Tender Loving Care (1973)

Although most of his sexy-nurse flicks were released through New World Pictures, Roger Corman issued Tender Loving Care through one of his other entities, Filmgroup. Like its New World counterparts, Tender Loving Care follows the private and professional adventures of three young women who room together while working at the same hospital. Yet while the New World sexy-nurse movies had glimmers of style as well as pretentions to social relevance, Tender Loving Care is written, photographed, and acted in the rudimentary fashion of a porno movie, telling a stupidly melodramatic story that climaxes with a ridiculous explosion of violence. Naturally, each of the three ladies has a showcase sex scene, and of course there’s a rape sequence. That said, does Tender Loving Care have any redeeming qualities? Depends how you define that notion. The liveliest scenes involve minor cult-fave actor George “Buck” Flower, appearing here clean-shaven instead of with his usual frontier-coot drag. He plays a demented orderly whose sexual violation of a nurse involves lots of creepy ad-libs about which nipple she wants him to pinch next. Just as frequent Corman collaborator Dick Miller added a welcome blast of energy to some of the New World nurse movies, Flower enlivens brief stretches of Tender Loving Care with compelling weirdness. The movie also has ’70s texture to burn, including a long sequence of a hot R&B band playing in a pimped-out nightclub. Speaking of ’70s texture, this review should not omit the dirt-bike rider who brings a girl back to his swingin’ bachelor pad so she can writhe on his waterbed while he sucks her toes.

Tender Loving Care: LAME

The Student Teachers (1973)

Roger Corman’s New World Pictures made so many iterations and variations of its sexy-nurses franchise that it’s challenging to keep straight which events occur in which movie, especially with motifs such as Dick Miller playing a sleazy coach appearing in more than one film. Nonetheless, I feel confident classifying The Student Teachers as the most befuddling installment. Amid the familiar tropes of feminist rhetoric, lingering sex scenes, and raunchy comedy, the movie churns through a grody subplot about a serial rapist, then concludes with a bizarre heist sequence featuring one of the leading ladies dressed as a nun—while she drives the unlikely getaway vehicle of a school bus. An early credit for director Jonathan Kaplan, who eventually graduated from drive-in schlock to mainstream pictures, The Student Teachers begins with the usual formula. Three hot women who work at the same place have experiences related to sex, and the experiences eventually interrelate. Tracy (Brooke Mills) moonlights as a nude model and gets involved with a peeping tom. Rachel (Susan Damante) takes a bold approach to teaching sex ed, sanctioning her students to make their own stag film. And Jody (Brenda Sutton) has the oddest adventure, pretending to become a drug dealer in order to help authorities capture a supplier. Naturally, each of these storylines includes an epic-length topless scene—or, in the case of Tracy’s subplot, several epic-length topless scenes. Yet it’s hard to reconcile the disparate elements. The Tracy vignettes are innocuously erotic, scenes of Rachel clashing with Miller’s character are semi-comedic, and the rape sequences—during which the assailant wears a plastic clown mask—are horrific. So by the time the campy finale arrives, the movie has become hopelessly muddled in terms of theme and tone. The unfortunate viewer who soldiers through this flick is left only with a bitter aftertaste and the sure knowledge that 90 minutes have been wasted.

The Student Teachers: LAME

The Velvet Vampire (1971)

         Cowriter/director Stephanie Rothman’s The Velvet Vampire gets points for taking an unusual approach to bloodsucker mythology, but the film is ultimately too enervated and unsatisfying to merit serious attention. Therefore, it’s a somewhat pleasant change of place for hardcore consumers of creature features, and it’s a fairly restrained dose of sex and violence given that it issued from New World Pictures, Roger Corman’s B-movie factory of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. The problem, of course, is that fans of sensationalized drive-in cinema rarely value restraint as a storytelling technique. So even though The Velvet Vampire has killings and topless shots, it’s not nasty enough to qualify as a genuine exploitation picture, and it’s not smart enough to qualify as an arthouse offering. None of this should leave the impression that The Velvet Vampire is awful. The movie has an eerie vibe, and it’s a kick to see a vampire flick in which the main character operates comfortably in daylight. However, the combination of sluggish storytelling and weak acting keeps the movie’s energy level dangerously low.

