, though he has no idea the reason for the alarm. I mean, for all he knows, it’s a fire alarm. Anyway, Mack blows away the mullet-headed robbers, police Det. Coleman (Robert Forster, who worked with Williamson in the far superior Vigilante) lets Mack know he’s sick of his shit, and Mama Derringer hams it up for the local TV news.

Meanwhile, Mack’s ex-wife Jennifer (Vanity), who manages a phone sex business, is being stalked by one of her callers, a guy identifying himself as Billy. Jennifer dismisses the stalker as an annoyance, until she shows up at work one day, wearing a slinky black dress with matching opera gloves, as one does, and discovers the naked corpse of her dim-bulb co-worker Suzi on the office floor. 

It was Nightclub Wednesday at the office.

You might think, as I did, that hunting for Suzi’s killer/Jennifer’s stalker would become the main driver of South Beach’s story, but that’s merely a B-plot. At the Sports Page, while cutting up with his buddy Jake (a barely recognizable Peter Fonda), yet another former pro ball player, Mack is approached by Francesca (Sheree Deveraux, who, despite what her name and acting style suggests, did not do porn). She wants to hire Mack to protect her from a jealous ex-boyfriend. He reluctantly agrees, because pussy, and accompanies her to a party aboard a yacht.

It’s a set-up, of course, and before the party is over Francesca has disappeared and Mack is framed for a murder. With Jake’s help, Mack goes hunting for the person who framed him, getting occasional too-convenient-to-be-true assists from Lenny. He might also try to find out who’s after Jennifer, and, what the hell, go after the people behind that jewelry store robbery since the helmet-haired daughter of the store’s owner (Shay King) so obviously wants to get into Mack’s Dockers. 

Shay King’s movie career consists solely of
supplying South Beach’s nudity.

These three storylines—Mack being framed, Jennifer’s stalker and the jewelry store robbery—are loosely wrapped up by the end, but don’t ask me to explain how because the movie sure doesn’t, not coherently, at least. But South Beach isn’t about the destination; it’s the meandering journey, during which our leading man models loud jackets, chews through about thirty cigars and considers all the sweet poontang he’s offered, including the well-seasoned meat pocket of Stella Stevens (watching the 54-year-old throw herself at Williamson is only slightly less cringey than the scene featuring Marquis Ross’s beachside rap performance).

Stella Stevens is actually a more age-appropriate partner for
Fred Williamson, but the movie pretends she still looks
like her 1960s self (right).

A Black Burt Reynolds

South Beach seems to be going for a vibe similar to one of Burt Reynolds’ ’80s crime movies, a mix of gritty action and smartass humor. It certainly sold me on the idea of Williamson as a Black Burt Reynolds. His ’stache isn’t as iconic and he lacks a signature laugh, but Williamson projects the same blend of no-bullshit machismo and easy-going humor as Burt. I could easily see him playing the lead in Stick or Heat.

Peter Fonda and Fred Williamson are just
a couple of zany bros.

Unfortunately, I could just as easily see Reynolds in South Beach, which more closely resembles the DTV shit he was making by the late 1990s. Michael Thomas Montgomery’s script, with its muddled plotting and underwritten characters, is partly to blame for the movie’s poor quality. I say partly because I suspect there were more than a few sequences that were improvised, e.g., the opening golf scene. And, honestly, can any scene involving Gary Busey really stay on script? Casting Busey in a movie after his 1988 motorcycle accident is like giving your best man a microphone at your wedding reception after he’s downed his sixth glass of Prosecco with a cocaine chaser. Semi-coherence is the best you can hope for.

But most of the blame goes to the director… Fred Williamson (IMDb lists Alain Zaloum as a co-director, though his name doesn’t appear on the movie’s opening credits). As cool as he is in front of the camera, Williamson isn’t so capable behind it. South Beach is sloppily made, with flubbed lines and visible safety rigging. There’s also an over-reliance on close-ups and waaaaay too many shots of Williamson grinning into the camera and handling a fucking cigar (seriously, I think he’s a fetishist about those things). 

One of the few scenes in South Beach that’s not
shot in close-up, and it captures the stunt man’s safety
rigging and filming equipment in the background.

