Death Nurse

Death Nurse (1987)

BOMB (out of 4)

Edith (Priscilla Alden) and her brother Gordon (Albert Eskinazi) work in their house as "doctors" but in reality they're just nuts who welcome in patients so that they can brutally kill them. They welcome in a man and kill him quickly but his annoying "keeper" continues to check in on him, which causes a problem for the doctors.

Director Nick Millard and star Alden hit exploitation gold with CRIMINALLY INSANE. That ultra low-budget movie just had something about it that appealed to drive-in fans such as myself but he followed that up in 1987 with a horrid sequel. That sequel was about forty minutes worth of footage from the original movie and twenty minutes worth of new scenes. DEATH NURSE is considered the unofficial third film in the series since it does feature the same director, star and sets but I think it plays out better as its own film. The problem is that it features a lot of stock footage from CRIMINALLY INSANE.

You know, I admire people who go out there and make movies no matter of their quality. I review movies as a passion but even the worst movie ever made deserves more "credit" than someone like me who simply watches them and talks about them. DEATH NURSE is a really awful movie on so many levels but I guess this should be expected. The special effects are bad. The music and cinematography are bad. The editing is bad. Everything is pretty bad here and what's worse is the fact that so much stock footage is used.

The good old days of VHS stores had countless movies like this on the store shelves. I actually found CRIMINALLY INSANE to be entertaining but this film here is just really, really bad.

The movie starts out with Priscilla Alden playing as Edith, who works as a nurse, lives with her brother in a suburban house. They kill new patients to keep up the bill for their state care. Okay, the plot is decent, but that's the only good thing about the film. Alden also has a nice creepy laugh.

I was very disappointed by this film. It's simply one of Nick's worst movies, and I felt like I got the biggest b*tch slap in the face. I mean what happened? This film is so incredibly boring that I couldn't get along with the plot any longer. The opening and ending titles, this movie doesn't have any. It's only footage that he ripped from Criminally Insane. There is very little gore, and very little kills. The whole movie itself is poorly edited, there isn't any originality into the sets, the sets were only re-used from Satan's Black Wedding for this movie. Nick, what were you thinking? It doesn't take this much to make a simple horror movie. You put effort on your other movies, they had nice quality, good sound, and it looked it you took time to make those movies. This looks like some crappy home video you and your family recorded, put it together with two VHS's, and sold it off as a "horror" film. Not even I would enjoy it.

This is one of those very poorly made,straight to VHS movies from the 80s.I don't know where to begin with this.Well we have two siblings.Edith and Gordon. Edith is a nurse and Gordon is a doctor.They open this clinic (and it doesn't even look like one I might add) and we find out that they kill the patients for their health care and money.The movie is about 60 minutes in length.

This movie is just awful. The acting is really bad,the quality is bad.And when they transfer it,a frame can get stuck and it makes it look really bad.Plus,they extend scenes for way too long.For example,Gordon digging a whole takes almost two or three full minutes then it cuts to him eating ice cream.Not to mention that the actors are all from Nick Millard's other movies like Criminally Insane.So a third of the movie is nothing but clips and scenes from Criminally Insane,and we're suppost to believe that these are Edith's dreams.

Just stay away from this movie.

You know how in most god-awful B-movies, directors try (and usually fail) to come up with some kind of creative solution when they can't find the location or prop they're looking for? A boiler room can double as a prison, a school classroom can fill in for a police station, an ambulance can just be the production van after a quick paint-job: it's a lot of work, but it seems like one of the perks of low-budget filmmaking. "Death Nurse" director Nick Millard however takes the bold decision of simply not giving a damn. His screenplay requires some kind of clinic but screw it, his dilapidated house will probably be fine. I'm not sure which state this is set in, but please don't get sick over there. Whether you're an alcoholic, a terminal tuberculosis patient (who, I kid you not, is walked to the clinic) or a woman whose illness is never explained and probably just doesn't have a bed at home, you'll always be sent to some dirty, rat-infested house in the suburbs with just one doctor and one nurse (a death nurse at that). Oh yeah, that clinic whose patients without any exception are never seen again and where they call a regular kitchen knife a scalpel: if those people can't help out, who can?

Nick Millard is an incessantly intriguing filmmaker because he takes not caring to such a bizarre level: his only goal is to fill an hour of videotape, and he's not keen on hiding it. Almost a third of this movie is stock footage from Millard's earlier (and much better) work "Criminally Insane", but it's not even really stock footage: he literally just plays the movie on his TV and films the screen. Even with just forty minutes of new footage, the padding keeps on coming. Death nurse makes tea, the doctor digs a hole and then makes himself a sundae, that doesn't need to be shown in real time for an audience to understand but Millard takes no chances. Then suddenly, an hour of your life has vanished and you get the most ridiculous non-ending you've ever seen...thank God you also have "Death Nurse 2". Nick Millard is one hell of a drug.

Good old Nick Millard, with his tiny, tiny budgets and crude lack of filmmaking finesse. He once again gives us a true groaner that somewhat entertains the viewer, if only because it's just so damn awful. Granted, the feeling that writer / director Millard does seem to have his tongue in his cheek helps to a degree, but that doesn't change the fact that this is just plain bad, bad, bad. The bargain basement gore is fun in its mind blowing tackiness, as is the acting that is phenomenally putrid right across the board.

Millard re-teams with his "Criminally Insane" lead Priscilla Alden, who here plays Edith Mortley, a sadistic nurse who works with her "doctor" brother Gordon (Albert Eskinazi) at a clinic which they run out of their suburban home. They're psychos AND they're scam artists, continuing to bill the state even after they've butchered their patients. Their trouble truly begins when the nosey Faith Chandler (Frances Millard, a. k. a. Nicks' mom) begins to poke around.

You can see that Nick knows damn well that he doesn't even have ONE hours' worth of story here, so he pads and pads the running time (even so, this only runs 58 minutes!) with archive footage from "Criminally Insane". Some of it is even used more than once. This is supposed to represent the dreams of the Edith character.

This is a singularly untalented cast, the kind that truly does make you want to look away. Millard also casts his wife Irmgard as the alcoholic, lusty patient Louise and even plays a part himself, that of the very ill Mr. Davis. Alden, at the least, does seem to be having fun.

"Death Nurse" is going to come off as a major waste of time to most people, even in light of its brief running time, but if you're anything like this viewer, its complete ineptitude should strike you as hilarious often enough to make this tolerable.

Five out of 10.