The Student Nurses
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''The Student Nurses'' is a 1970 American film directed by
Stephanie Rothman Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially ''The Student Nurses'' (1970) and ''Terminal Isla ...
. It was the second film from
New World Pictures New World Pictures (also known as New World Entertainment, New World Communications Group, Inc., and New World International) was an American independent production, distribution, and (in its final years as an autonomous entity) multimedia com ...
and the first in the popular "nurses" cycle of exploitation movies. It has since become a
cult film A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase, which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage in repeated ...
.


Plot

Four young women share a house as they study to be nurses—Phred falls for a sexy doctor, Jim, despite accidentally sleeping with Jim's roommate. Free-spirited Priscilla, who does not wear a bra, has an affair with a drug-selling biker who gets her pregnant and leaves her, causing her to seek an
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
. Sharon forms a relationship with a
terminally ill Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer, rather than fatal injur ...
patient. Lynn sets up a free clinic with a Hispanic revolutionary, Victor Charlie. The hospital turns down Priscilla's request to have an abortion, so she gets an illegal one from Jim, with the help of Lynn and Sharon, despite Phred's vehement opposition. Sharon's lover/patient dies, and she decides to join the Army Nurse Corps and serve in
Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
. Victor Charlie is involved in a shootout with the police and goes on the run; Lynn decides to go with him. Phred breaks up with Jim, but Priscilla and she agree to remain friends. The four friends graduate together.


Cast

* Elaine Giftos as Sharon *
Karen Carlson Karen Carlson (born January 15, 1945) is an American retired actress. She is also a director, producer and writer. Early life Carlson was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M.W. Carlson. She was educated at C.E. Byrd Hi ...
as Phred * Brioni Farrell as Lynn * Barbara Leigh as Priscilla * Reni Santoni as Victor Charlie * Richard Rust as Les * Lawrence P. Casey as Jim Caspar * Darrell Larson as Greg *Paul Camen as Mark *
Richard Stahl Richard Stahl (January 4, 1932 – June 18, 2006) was an American actor who mostly appeared in comic roles on television and in films. Early life A native of Detroit, Stahl moved to California when he was 15. During the Korean War he served in t ...
as Dr. Warshaw * Scottie MacGregor as Miss Boswell *
Pepe Serna Pepe Serna (born July 23, 1944) is an American actor and artist. Career Serna's first break in films came in 1970 on the Roger Corman-directed film '' The Student Nurses''. Over the years, Serna has appeared in over 100 films. In the blockbust ...
as Luis * John Pearce as Patient *Mario Aniov as Ralpho *
Ron Gans Ronald Kenneth Gans (August 9, 1931 – June 29, 2010), sometimes credited as Ron Kennedy, was an American character actor and voice-over artist, known for portraying Q.T. the Orangutan on The Disney Channel's '' Dumbo's Circus'', the voice of A ...
as Psychiatrist


