The Devil in Miss Jones: The Resurrection

I really had high hopes for this movie, and enjoyed many aspects of it. The casting of Tom Byron as the deviant Reverend was brilliant, and is arguably one of his best performances. He played a perfect balance of dork and deviant. Nick Manning was well cast as the sinister side kick Dorian, and Evan Stone played an admirable evil preacher, although his similar performance in Jim Holliday's Paradise Hole was better. Belladonna is amazing as always. Kurt Lockwood, Savanna Samson, and Steven St. Croix turned in good performances.

Unfortunately, for my taste, I found the sex scenes pushing the limits of my interest. I understand that adult feature films compete with extreme gonzo video, but hard anal, spitting, anal to mouth, have little interest for me. I'm not necessarily offended, but just lose interest. I ended up fast forwarding through many of the sex scenes, trying to follow the story, which, although compelling, is foggy and meandering. Worth a view, but not a good bet for a romantic evening with a significant other.

Director Paul Thomas takes a second crack at reinventing the original film for a new audience and isn't as successful as the first time around. Belladonna stars as a young indie reporter who will do anything for a story and a crack at the big time. After creating a situation that ends badly for a big story, her guilt gets her a date with the devil. It's not a terrible idea, the main issue is Belladonna is far from the innocent naive girl that the films usually center around and the gonzo style sex scenes that kill the narrative momentum. So while not a poorly made film, the punishing run time makes it a patience test.

The era of dominance in Adult Cinema by Vivid is well and truly over, as evidenced by this embarrassingly bad cash-cow feature by its top director of yore, Paul Thomas. Even the talented screenwriter "Raven Touchstone" flunks out with a turgid, lousy script.

Belladonna is seriously miscast in the central Georgina Spelvin role, this time posited as Melinda Jones, a fame-seeking reporter for the Seattle Free Press. Picture is a creature of its time, as dated as the flip-phone Melinda uses, and her casting merely reflects her superstardom as the ultimate gonzo actress of the day, underscored by the hit "Fashionistas" and its followups.

For this followup, PT unwisely shot on video rather than his 35mm film used for prestige Vivid projects, losing the patina of importance such a pretentious film requires. Instead we get a jumble of over-extended, indulgent gonzo sex scenes owing far more to the pernicious influence of Max Hardcore than to the genius of Gerard Damiano, the creator of the DMJ film and myth.

It's a very cornball story of easily corruptible reporter dealing with a trinity of evil, 3 cardboard characters essayed by Savanna Samson (then the numero uno Vivid contract star who is overemphasized here for commercial reasons, natch), hammy as usual Evan Jones as a corrupt preacher and slimy/slick Nick Manning with his shoulder length hair and non-acting as what is called "the go-fer from Hell". They lure Belladonna and her ho-hum boyfriend Kurt Lockwood to L.A. and Savanna's mansion, and manipulate the heroine into depravity and oodles of guilt for her various misdeeds climbing to the top.

With lousy Mickey-Mousing music (imitating classic films like "The Exorcist" for example), feature fails to create the desired suspense, especially in showing the key scene, wherein Belladonna as Miss Jones becomes a media superstar solving the case of the Halloween Bandit (Steven St. Croix in a guest role wearing a Devil mask/horns), strictly in flashbacks, and leading to several anticlimaxes including a thrown-in BDSM orgy scene that is pure sex filler. There's also a lengthy, imaginary swimming pool threesome with Lockwood and Rebeca Linares that has Carmella Bing's humongous hooters stealing the show for a couple of reels from Bella.

Worst scene is the trio of satanic demons lecturing our poor heroine on her faults, delivering indigestible pithy dialog that is so ridiculous it verges on satire (or "porn-parody" to use the industry's favorite buzz word). Cryptic open ending (the fools at Vivid evidently hoped for more money-grubbing sequels spin-offs that fortunately didn't happen) is terrible.

Irony here is that late in the film Belladonna is sent undercover posing as a hooker to get the goods on hooker Penny Flame, leading to another gonzo toss-in, as Penny sodomizes our tattooed leading lady with a long- necked wine bottle. Sad to say, the gap-toothed wonder playing Miss Jones is instantly believable with clownish makeup and trashy clothing as a whore, while she is a non-starter made to look plain (but skanky) in the heroine role. A simple switch of actresses' parts from Bella to Penny could have solved that problem and made for a far better movie, but the great Ms. Flame (terrific in PT's movie "Layout", made at around the same time as this clunker) was unfortunately not an industry "star" like Ms. B.

Very cheap props and sets, annoying "flashy" editing and other gimmickry betray PT, though fortunately we have dozens of great films by him to treasure apart from misfires like this one, clearly produced merely to make a fast buck. It's production date is clearly displayed on the DVD as Feb. 24, 2007 (for legal purposes to comply with actors/actresses at least 18 at time of filming), so why it sat on the shelf for over 3 years before release remains a mystery, likely NOT because (too obvious and logical) it was a stinker.

In the world of porn, Vivid Entertainment is about the only company that still puts some effort and class into their productions. Serious money and time goes into them and it also pays off. They are about the best recognized company within the industry at the moment and their movies keep sweeping all of the big award shows.

And this movie is above all things a really good looking one. The cinematography and all of the images look amazing. It's not just a movie that tries to be serious with its looks but also with its story and acting.

Even though I still have no clue what the movie its story was exactly being all about, it still really deserves lots of credit for trying. It seemed to me that the movie started off alright with its story but as it progressed they totally seemed to forget about it and it only became extremely confusing and muddled. It also feels as if there are two movies in this; first you have the movie that tries to follow a story and secondly you have one that purely is all about its porn.

The director seemed to have some extreme sexual preferences, that I would imaging aren't that hot for just everybody. All of the sexual acts within this movie are being more or less the same and some more variation wouldn't had harmed the movie.

The acting is simply quite good for a movie of this sort and it seems that Belladonna actually really has some talent for it. Who knows, maybe she will be one of those porn actress that will attempt to have a 'serious' acting career one day.

Simply one fine looking and classy movie within its genre.

7/10

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