JUSTINE learns to "understand the needs of a man" in Roberta Findlay's taboo-breaking skinflick, on Blu-ray/DVD combo from Vinegar Syndrome.

Upon her father's death, Justine (Hillary Summers, THE BUDDING OF BRIE) who has grown up in an exclusive French boarding school, is sent to New York under the guardianship of her father's estranged brother Steven Cates (Ashley Moore, NEVER SLEEP ALONE). Although Uncle Steven and his son Greg (Andy Hayes) seem protective of her innocence – Steven running around with multiple women like the voluptuous Vanessa del Rio (DRACULA EXOTICA) since his lesbian wife (Linda Vale, INSIDE SEKA) moved out, and Greg regularly engaging in threesomes with his college friends Elaine (Robin Sane, CENTERFOLD FEVER) and Don (Rick Iverson, SUNNY) – virginal Justine is more intrigued than shocked makes peeking through doors, being groped by the simple-minded gardener Santo (Dave Ruby, WHITE HOT), or putting on sexy undergarments chosen by sophisticated housekeeper Miss Pomerantz (Suzanne Raven). Despite plenty of offers, Justine only has eyes for her Uncle Steven and means to have him for herself.

Despite the title, JUSTINE has about as much to do with the Marquis de Sade as contemporary films like the Australian FELICITY and the German VANESSA in which convent boarding school girls are sent off to live with distant, decadent family. Unlike some other incest-themed classics of the golden age of adult films, JUSTINE's thin story is actually quite complex under the surface with regards to the sexual lives of its characters, inferring a lot without passing judgment, and making the taboo act seem far less inevitable with plenty of opportunity for Justine to have her trust (among other things) violated and to be devastated by her discoveries about her relatives. Although director Roberta Findlay's eighties porn and horror films were modestly budgeted and shot quickly, they all make effective use of their New York settings from the gritty to the Gothic. Although shot in just a few days, JUSTINE has some attractive production values from the upstate mansion locations apart from one horseback riding sequence that looks like it was shot by the side of a freeway entrance, but the cast and the sex is all class (particularly the sequence between Moore and the voluptuous del Rio). The film was produced and co-written by Cecil Howard who had his own string of above average hits throughout the eighties including NEON NIGHTS and BABYLON GOLD. A live sex show attended by Moore and a pair of stewardesses (FOXTROT's Merle Michaels and THE NIGHT BIRD's Christie Ford) is apparently cutaways to footage from Findlay's FROM HOLLY WITH LOVE. The theme song ("Justine, understand the needs of a man") is echoed in the music box melody Justine listens to throughout the film.

Originally released on video by Select-a-Tape, JUSTINE had been hard to see apart from Alpha Blue Archives unauthorized DVD until Vinegar Syndrome's December 2019 Blu-ray/DVD combo release which largely went unnoticed by most apart from yearly package subscribers after all of the specials and Vinegar Syndrome Archive surprises from the Black Friday sale the month previous. Mastered from a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative apart from the first reel sourced from the 35mm CRI, JUSTINE looks reasonably slick apart from a couple credits opticals that look more faded and discolored than the rest of the opening sequence. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is fine even though the opening text about the transfer also mentions that five minutes of audio had to be sourced from VHS. As with some of Vinegar Syndrome's other recent releases, a lossy Dolby Digital track is also included (which may be a repurposing of the track for the DVD side for obscure reasons or a quirk of the authoring program being used). Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.