         Here’s the threadbare storyline. Ancient vampire Diane (Celeste Yarnall) meets an attractive young couple at an art gallery. They’re Lee (Michael Blodgett) and Susan (Sherry Miles). Diane invites the couple to visit her house in the desert, the only other resident of which is Diane’s foundling manservant, Juan (Jerry Daniels). Soon after the couple’s arrival, Diane puts the moves on Lee, who sleeps with his sexy hostess. Yet Diane also makes advances on Susan. Wedged between chastely filmed sexual encounters are trippy dream sequences, set to unnerving rock music with a Neil Young flavor, plus assorted murder scenes during which Diane feeds on victims. Had Rothman and her collaborators dug deeper into the material and explored Diane’s psychology, they could have generated something like The Hunger (1983), an erotic drama about a melancholy female vampire. Instead, The Velvet Vampire is drab and superficial. About the best Rothman can conjure is a vaguely kinky scene during which Diane sucks rattlesnake venom from Susan’s thigh. Regarding the film’s acting, Yarnall cuts an attractive figure without conveying much depth, while Blodgett and Miles are as interesting to watch as department-store mannequins.

The Velvet Vampire: FUNKY

Moonshine County Express (1977)

          Since the ’70s were rotten with drive-in flicks about rednecks hauling white lightning through the woods with cops hot on their tails, there wasn’t much left to say about the subject by the time Moonshine County Express was made. That said, the textures of this low-rent genre were so firmly established that delivering a straight recitation shouldn’t have been too difficult—especially since Moonshine County Express was issued by trash-cinema titan Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. All of which goes to explain why Moonshine County Express is vexing. The movie has the usual barrage of zippy nonsense, so it’s never boring, per se, but the storyline is so sloppy that it’s hard to tell which of the two main characters is the protagonist. After all, John Saxon gets top billing for playing a racecar driver who moonlights running ’shine, but the narrative actually hinges on the character played by Susan Howard.

          After thugs kill an aging moonshiner, his three daughters learn that he left them a secret stash of valuable Prohibition-era whiskey, so the oldest daughter, Dot Hammer (Howard), begins selling the hooch to her dad’s old customers. This gets the attention of Jack Starkey (William Conrad), the kingpin of the area’s illegal-liquor business, since he’s the one who killed the father in the first place as a means of eliminating competition. Giving the story its small measure of complexity is J.B. Johnson (Saxon), who drives for Starkey until switching sides to help the imperiled Hammer sisters. There’s also a sheriff involved, but suffice to say nothing truly surprising happens.

          Still (no pun intended), it’s possible to groove on the film’s pulpy elements. Playing the Hammer sisters, Howard, Claudia Jennings, and former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick add eye candy, though all of them manage to keep their clothes since this PG-rated film is tame compared to other moonshine flicks. Saxon gives an unusually casual performance, and Conrad has a blast playing a cartoony villain. (Not every movie features the enormous Cannon star in a sex-fantasy scene featuring fishing tackle.) Furthermore, Dub Taylor plays a supporting role without his frontal dentures; the rootsy soundtrack features banjos and spoons and the like; and in one party scene, a bar band renders these peculiar lyrics: “Grandma’s got syphilis, Grandpa’s deranged, and all the children had their sexes changed.”

Moonshine County Express: FUNKY

Nashville Girl (1976)

          On some levels, the story of this music-business drama is as generic as the film’s title, because it charts the familiar trajectory of a nobody who becomes a somebody through a combination of genuine musical talent and humiliating personal sacrifices. It’s the old question of whether fame is worth achieving if doing so requires the aspirant to sell his or her soul. Yet Nashville Girl works because the texture of the picture is credible, and because the sexual politics make sense. Every horny dude and every seedy location feels believable, and the way the heroine battles for control over her sexual identity resonates. As such, Nashville Girl is an interesting reminder that even though Roger Corman spent much of his career producing exploitation flicks that lured male audiences with the promise of female skin, he also released several deeply feminist films. Like The Lady in Red (1979), a pungent gangster picture written by John Sayles, Nashville Girl does more than simply include the exploitation elements of nudity and sex; the film contextualizes these elements within a defiant sociopolitical framework.

