Mike's Porn Reviews

The Devil in Miss Jones #3 and #4

Background

After the success of the "artistic" late-1970s porn movie Devil In Miss Jones and its sequel, the Dark Brothers decided that it was time to update the idea for the 1980s, with more emphasis on the porn and less emphasis on the art. The original Devil in Miss Jones was a bona-fide movie, with a compelling characterization for its central character and real dialogue. Roger Ebert even reviewed it, which is no surprise since it was made during that short-lived era when porn performers were called "actors" and there was a dream that someday the porn industry and Hollywood would come together.

Of course, as we all know, that never happened. Hollywood continued to push the boundaries of blood and gore, but its boundaries for onscreen sex remained firmly fixed. The porn industry, in the meantime, discovered the handheld video camcorder, and a new generation of dirt-cheap porno movies arrived. Why spend all that money on lighting, film cameras, developing, multiple takes, and the other accoutrements of real moviemaking, when you can just go buy a regular camcorder at an electronics store for a couple of thousand dollars and then make yourself a porno movie on the cheap?

More to the point, the porno industry discovered that porno consumers weren't really interested in buying movies that could be respected by real movie critics. As I've said elsewhere, porn consumers don't want a real movie with sex added. They want a porno movie, which may or may not have a story added. They watch so they can see people fuck, not so they can see well-written characters. In short, the difference between a well-made porno movie and a badly made one is the difference between two-dimensional characters and one-dimensional ones. Three-dimensional characters simply have no place in this business.

With that in mind, the Dark Bros remade Devil In Miss Jones for a more modern sensibility, and appropriately called it Devil in Miss Jones #3: A New Beginning. Unlike the original Miss Jones, who was a sexually repressed, suicidally lonely spinster in her 30s living alone in a shabby apartment, the new Miss Jones is a hot young sexually active blonde. The pathos of the earlier film is gone; the new Miss Jones is nothing more than an annoying two-dimensional self-absorbed slut, and you don't really care about what happens to her. The film's appeal lies only in making you want to see what bizarre things might happen next.

Having said that, this movie (which was actually intended as a two-part story, hence the shared review of DMJ #3 and #4) was a big hit in its time, and I recall being amazed when I first watched it as a teenager. But watching it again almost 20 years later, it doesn't really hold up that well. For one thing, I first watched it as an underage teenager. And let's face it, it doesn't take much to impress an underage teenager, so those 20 year old accolades really don't count for much. Also, the film derived much of its impact from breaking taboos. It showed interracial sex onscreen, anal sex, double penetration, odd fetishes like a man in a diaper being sucked off by a woman wearing a nurse outfit or an onscreen genital-area shaving, etc. In 1986, this was pushing the envelope. But 20 years later, one must face up to the fact that porno has casually tossed aside all of those taboos, to the point that some of them are almost cliché.

With the films' shock factor effectively neutralized, they now stand or fall based on the quality of the story and the caliber of the performances. I'm pleased to say that even after 20 years, the latter still holds up. There were quite a few talented performers in these movies and they performed well. They may not have the polished plastic faces and bodies of modern porn stars, but they know how to fuck, and they seem to genuinely enjoy it too. Unfortunately, the story doesn't do as well. Gregory Dark chose to make a film where everybody seems pissed off all the time except when they're fucking, and that grows really tiresome after a while. If it weren't for that, I'd rate the film higher, but as Rebecca put it, the film is full of anger and that's a big turnoff.

Devil In Miss Jones #3: A New Beginning

With the background out of the way, let's move on to the scene-by-scene breakdown, shall we? The first scene features Justine Jones (played by blonde spike-haired Lois Ayres in a true 1980s time capsule performance) getting angry at her boyfriend (Tom Byron) because he's cheating on her with another woman (nasty brunette Jennifer Noxt). In fact, he's cheating on her at the same time that he's talking to her on the phone about this argument!

