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Released by: Impulse Pictures
Released on: June 9th, 2015.
Director: Gerard Damiano (?)
Cast: Rainbow Robbins
Year: 1972
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The Movie:
A guy named Captain Andy owns a houseboat that he's dubbed 'Evil Ways.' He's even gone so far as to have a fancy sign made up that hangs on the side of the boat, just to make sure that nobody gets confused. At any rate, Andy is a bit of a dog. He likes to get laid and he doesn't really care about much in the way of relationships ever since he found out that his fiancé has been messing around on him behind his back.
So he hits the high seas in his houseboat and picks up chicks. Not only that, he plies them with tasty pretzels and delicious Schlitz beer (see the screen cap below - this guy loves his Schlitz).
And that's about it.
There's no real story here. We just see a bunch of beatnik types hanging out on a houseboat and screwing around, occasionally breaking for beer and pretzels. It's a nice enough houseboat and good for these willing and able participants to be so confident in themselves as to be willing to screw on camera for our enjoyment but this is fairly plotless. Sort of. See, there's narration here that tries to give what we see an actual context, but it seems that it was written either before or after and possibly for something different than what was actually captured by the camera.
It's this narration that explains who Andy got the shaft from his lady which lead to his decision to just say fuck it all, I'm gonna bang a lot of chicks and drink a lot of beer. But we never really see any evidence of that back story. It's just not there. We also get some odd moments in the narration where the guy behind the mic waxes on about the psychological ramifications of what Andy and his swinging pals are up to. In fact, it goes so far as to actually condemn what we see happening, almost calling out its own audience in a bizarrely hypocritical fashion for enjoying what the movie is in fact presenting. The narrator also seems to have a strange hang up with homosexuality, lesbianism in particular, which gives all of this a bizarre slant.
Rumor has it that this movie, which appears without any credits whatsoever, was made by Gerard Damiano before he hit box office gold with Deep Throat. There doesn't seem to be any definitive proof that Damiano was the man responsible for this but it might have been his work. The narration is in keeping with some of the themes of guilt that run through a few of his movies (the most obvious example being the fantastic The Devil In Miss Jones) but there's nothing here to really set this movie apart from the scores of other earlier seventies smut films that were made fast and cheap. Through the magic of Google Image Search, however, it does appear that there was a one sheet released for the movie that indicates Gerard Damiano Film Productions Inc. at least distributed the picture.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Evil Ways Of Love is presented on DVD for the first time anywhere in 1.33.1 fullframe in a surprisingly nice looking transfer. There is some damage here but it's very minor and for the most part this is a clear and nicely detailed presentation. Colors are nicely reproduced, black levels are good and the image is quite nicely rendered here in standard definition. It's a nicely authored disc, free of compression issues, edge enhancement and noise reduction problems. This looks a lot better than most are probably going to expect.
The Dolby Digital Mono track on the disc is decent enough. There's some hiss in a few spots that is hard to ignore but it doesn't really take you out of the movie at all. The levels are properly balanced so there aren't any drastic shifts there to note, things are pretty stable. So yeah, if you don't mind some minor background hiss and the occasional pop, the audio here is just fine.
The main extra here is a twenty-three minute bonus preview of Impulse Pictures' 42nd Street Forever: The Peepshow Collection run of DVD releases. Here we find three loops taken from those releases - Homecumming, Girls For One Night and Three Girls On A Bad. We also get a static menu and chapter selection on the disc. The bonus loops make up for the fact that the feature itself is only sixty-five minutes long.
The Final Word:
The Evil Ways Of Love is interesting in that yeah, maybe Damiano did direct this and yeah, it's got some funny Schlitz Beer product placement in it but mostly it's just reasonably unattractive people fucking on a boat. The DVD looks nice though and the bonus preview of the 42nd Street Forever discs is fun.
