The Student Nurses

This is an early entry into what became a veritable genre of low-budget exploitation movies focusing on a group of sexy young women working as nurses, teachers, flight attendants, models etc. These movies offered some sop towards the women's liberation movement of the era, but were usually far more interested in liberating the gorgeous actresses in them from their clothing. As you might expect, this movie is about the lives and loves of student nurses. The blonde is torn between gynecology and psychology (and two handsome doctors that work in each field). The Hispanic girl (Brioni Ferrell) gets involved with a Chicano activist and ends up on the lam from the police. The sensitive redhead falls in love with a terminally ill patient. And the hippie girl (Barbara Leigh) goes to a "love-in", drops acid, and gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a hippie creep.

This is definitely a pretty dated movie. There is a whole abortion subplot that seems pretty jarring by today's standards (but are things really so much better today in movies where everybody has lots of sex but nobody ever seems to get pregnant and has to make these hard choices?) The director of this was the underrated Stephanie Rothman who directed stuff like "The Velvet Vampire" and "Sweet Sugar". Rothman has never gotten her due as a great female director because she never really emerged from the Corman exploitation school, but then she also never sold out like Penelope Spheeris or Katherine Bigelow (who started out with stuff like "Decline of Western Civilization" and "Near Dark", but ended up making the worst Hollywood crap imaginable after they finally "made it"). This is one of Rothman's first movies, and definitely not her best, but I always have time for one of her movies.

The most recognizable actress here is probably Barbara Leigh who was once slated to be "Vampirella" in a tragically aborted Hammer production. Leigh is absolutely gorgeous, but is much more famous for her many celebrity love affairs (Elvis, Steve McQueen, ad infinitum) than any acting she ever did. She does have a great LSD freakout scene on a beach here (and it helps to no small extent that she's naked the whole time). My personal favorite though was Brioni Farrell, who regrettably was the only one of the quartet not to get naked. Actually though, I wouldn't really recommend this as a nudie/soft porn movie, but I would recommend it to anybody that digs 70's exploitation flicks.

... but still not really very good. The idea with this series was to weave together a story of young professionals trying to succeed amid the temptations of the swinging early 70s and within a fairly rigid institutional setting. The very attractive cast of unknowns included striking Playboy regular Barbara Leigh and former Miss Arkansas Karen Carlson, both of whom got quite a bit of work throughout the rest of the 70s, 'bouncing' from one TV show to another. The actresses acquit themselves pretty well despite the limitations of time and budget and their own comparative inexperience. The script also occasionally tried to work in a serious issue. For instance, one of the girls becomes pregnant at a party and has to go through a rather humiliating interview with an unsympathetic medical establishment to get approval for an abortion. This is quite a good scene and fits well with the strong anti- establishment tone of everything.

Mostly though, this was just an exercise in soft-core titillation, with the camera following attractive young women in their tight uniforms along hospital corridors, and then off to parties where they take off their tops, smoke dope and have sex. The script cross-cuts from one character's tribulations to another, but once each girl's central issue has played itself out, nothing really comes together. Movie does not have much of an ending. It just tapers off and stops.

Writer-director Stephanie Rothman tried her best to make the proceedings relevant and the dialogue probably sounded fairly hip at the time (or maybe it didn't) but it is pretty laughable now, as are the attempts to make the party scenes seem exciting by using a lot of way out psychedelic camera angles and edits (spins, tilts etc.). That stuff was a few years old by the time this movie was made and almost becoming clichéd.

The movie was a big drive-in hit at the time, of course, mostly thanks to a sexed-up ad campaign that promised more than the movie delivered.

In about 1984 this movie was re-released under the name Young L.A. Nurses. It's the same movie with the title changed.

This movie is rated at about 5 our of 10. I think the people doing the rating are being very generous. It's pretty bad.

Still, the girls are pretty. And I guess there is somewhat of a story.

First off, nope, this NOT any type of sexploitation movie. And it's not a feminist film neither. It's a is a movie from the female perspective, refreshing, since it doesn't feature women as accessories to Men-Dealing-With-Stuff, as most films still are. Secondly, the acting and production values are above par, as can be seen in the crowd shots of Barbara Leigh. Thirdly, the moments of nudity are very sparse and modest, so this is a great seventies movie, from the first high quality period of American film making, in the vein of "Lolly-Madonna", "They shoot horses don't they?", Butch Cassidy", "The Parallax View" and "Zabriskie Point". It was like the director thought: "I wanna tell a story from the female PoV, bút it's still a man's world, so it'll only happen if I can lure them in with a sexploitative title.....hence "The Student Nurses" The plot is simply the life and times of four young women, at a turning point in their life's. It's also very contemporary, so you will get a good idea of how life was back then. It seems police brutality was even worse back then, but the police wasn't militarized yet.

8/10 The Melancholic Alcoholic.

This first movie in a set of five "Nurses" films, starts with four young women living together and working at a local hospital with the expectation of becoming nurses in the near future. Even though "Lynn" (Brioni Farrell) is almost raped by a patient she maintains her compassionate attitude towards those less fortunate and as a result eventually becomes involved with a militant activist which seriously threatens her career. "Sharon" (Elaine Giftos) also has great empathy and this leads her to develop feelings for a terminally ill patient. "Phred" (Karen Carlson) on the other hand is more self-involved and knows exactly what she wants. Unfortunately, she has a strict set of rules which may tend to cause obstacles for her. Last, but not least, is "Priscilla" (Barbara Leigh) who I think is the prettiest of them all but unlike Phred seems much more Bohemian and as a result she finds herself getting mixed up with a drug dealer who cares only about himself. This causes problems, not just for her, but for her three roommates as well. At any rate, rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was an interesting "sexploitation film" which manages to portray a period in American history which was both odd and short-lived. Additionally, although it may have been marketed as being a bit risqué when it first came out the fact is that, while there is certainly some nudity, this film is relatively tame by today's standards. Now that's not to say that this film is appropriate for a general television audience by any means. However, those expecting something really explicit or on the cutting edge may be somewhat disappointed. I rate it as about average and recommend it to those who enjoy films related to the counter-culture movement during the 60's or drive-in exploitation films in general. Followed a year later by "Private Duty Nurses".