Justine decides to get her revenge by picking up some random guy at a bar and having sex with him, and Paul Thomas steps up to the plate. Their sex scene is short and sweet, but at the end of it, she bumps her head against the headboard and ... dies. It seems rather unlikely that a light bump on the head would cause death, but let's just roll with that anyway, because it leads to the signature plot device of the film: Miss Jones ends up in Hell.

Hell has been visualized many times in many ways throughout history. Dante wrote a thoroughly detailed description of it. The New Testament describes it as a "lake of fire". The DOOM computer games portrayed it as a place of hideous demons who mindlessly attacked and mutilated any living thing foolish enough to enter, by attacking in waves until you ran out of ammunition. And the Dark Brothers? They chose to portray Hell as a sex club with a badly dressed hyperactive black guy as the master of ceremonies.

After arguing with Justine for quite a while about the whole "you're dead" thing, we learn that Satan's minions use women as "horses" and ride them around, both in the literal and sexually figurative sense. So while the MC takes Justine on her guided tour of Hell, he leaves his "horse" behind where a cowboy gets to "ride" her.

At this point, you've already heard all the plot you need to know. Our master of ceremonies will now take Justine Jones on a tour of Hell which basically involves showing her numerous different people having sex. Two sex scenes follow:

After this, Justine herself gets a little action before being pulled away by her helpful tour guide. As she leaves, she sees Vanessa Del Rio surrounded by cocks and getting busy, and realizes that she will become one of these crazy-fucking people if she stays here too long. The film ends with her trying to find a way out.

Devil In Miss Jones #4: The Final Outrage

DMJ4 picks up where DMJ3 left off, with Justine Jones looking for a way out of Hell. But first, our master of ceremonies is going to show her more of the perverse behaviour that goes on in Satan's kingdom. This movie actually has less of a story than DMJ3 did, since DMJ3 had to set up the whole scenario. This one basically has nothing to do but kill time until we discover Justine's deep dark secret. It starts with her giving a blowjob to someone who claims he can free her: an act which seems to accomplish nothing.

Then her guided tour of Hell continues, into an orgy room where four different couples are going at it in different ways. Supposedly, they're being punished for having "sick fantasies" by being forced to live out those fantasies for eternity. Some of the things they're doing, like the guy in diapers (who happens to be Ron Jeremy, by the way) or the DP were probably considered seriously offensive in 1986, but they're pretty ho-hum now. In 2006, I can't help but look at this scene and think "was this supposed to be outrageous?"

Once we leave the orgy room, we go to the interracial room, where (gasp!) a white racist woman is getting fucked by two black guys, and a white racist guy is having sex with two minority women (apparently, this is supposed to be their punishment). Again, while the 1980s was not really much more overtly racist than the present in most ways, this kind of scene obviously caused a lot more stir in 1986 than it does in 2006, where you can order a DVD 5-pack of the "Black Gangbangers" series for twenty bucks and watch white women getting fucked senseless by black guys for 20 straight hours.

From here we move to Justine's big secret: she wanders into the dreaded room where no one should go, and we discover that she was sexually abused by her father. Now don't get me wrong, it would obviously be quite traumatic for her to have been sexually abused as a child, but that's the kind of revelation you normally save for a real movie, where you've actually built up a character we care about. In this film, it simply comes off as pretension. Especially when they choose to reveal this abuse in the form of a sex scene where Justine Jones (as an adult) is having sex with an older man (presumably her father). It's more crass than dramatic.

In any case, Justine runs away screaming after this scene, then wakes up in bed with Paul Thomas. It turns out that the whole thing was a dream ... or was it? Either way (and the director makes it very clear whether it was a dream), I have to say that this film has not aged well. The outrageous scenes just aren't all that outrageous any more, and the big revelation is not worth the wait. The direction and film-making technique in general is very good for porn: better than most modern porn. But there's only so much polishing you can do on an essentially flawed concept.

Rating: 2/5
Anal/DP: yes
Choking/slapping/abuse: none
Running time: 1 hour, 16 minutes (DMJ3) and 1 hour, 5 minutes (DMJ4)
Video quality: fair
Studio: Dark Bros Entertainment
Producer: Gregory Dark
Director: Gregory Dark

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