Production


Development

The film was the second made for
Roger Corman Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director, producer, and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he w ...
's new production and distribution company,
New World Pictures New World Pictures (also known as New World Entertainment, New World Communications Group, Inc., and New World International) was an American independent production, distribution, and (in its final years as an autonomous entity) multimedia com ...
, following '' Angels Die Hard''. The idea for the movie came from distributor Larry Woolner, who was involved in the establishment of New World; he suggested to Corman that he make a film about sexy nurses.
Stephanie Rothman Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially ''The Student Nurses'' (1970) and ''Terminal Isla ...
, who went on to direct the film, later recalled:
The sub-distributors had recently had success with a R-rated film about a babysitter ('' The Babysitter''), which had more nudity than audiences could see in films made by major studios. At that time, it was believed by the purveyors of male fantasies in films that nurses were a popular male fantasy because they were caring, and they were women who could legitimately touch men all over. hucklesSo they requested a film be made about very pretty student nurses with as much nudity as an R-rated film could have.
Roger Corman said the film:
Took shape out of a formula I had been working on for some time: contemporary dramas with a liberal to left wing viewpoint and some R-rated sex and humour. But they were not to be comedies. I frankly doubt the left-wing bent, or message, was crucial to the success of the films we would do. But it was important to the filmmakers and me that we have something to say within the films... I insisted each (nurse) had to work out her problems without relying on a boyfriend.Roger Corman & Jim Jerome, ''How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never lost a Dime'', Muller, 1990 p 181
Corman allocated the project to the husband and wife team of
Stephanie Rothman Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially ''The Student Nurses'' (1970) and ''Terminal Isla ...
and Charles S. Swartz, who had worked on a number of different projects for Corman, including '' It's a Bikini World'' and '' Gas-s-s-s''. Rothman would direct, and she and her husband would both produce and provide the original story. Rothman:
We made it while Roger was out of the country, directing... '' Von Richthofen and Brown'' (1971), so we were free to develop the story of the nurses as we wished, as long as there was enough nudity and violence distributed throughout it. Please notice, I did not say sex, I said nudity. This freedom, once I paid my debt to the requirements of the genre, allowed me to address what interested me... political and social conflicts and the changes they produce. It allowed me to have a dramatized discussion about issues that were then being ignored in big-budget major studio films: for example, a discussion about the economic problems of poor Mexican immigrants... and their unhappy, restive children; and a discussion about a woman's right to have a safe and legal abortion when, at the time, abortion was still illegal in America. I have always wondered why the major studios were not making films about these topics. What kind of constraints were at work on them? My guess is that it was nothing but the over-privileged lives, limited curiosity and narrow minds of the men, and in those days they were always men, who decided which films would be made.
Rothman says Corman hired them in January 1970. She and her husband sat down with New World's story editor
Frances Doel Frances Margaret Doel (15 April 1942 – 26 May 2025) was a British writer and story editor, notable for her long association with Roger Corman. Doel was head of the script department at New World Pictures; Jon Davison said that at one stage Doe ...
to form a treatment then they hired Don Spencer to write the script. Rothman said Spencer did "very good work. He contributed some excellent dialogue. The attitudes, the approaches, and what happens in the piece were mostly our ideas. The way it was executed, in terms of dialogue and the tone of the dialogue, were largely his." Rothman says when she started work on the movie she did not consider it an "exploitation film".
I first learned the term when it was used in a review of ''The Student Nurses''. I thought I was making low-budget genre films. But whatever I was making was called, it irritated me that many contemporary films, regardless of their budgets, were dishonest about everything from sexual politics to social conflict. Since I didn't know how long I would be able to work making any kind of film, I decided to say what I wanted while I had the chance, instead of playing it safe... The women in my films are independent in thought and action. I think this stands out because of the limited, usually subordinate roles, that were written for them in that era. It was indeed my intention to change that in my films. I wanted to create – as in the real world I wanted to see – a more equal and just balance of power between the sexes. That is why in some scenes the men are nude as well as the women, which definitely was not the convention then. But I wanted the women's independence to extend far beyond that issue to a life filled with meaning and purpose beyond marriage. Some women lived such lives in the Seventies, but it was a more novel idea in life and films than it is today.
Rothman said Corman did not ask for the more progressive elements of the movie, such as the abortion sequence and depiction of Chicano labor issues. However "we had both known him for a number of years now, and we knew that he was very open-minded about these issues, and so we didn’t expect him to not accept them, and in fact that turned out to be true." Rothman said there were several reasons the film would focus on four nurses as opposed to one: it would mean there could be several pretty actresses, the responsibility of the lead roles would not fall on one actress, she could explore relationships between woman, and there had been successful films about young doctors a decade earlier.


Casting

Most of the cast were unknown, although Elaine Giftos had been in ''Gas-s-s-s''. Barbara Leigh later wrote in her memoirs about her casting that, "Stephanie saw an innocence about me, which she liked. When she interviewed me, she asked me to expose my breasts, so she could see if they were worth photographing.Barbara Leigh, ''The King, McQueen and the Love Machine''
Xlibris, 2002 p 324,] accessed 25 Feb 2015
Rothman said the nudity was required because:
The reason audiences came to see these low-budget films without stars was because they delivered scenes that you could not see in major studio films or more supposedly ambitious independent American films... My struggle was to try to dramatically justify such scenes and to make them transgressive, but not repulsive. I tried to control this through the style in which I shot scenes... Comedy was another method of control I used. I have always enjoyed writing and directing comedy– I was, in fact, more comfortable working in a comic idiom than a dramatic one–and so I also used comedy to modulate a scene's tone."


Shooting

Filming began in April 1970. Barbara Leigh says her most memorable scene was when her character was nude on the beach, taking orange juice laced with acid from her lover (Richard Rust). When the scene was shot, Rust gave her orange juice laced with real acid. "I was very stoned on camera", she wrote. Rothman said in 1977 that "The only thing I consider dated about the abortion sequence is the fact that the law has changed. Priscilla’s attitude would be no different if I made the film today.” Rothman added "we tried to get the music to reflect the nature of the scene. We wanted it to be in the most popular style of the time, because we thought this would make it a more timely picture, and we wanted to be dramatically appropriate."


