Virgin spinster Justine Jones (Georgina Spelvin) takes her own life only to discover that she is condemned to hell without ever having really lived. She begs for a second chance and vows to live a life “consumed by lust” before accepting her eternal fate.
While Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat got the general public going to theaters to see adult films, it was his followup, The Devil in Miss Jones, that got the critics to take them seriously. The original ad campaign was made up of quotes from the mainstream press, an unprecedented feat for a “porno movie”. The cinematography by Harry Flecks (Joáo Fernandes), as well as the script, direction, and editing, by Damiano, set the bar for an era in filmmaking that would come to be called “The Golden Age of Porn”. Even the haunting original score by composer Alden Shuman garnered international acclaim. The BBC ranked it among the top 100 movie soundtracks of all time.
But it was the performance by Spelvin that set the film apart from others of the genre. Critic Roger Ebert wrote: “The only hardcore film I’ve seen that was effectively erotic was The Devil in Miss Jones – and it was erotic not because of its hardcore content but in spite of it. It worked because its star, Georgina Spelvin, was so able to project emotion, involvement, and abandon…The genius of The Devil in Miss Jones was that the title character had a fictional reality and motivation that made the sex scenes credible.”
Spelvin’s chance meeting with Damiano during an interview for a craft service job would change the course of her life. She not only landed the starring role in the film, but accepted the craft service job as well, cooking for the cast and crew in between takes. Following the success of The Devil in Miss Jones, audiences were now ready for serious films with sexually explicit content. The era of porno chic had begun in earnest.

Gerard Damiano Jr.