 

 

South Beach has an interesting cast, at least. The movie can now boast that it stars three Oscar® nominees (Busey for The Buddy Holly Story, Fonda for Ulee’s Gold, and Forster for Jackie Brown), plus an Emmy winner (Sanford for The Jeffersons) and a Golden Globe winner (Stevens, but the category was Most Promising Newcomer, the Hollywood equivalent of being crowned homecoming queen). Vanity never won any awards but she boned Prince, so that’s got to count for something. I always found her a welcome screen presence, and wish she was more of one in South Beach, her next to last movie before she quit cocaine and show business to become an evangelist (no one ever turns to God when things are going great). Rounding out the cast are cameos from Henry Silva and Flash Gordon star Sam J. Jones. The movie also has the distinction of having a high body count amongst its cast: Sanford, Forster, Fonda, and Vanity are now all deceased, and yet Busey is still with us.

Unless you’re a fan of the lead actors you could probably skip this one and re-watch one of their better movies. That said, there were worse things I could’ve watched on Election Night.

Fun fact: South Beach features four actors who have posed
nude for Playboy/Playgirl: Stella Stevens, Fred Williamson,
Vanity, and Sam J. Jones.

Striking Terror in the Hearts of Homophobes

It’s Halloween so I feel compelled to review something seasonally appropriate. The works of Romero, Carpenter and Craven are typical fodder for this sort of thing, or I could look at a couple of Frank Whale and Jacques Tournier films if I wanted to get all New York Times about it (I don’t). Instead, I thought I’d explore a different type of horror director, one who pays homage to horror conventions yet puts his own unique spin on the genre. This Halloween, I’m delving into some select works from David DeCoteau.

No one should watch a David DeCoteau horror movie expecting to be scared. Even his best ones are standouts not because they succeed as horror movies, but because they possess that so-bad-it’s-good magic. Yes, DeCoteau is that kind of filmmaker, occupying the same strata as Fred Olen Ray.

Like FOR, DeCoteau is extremely prolific, with 165 directorial credits to his name as of this writing (FOR only has 159, but he has more writing and acting credits than DeCoteau). Also like FOR, DeCoteau has worked in numerous genres, from hardcore porn to family-friendly Christmas movies. Yet, regardless of the movie’s genre, the era in which it was made, or pseudonym the director uses, there are certain signifiers that reveal a movie as being a DeCoteau product, signifiers that I’ll highlight in the movies below. Though many of these themes and techniques aren’t unique to the director on their own, they are hallmarks of a DeCoteau product when combined with some very specific, recurring tropes.

DREAMANIAC

The moment Thomas Bern realized he
didn’t want to be in movies anymore.

DeCoteau’s first horror movie was this 1986 Nightmare on Elm Street cash-in (one of the movie’s taglines was, “You Don't Have to Live on Elm Street to Have Nightmares”). Adam (Thomas Bern, in his screen debut/swan song), an aspiring heavy metal musician who is never shown playing or listening to it, agrees to let his girlfriend’s snooty sister Jodi (Lauren Peterson) rent his place to host a party for her prospective sorority. When Jodi’s guests arrive it’s soon evident that the sorority she wants to join is Phi Kappa Kunt. “Do I know you?” Jodi’s sister Pat (Kim McKamy) asks Francis (Dixie Carter lookalike Cynthia Crass), a sorority member bedecked in a giant foreskin. “I doubt it,” Francis sniffs. “I went to private schools all my life and I’m rich as shit.” The men attending this party don’t fare much better, being either dorky, goofy or smarmy. Only Pat is remotely likable, though I found her initial interaction with Adam to be borderline abusive.

Julia Sugarbaker goes to college.

Luckily for the good of humanity, Adam’s also into black magic (don’t let that Def Leppard tee fool you) and has summoned a succubus, Lily (Sylvia Summers), who’s down to fuck and/or kill the party guests, though she drags her feet doing either. Among the notable-but-improbable kills: Lily entices one of the hotter guys, Ace, to strip down to his tighty whities, wraps an extension cord around him and electrocutes him, somehow. Another head-scratching kill scene has a character getting decapitated by a power drill.

