The Student Nurses

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.

IMDb mark: 3

This is a '70s type of film, all the way. Even though it was produced by Roger Corman's company, I don't think it is exactly the type of film people expect when they hear his name. Very likely, this blandness, as some might call it, has something to do with the fact that a woman directed the movie.

-Cast: I only heard of Elaine Giftos, whom I saw in a couple of episodes of 'Three's Company'. Other than her, I have never heard of any of the others. 2/20

-Nudity: I think Phred is the blond one; she is nude three times. Priscilla has the best nude scene, however. And Sharon is briefly topless, also. 14/20

-Ending: I wasn't crazy about the ending at all. Of course, taste varies. 4/15

-Acting: The acting in Corman's movies is usually very cheesy. So, maybe it's not surprising that it seemed cheesy here, too. 2/11

-Plot: Here are these 4 nurses, who are studying to become nurses. Dumb, isn't it? While doing so, they work and play, get tangled with the wrong people and, naturally, get involved with men. Each one of the four has like her own subplot. 2/10

-Theme: Don't mix business with pleasure. At least, that's what I make of it. 4/10

-Soundtrack: I couldn't say I liked it. 2/10

-Genre: This is a drama. 1/4

-->Overall: 31/100

Apart from the fact that the nurses are easy on the eyes, I couldn't possibly see why anyone would be compelled to watch this movie. It's a really bad sort of drama. From Swordlord, 2 swords down!

I was in Grade 9 when this movie came out in 1970. I always remembered it, as the ads in the local paper featured a pouty young nurse with her uniform falling off her shoulders. Pretty hot stuff for a junior high school student in Western Canada in 1970! Naturally, I couldn't go see it, as it was rated "restricted adult", and in the years after the ardour faded and I never got around to viewing it until recently.

Thanks to good ol' cable and their willingness to screen almost anything, I finally got a chance to view this 'hot' artifact of my adolesence. The result, a chance to drift down memory lane and view a classic early 70's youth flic.

The plot needs not be repeated here, as the title basically says it all. The student nurses are young, attractive, rebellious, and, of course, sexually liberated. Various turgid plot devices keep things going between romps in bed. Sundry nude scenes help remind us how actresses looked prior to the era of breast implants. Everybody is groovy, everything is cool, except when 'the man' representing adult authority rears his ugly head.

In spite of the above, though, I couldn't help but like this film. Perhaps it's my age, but it personifies an era that seems so much more innocent and fun than the slasher flics or hard edged teenage exploitation films of today. Soft drugs, unprotected sex, and a basic 'nice' approach to life personifies the earnest strivings of the Student Nurses, and captures a side of the late '60's and early '70's that actually did exist for a few years. I was too young to participate, but I witnessed it, and like many boomers, I mourn it's passing.

See the flic if you get a chance. If you're over 40, it'll bring back memories. If you're under 30, you'll get a chance to see the warmer, softer side of the 60's that your parents remember.

5 out of 10 for nostalgia.

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.