Release


Critical

The ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' said the film "seems little more than a belated pilot film for '' The Interns'' with overheated loins and under-thunk narrative" but which is "never quite as bad as it threatens to be. A taste prevails, holds it in check and manages to make individual characters and relationships intermittently believable." ''Daily Variety'' wrote that the movie "is a good contemporary dual-bill item about the varying romantic experiences of four novice nurses. The acting level is fair at best, which drags down what otherwise is a well-crafted film... Stephanie Rothman's physical direction is excellent... an exploitation item to be sure, but beyond those angles, general audiences will find a surprising depth. In later years, Pam Cook wrote that "viewed today, ''Student Nurses'' is a remarkable achievement. It is striking not only for its high production values, but also for its sophisticated discourse on 1970s politics – neither of which would necessarily be expected from an exploitation film. Also unexpected are the drug-induced fantasy sequences, which are more in line with the European art cinema than the rough and ready codes of exploitation. Rothman's inclusion of a relatively graphic abortion sequence, cut against scenes of one of the nurses having casual sex, still has a powerful impact."Pam Cook, ''Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema''
Routledge 2004 p 59, accessed 25 Feb 2015


Box office

The film was an enormous box office success, which Rothman admits took her by surprise, especially when men came to see it "in droves. It was a mystery to me. Only later did I discover that the nurse is a very erotic figure in most male fantasies. There was a wide market out there for films about women and a very responsive audience, not just men. ''Student Nurses'' was not a film designed exclusively for men. Many women came to see it."Tony Williams, 'Feminism, Fantasy and Violence: An Interview with Stephanie Rothman', ''Journal of Popular Film & Television'' 9. 2 (Summer 1981): 87. The movie helped establish
New World Pictures New World Pictures (also known as New World Entertainment, New World Communications Group, Inc., and New World International) was an American independent production, distribution, and (in its final years as an autonomous entity) multimedia com ...
as a production company and kicked off a cycle of similar films about young women having adventures while doing a familiar job: *nurses – '' Private Duty Nurses'' (1971), ''
Night Call Nurses ''Night Call Nurses'' is a 1972 American sex comedy, sex comedy film directed by Jonathan Kaplan. It is the third in Roger Corman's "nurses" cycle of films, starting with ''The Student Nurses'' (1970). Quentin Tarantino called it "a sexy version ...
'' (1972), '' The Young Nurses'' (1973), '' Candy Stripe Nurses'' (1974); *teachers – '' The Student Teachers'' (1973), ''
Summer School Teachers ''Summer School Teachers'' is a 1974 feature film directed and written by Barbara Peeters and starring Candice Rialson. It is about three female friends who all teach at a school over the summer. The film was an unofficial follow up to '' The S ...
'' (1974); *stewardesses – ''
Fly Me ''Fly Me'' is a 1973 exploitation film directed by Cirio H. Santiago and produced by Roger Corman. The story concerns flight attendants, international drug smuggling, kung fu, and nudity. It was poorly received by critics. Plot Toby, Andrea ...
'' (1973); *models – ''
Cover Girl Models ''Cover Girl Models'' is a 1975 exploitation film from New World Pictures about three models who become involved in international espionage. Plot Three fashion models travel from Los Angeles to Hong Kong for a shoot. Barbara accidentally comes in ...
'' (1975); *actresses – ''
Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollyw ...
'' (1976). Rothman says Corman wanted to make a sequel but she was not interested.
I had said all I wanted to about student nurses, and so he hired a series of male directors to make the sequels. I never watched them, so I cannot say if they contained any feminist ideas. But the lesson Roger derived from my film's success was that you could make exploitation films whose narratives included contentious social issues, including feminism, and he consequently encouraged his directors to do it.


See also

*
List of American films of 1970 This is a list of American films released in 1970. Box office The highest-grossing American films released in 1970, by domestic box office gross revenue as estimated by '' The Numbers'', are as follows: January–March April–June Jul ...


References


Notes

*


External links

* *
''The Student Nurses''
at AFI
review of film
at Film Fanatic
Review of film
at ''Filmmaker'' magazine {{DEFAULTSORT:Student Nurses American exploitation films 1970 films 1970s English-language films New World Pictures films Films about nurses Medical-themed films 1970s exploitation films 1970s American films Films directed by Stephanie Rothman Three girls movie