Though Dreamaniac has a few OK practical effects (it’s one of DeCoteau’s bloodier movies, though that “too gory for the silver screen” tag on the poster art is total bullshit), whatever schlocky potential it may have had is dashed by Helen Robinson’s lame script, the high school play-caliber acting and heavily padded runtime. That it was shot on video doesn’t help, though the quality of its cinematography is more early ’80s porn movie than shot on shitteo. That said, the picture is still pretty murky and fuzzy, making it even more of a chore to watch. 

What makes a David DeCoteau film unique? Exhibit A.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Barely 40 minutes of story to an 82-minute runtime. (I swore when I first watched it the movie was 1 hour, 42 minutes, but maybe it just felt that long.)

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Repeated footage; footage of people walking/running; repeated footage of people walking/running; slooooow pans; even slower opening and end credits.

Kim McKamy considers whether porn
might be less demeaning.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Kim McKamy took the name Ashlyn Gere in 1990 and had a long career in adult video.

Homoerotism Level: Lower side of medium, though after executive producer Charles Band screened the movie someone from his office called DeCoteau and asked, “Are you gay?”

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: Less than 10%, though Dreamaniac has more male nudity than other DeCoteau titles.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They may bitch about the amount of man-ass on display, but otherwise, no.

THE KILLER EYE

Ryan Van Steenis never saw the Eighth
Dimension coming.

DeCoteau takes the 1950s drive-in creature feature into the craptastic direct-to-video market of 1999, spicing it up with a heavy helping of homoeroticism and a generous side of naked women. Right off the bat we have “mad” scientist Grady (Jonathan Norman) hiring a hustler (pouty twink Ryan Van Steenis) to be his lab rat. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather screw, Doc?” the hustler asks. “’Cause my rates are the same.” Unfortunately for him, Grady wants a test subject, not a blowjob. The scientist administers eye drops that should, if successful, give the subject a view into “the Eighth Dimension.” Instead, the drops transport an entity from the Eighth Dimension into the blonde twink’s eye, causing it swell so large that it pops from his head and becomes sentient. (I just wrote that!)

Grady, however, was too busy arguing with his horny wife Rita (“You want to talk about you and your orgasms now?”) to notice any of these developments. It’s only after Rita (Jacqueline Lovell) leaves to have a three-way with their downstairs neighbors, hunky stoners Tom and Joe (David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez, respectively), that Grady notices his subject is now dead. So, he calls his assistant Morton (Kostas Koromilas), who conveniently lives in the same building, to, well, assist him, much to the chagrin of Morton’s young wife Jane (Nanette Bianchi). Though it would seem that a giant floating eyeball would be hard to miss, quite some time passes before it’s discovered, even though it’s frequently hovering only a few feet away, using its phallic-like optic nerve to get Rita off while her two stoned studs doze on either side of her, then feel up Jane while she showers. 

A typical night with Jerry Falwell Jr., his wife
and their pool boy.

Meanwhile, Creepy Bill (Blake Adams, billed here as Blake Bailey), a guy who, near as I could tell, just hangs out in the apartment building’s attic, happens upon the dead hustler’s body. Because Bill’s not quite right in the head, he has no interest in blackmailing Grady (“When you tell on others, you’re just telling on yourself,” he says). Instead, he joins the search for the titular Killer Eye, which at this point is more accurately described as the Creeping Molesting Eye. Rita, Tom, Joe and Jane join their efforts to trap the giant eye, to no avail. (“It’s been floatin’ and fucking for hours, so it’s got to be getting tired,” observes Creepy Bill.) But it soon becomes quite obvious that one member in their group has no interest in stopping the sentient eyeball.

The giant, phallic eyeball from
the Eighth Dimension.

This one’s kind of fun, actually. The movie knows what it is and does what it can within its limited budget, managing to deliver a few laughs in the process. It doesn’t do it efficiently, however. For all the amusing moments, there are just as many sluggish, pointless ones. The acting is weak, but still leagues above what was seen in Dreamaniac, with several cast members delivering semi-professional performances.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Really only enough story here to support 70 of this movie’s 90 minutes.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Extended PG-13 sex scene; extended R-rated shower scene; repeated footage, especially of that big rubber eye; slooooow pans; even slower end credits.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Jacqueline Lovell worked in adult film under the name Sara St. James.

