Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Justine Jones (Georgina Spelvin). One that arguably has a point beyond being a reason for serving up nudity and sex, even. While there’s no mistaking The Devil in Miss Jones for a movie that isn’t deliberately trying to stoke a hetero libido, it is also an undeniably thoughtful film, especially by the standards of the hardcore pornography of today. Well, to be fair, maybe it’s not all that surprising. Ebert thought slasher movies spelled the end of Western civilization, but gave the thumbs up to a movie where a good chunk of the second act involves a woman learning about the joys of oral sex.

In fact, The Devil in Miss Jones got a three-star rating from none other than Roger Ebert himself! What’s porno chic? My dear naive reader, porno chic is a very weird bubble in American cinematic history when hardcore porn aimed for more than flimsy excuses for sex in lieu of plots or half-baked parodies of popular films, and in turn they were released in mainstream theaters and got serious attention from film critics. The Devil in Miss Jones is a movie that only could have happened during the porno chic era of 1970s America. The key difference is that The Devil in Miss Jones doesn’t so much present quirky yet profound explorations into the philosophy of ethics as it has lots and lots of hardcore sex. Before The Good Place, we had The Devil in Miss Jones, which similarly took a skewed and satirical look at the grotesque absurdities in traditional western Christian views of the afterlife and eternal punishment.

The Devil Finds Work by Michael Delving