Rising Damp (film) Rising Damp (film) Rising Damp is a 1980 comedy film based on the British situation comedy "Rising Damp", which aired on ITV from 1974 to 1978. The television series was, in turn, adapted from Eric Chappell's stage play "The Banana Box". Chappell adapted the play to television, and wrote the screenplay for this feature film. The film's director was Joseph McGrath. Leonard Rossiter plays Rupert Rigsby, the middle-aged landlord of a decrepit townhouse. Rigsby has fallen for his only female tenant, Ruth Jones (Frances de la Tour). Ruth, however, prefers Philip, who is much younger, more attractive, and more sophisticated
The Devil in Miss Jones fashioned a bizarre melodrama," and described the opening scene as "a sequence so effective it would stand out in any legit theatrical feature". 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." 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". Other critics have described it as, along