Homoerotism Level: High (see below).

#NoHomo

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: David Oren Ward and Roland Martinez never once put on pants, so a good 30-40%.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They’ll definitely be nervous, though Lovell and Bianchi are well utilized as the movie’s beards.

VOODOO ACADEMY

The spirit of Voodoo Academy
possesses Chad Burris.

Much like this movie’s young protagonist when he enrolls in the Carmichael Bible College, my husband and I didn’t fully know what we were getting into when we rented this DeCoteau offering in the early 2000s. We knew it was trash, of course, and our expectations were appropriately low, but then we started watching it and soon realized we’d happened upon a true hidden gem.

Like The Killer Eye, this 2000 release takes a premise that would’ve been common on the movie screens of yesteryear and pulls it into the 1990s, with DeCoteau putting his own, unmistakable spin on the material.

Christopher Sawyer (Riley Smith) is a devotee of Rev. Holice Carmichael’s “Neurocystic Christian Church” (a mix of Catholicism and Scientology, as one character describes it), so he’s thrilled to be accepted into the reverend’s bible college. Of course, the school’s extremely small, all-male student body — Christopher would be the school’s sixth student — is a bit of a red flag, but Mrs. Bouvier (Debra Mayer), the school’s sole administrator, explains that’s only because Carmichael Bible College is still an experimental institution. The school isn’t even accredited yet, another red flag, as is Rev. Carmichael’s sudden introduction of confessional booths. And seeing how the Rev (Chad Burris, who looks like he could be Jeff Stryker’s little brother) interacts with his students — placing hands on their muscular thighs, fixing his seductive gaze on their young, handsome faces — you just know those booths have a glory hole. 

Kevin Calisher looks over Carmichael
Bible College’s newest student.

It’s not until Christopher’s hunky classmates succumb to the effects of drugged wine (Christopher, a staunch teetotaler, abstained), and begin writhing in masturbatory torment that the devout new student decides to investigate. When one of the students, Rusty (Huntley Ritter), walks, zombie-like, upstairs to Mrs. Bouvier’s apartment (“That’s it, Rusty, follow your urges,” Mrs. B intones), Sawyer follows and discovers the truth: Carmichael Bible College isn’t a religious school at all—it’s a front for a voodoo priestess, and its students are all sacrifices to Macudo!

Simply put, Voodoo Academy is DeCoteau’s masterwork, second only to his one stab at indie legitimacy, 1997’s Leather Jacket Love Story. While the acting isn’t that good (it’s still a DeCoteau movie), the male cast gamely sells the homoerotism, especially Burris and, as class smartass Billy, Kevin Calisher. What’s amazing about this movie is that though its content is relatively tame, it’s so heavily suggestive that by the time the final credits roll you’ll swear you saw the guys suck each other off.

The boys of Voodoo Academy can’t fight the feeling.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Though 92 minutes is a wee bit longer than it needs to be (80 minutes is closer to the mark), Voodoo Academy doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

Rusty is swiftly punished for following his urges.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Lingering shots of guys writhing in their underwear; repeated footage; extended opening credits; slooooow pans.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Despite all the guys in the cast looking like they were plucked from Chi Chi LaRue’s stable, none of them have done porn. Debra Mayer was in several Full Moon films prior to her death in 2015, but no porn.

Homoerotism Level: Were it any higher it would be hardcore gay porn.

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: Oh, 60%, easy.

Will it Scare Homophobes? They’ll be fucking terrified.

EDGAR ALLEN POE’S HOUSE OF USHER

Frank Mentier and Michael Cardelle make
awkward, awkward love.

With his 2008 retelling of the famous Poe tale, DeCoteau doesn’t waste time with mere homoeroticism. This one’s motherfuckin’ gay! What’s more, he made it for Here! TV, the gay network that gave us the wonderfully terrible series Dante’s Cove and The Lair. Was I giddy at the prospect of watching this? You bet your Tommy Hilfiger boxer briefs!

Unfortunately, Here! TV didn’t get the director of Voodoo Academy; it got the director of the 1313 series. DeCoteau’s interest in the material doesn’t go much further than cashing a paycheck, so what should have been a campy homo horror is a boring slog. He couldn’t even be bothered to eliminate the street traffic noise from scenes that are supposed to be taking place in the gardens of a remote country estate.

