This presumably, from its date, is the film porn auteur Gerard Damiano made just before Deep Throat. Ironically, it is precisely the kind of porn film that Deep Throat did much to do away with – a few reels of stag-footage telling little to no story with barely discernible characters simply filmed having sex. There's very little of interest aesthetically here, either in the filming (basic shot constructions and lazy editing) or the performers (some of whom might be better suited to a live action film of the Hair Bear Bunch).
What little interest the film has, and what in fact makes it a Damiano film, is to be found off-screen in the non-diegetic narration. A pseudo-sociological narrator mediates the images with a certain degree of disapproval, bringing into play the queasily ambiguous attitude to sex which was a running theme in Damiano's 70s films. The main "character" is Andy, a single young man with a houseboat, which he uses to lure young ladies and host orgies with his wacky, degenerate friends. The narrator clearly dislikes Andy, describing him as misogynistic and pointing out the ways in which Andy manipulates girls to get them to clear up for and have sex with him. The narrator also seems to be obsessed with homosexuality – he sees a man engaging in voyeurism or performing cunnilingus as implicitly homosexual and when, in the final sex scene, a man is engaged with two women, one of whom performs cunnilingus on the other, the narrator is besides himself with glee that his thesis has been proved and the homosexuality has come to the surface. None of this is very scientifically convincing.
Evil Ways of Love turns up on the Alpha Blue Archives 3 film disc 'Cult 70s Porno Director: Gerard Damiano.' Were it not for Damiano's involvement, it is unlikely that this rather incompetent film – little more than a stag or home movie – would survive in the digital age. The film has no credits and it is only really its presence in this collection that links it to Damiano at all; one would barely think to look at it that this is a product of a man just about to change the face of the genre absolutely. Yet its mediating narration and its positing of casual sex as a twisted necessary "evil" does mark it as the product of the man who made Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones and other individualized auteur pornographic features.
What little interest the film has, and what in fact makes it a Damiano film, is to be found off-screen in the non-diegetic narration. A pseudo-sociological narrator mediates the images with a certain degree of disapproval, bringing into play the queasily ambiguous attitude to sex which was a running theme in Damiano's 70s films. The main "character" is Andy, a single young man with a houseboat, which he uses to lure young ladies and host orgies with his wacky, degenerate friends. The narrator clearly dislikes Andy, describing him as misogynistic and pointing out the ways in which Andy manipulates girls to get them to clear up for and have sex with him. The narrator also seems to be obsessed with homosexuality – he sees a man engaging in voyeurism or performing cunnilingus as implicitly homosexual and when, in the final sex scene, a man is engaged with two women, one of whom performs cunnilingus on the other, the narrator is besides himself with glee that his thesis has been proved and the homosexuality has come to the surface. None of this is very scientifically convincing.
Evil Ways of Love turns up on the Alpha Blue Archives 3 film disc 'Cult 70s Porno Director: Gerard Damiano.' Were it not for Damiano's involvement, it is unlikely that this rather incompetent film – little more than a stag or home movie – would survive in the digital age. The film has no credits and it is only really its presence in this collection that links it to Damiano at all; one would barely think to look at it that this is a product of a man just about to change the face of the genre absolutely. Yet its mediating narration and its positing of casual sex as a twisted necessary "evil" does mark it as the product of the man who made Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones and other individualized auteur pornographic features.