The Devil in Miss Jones is a 1973 pornographic film, written, directed and produced by Gerard Damiano, inspired by the 1944 play No Exit by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
[15] After an intense session of pain and pleasure with a menacing man, known only by the title of "The Teacher",[1][17] Justine has several bizarre and sexually deviant encounters, the last of which is a graphic threesome.
Though initially horrified at the pain she will be forced to endure, Abaca dispels the common human myth of Hell, promising Jones that she will in fact be "quite comfortable".
[4] The Devil in Miss Jones was one of her first acting appearances following a career as a chorus girl on Broadway where she was featured in productions such as Cabaret, Guys and Dolls, Sweet Charity, and The Pajama Game.
[1][22] It earned $15 million in gross rental at the U.S. box office, making it the tenth most successful film of 1973, just behind Paper Moon with Ryan O'Neal and Live and Let Die with Roger Moore.
[7][18] The film's review in Variety said, "With The Devil in Miss Jones, the hard-core porno feature approaches an art form, one that critics may have a tough time ignoring in the future", and compared its plot to Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit.
[1] It finished by stating, "Booking a film of this technical quality into a standard sex house is tantamount to throwing it on the trash heap of most current hard-core fare.
"[1] According to Peter Michelson, there is, "a relatively small corpus of [pornographic] films—e.g., Deep Throat, Devil in Miss Jones, Behind the Green Door—that have a minimal but still sufficient artistic interest to distinguish themselves from the rest of the genre".
He wrote that the relatively high production values and storytelling were partly the reason for his positive review, but that Spelvin's performance was the main draw: "she is not only the best, but possibly the only, actress in the hard-core field.
"[27] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a cut above the average skin flick, and that explains why it has done sensational business in New York and Los Angeles.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times was negative and called it "a ridiculous new porno film ... which a lot of people, who should have known better, seem to have been conned into finding a breakthrough movie.
The DVDs contain the remastered feature, audio commentary with director Damiano, a lengthy in-depth interview with Spelvin, the original trailer, the cable TV version, and a photo gallery.