Part of the movie’s undoing is its casting. Frank Mentier, as the eccentric Roderick Usher, and Michael Cardelle, as his childhood friend Victor Reynolds, are emblematic of DeCoteau’s erotomania: buff, smooth and young. While Cardelle does look good in boxer briefs — because of course DeCoteau’s going to get him stripped down to his underwear — it’s nigh impossible to believe that his character has traveled the world and seen some shit when we suspect the actor playing him is filming his scenes during his high school spring break (and, based on Cardelle’s performance, between bong hits). Mentier, looking and sounding more bored than stoned, appears to be slightly older — he was possibly on his spring break from university — but not much more believable. These characters needed to be played by men who could act, not boys who could not. Jaimyse Haft, as Roderick’s sister Madeline, tries to deliver a real performance, bless her heart, but, alas, she just doesn’t quite have the acting chops to pull it off.

Who farted?

OK, I know better than to watch DeCoteau’s movies for the acting, but when so little regard is shown for all other production aspects (the script, art direction, the pacing) you become less forgiving. The one possible saving grace House of Usher had was its sex scenes, something to appease the viewers until there’s a Next Door Studios’ House of Usher, but again DeCoteau drops the ball. Mentier makes out with both Cardelle and a blonde whatsisname, yet it barely qualifies as softcore. The actors never even remove their underwear, instead yanking them below their buttocks but keeping their genitalia covered. You’d think a man who has directed gay porn would have a better grasp of the mechanics of sex. I wasn’t expecting to see any dicks, but I thought we could get sex scenes that reached the same level of explicitness as a Shannon Whirry erotic thriller, or, you know, Dante’s Cove.

Unless you share DeCoteau’s fondness of cute guys walking around in their underwear, House of Usher isn’t even worth hate watching. Better to stick with Roger Corman’s 1960 adaptation. Or try your luck with this 1989 adaptation or this one from 2006, both movies looking like they deliver the fun kind of bad DeCoteau didn’t. If nothing else, the acting should be better.

Michael Cardelle reminds us we’re watching
a David DeCoteau movie.

Story-to-Runtime Ratio: Though there should be enough story to flesh out an 84-minute movie, Simon Savory’s uninspired script, coupled with the sluggish pacing and bad acting, make House of Usher barely tolerable for one hour.

Method(s) Used to Pad Runtime: Repeated footage; lingering shots of guys in their underwear; people walking; extended softcore sex scenes; slooooow pans.

Has Been/Porn Star in Cast: Jill Jacobson of Falcon Crest fame(?) has a cameo so inconsequential it’s insulting.

Homoerotism Level: Extremely high.

Percentage of Runtime Male Cast Members in Underwear: 50%, augmented with some male rear nudity, but neither helps.

Will it Scare Homophobes? Yes, but they’ll be bored soon enough. 

Boo!

Dreamaniac and The Killer Eye are currently streaming on Tubi.

A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #3: ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’

Even mainstream critics couldn’t
say enough kind things about
The Devil in Miss Jones.

Though I’d like to think I have a fairly well-rounded appreciation of cinema history, I realize there are serious gaps in my education. Some omissions I’m OK with: I don’t care that Battleship Potemkin is touted as one of the fundamental landmarks of cinema, I just can’t work up a desire to see it; and once I discovered D.W. Griffiths’ controversial KKK silent epic The Birth of a Nation was three-plus hours—which is two-plus hours more racist silent epic than I can tolerate—I decided I could live happily without ever having verified its appalling content with my own eyes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most guys probably wanted to give themselves a furious
tugging during this scene, but I just wanted to give that
tub a serious scrubbing.

Justine prepares to orally traumatize a snake.

Following an interlude with an enema hose, Justine returns to worship the Teacher’s cock (“I’m only content when I have you in my mouth”). Once her “lesson” reaches its gooey conclusion, Justine has some private time with a bowl of fruit, a masturbation scene my husband found icky and I found silly. But what do we know? Maybe all women are tempted to stuff grapes in their cooches. More troubling was Justine’s giving a literal snake literal head. How freaked out must that snake have been?

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). 

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!

“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.

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.

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.

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.