          The picture plays rough right from the start. When we first meet her, Jamie (Monica Gayle) is a backwoods teenager crazy for country music, casually skinny-dipping in a pond. Yet male predators lie in wait, as they will throughout her ascension. A local boy rapes Jamie. Then, not long afterward, Jamie gets caught listening to her transistor radio in church, so her father beats her. That’s enough to convince her it’s time to leave home. Jamie makes her way to Nashville, where the best work she can find is being a receptionist in a massage parlor. Meanwhile, shady managers demand money in exchange for representation, and male country singers make overt passes. A vice raid at the massage parlor lands Jamie in jail, and when she gets out, she befriends a session player named Kelly (Roger Davis). He puts together a demo recording for Jamie, and they become lovers. The demo puts Jamie on the radar of recording star Jeb Hubbard (Glen Corbett), a horndog with a weakness for young flesh. He agrees to make Jamie a star, though Jamie knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll expect repayment in sex.

          Effectively stripping the music business of glamour, Nashville Girl dramatizes the ugly reality that many young women pursuing a singing career will be asked to sleep their way to success. Moreover, the film tracks Jamie’s psychological growth with precision. Confused and sad because the choice of when to enter the world of sex was stolen by her rapist, she struggles to regain her sexual autonomy, only to become even more confused whenever she trades intimacy for advancement. (That the filmmakers handle this complex material so well is even more impressive given the pedestrian nature of the other credits on their filmographies.) While not an extraordinary film, Nashville Girl has a surprising abundance of grit, and the performance scenes effectively describe the gulf between grim offstage tension and sparkly onstage illusions. 

Nashville Girl: GROOVY

Up from the Depths (1979)

The cycle of Jaws ripoffs spiraled ever downward with Up from the Depths, one of several movies that Roger Corman commissioned in order to cash in on the success of Steven Spielberg’s aquatic-horror blockbuster. Helmed by frequent Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith, Up from the Depths revives that old trope from 1950s monster movies, the notion of an ancient creature accidentally released from underwater hibernation. In this case, the critter is a dinosaur/shark/whale thingamabob, but nothing in the movie compels the audience to exhaust much energy identifying the beast’s identity. The attack scenes are derivative and silly, and once the creature is finally shown, it looks like a pile of plastic junk that was left outside to melt in the sun. As for the perfunctory narrative, it’s the same old shit about a resort proprietor suppressing evidence of a rampage in order to protect his livelihood, with disastrous results. The nominal protagonist is American hustler Greg Oliver (Sam Bottoms), who teams up with marine biologist Rachel McNamara (Susanne Reed) to investigate several mysterious deaths. Yawn. Per the Corman template, sex is used at regular intervals to compensate for the lack of suspense. The opening scene, a shameless cop from The Deep (1977), features a buxom diver in a white T-shirt that becomes semi-translucent underwater. Later, a model arrives at the resort to shoot a topless layout. Even the nudie shots, however, fail to enliven Griffth’s hapless attempts at generating a campy hybrid of horror and humor. One should not be surprised to discover the involvement of Filipino-cinema bottom-feeder Cirio H. Santigo, who produced this picture; few filmmakers so consistently excluded believability and logic from their storytelling.

Up from the Depths: LAME

Fast Charlie . . . The Moonbeam Rider (1979)

          Not many of David Carradine’s projects for penny-pinching producer Roger Corman edge into the realm of credible cinema, but Fast Charlie . . . The Moonbeam Rider, a motorcycle picture set in the 1920s, is highly watchable even though certain elements are undercooked. Rather than displaying his martial-arts acumen or posturing like some tight-lipped tough guy, Carradine gets to demonstrate equal measures of charm and vulnerability as a World War I veteran who exaggerates the scope of his military service while swindling friends and strangers alike until the love of a stalwart woman instills him with a newfound sense of pride. The character arc is predictable, and so is the outcome of the cross-country road race that gives the story its structure. Nonetheless, the film’s creative team—which includes reliably unpretentious B-movie director Steve Carver and story co-author Ed Spielman, who helped create Carradine’s famous TV series Kung Fu—keeps things lively with an eventful narrative and flashes of colorful dialogue. Although the picture slips into dull ruts now and then, particularly during racing scenes in which it’s hard to tell one dust-covered motorcyclist from another, the movie’s best moments have style and swing.

          Carradine plays Charlie Swattle, a con man who recruits guys from his old U.S. Army motorcycle-courier unit to serve as a pit crew for the impending race, which begins in St. Louis and terminates in San Francisco. Complicating matters is the fact that Charlie abandoned his unit during combat, so most of his former friends now hate Charlie. He sways them with promises that he’s changed. Also falling under silver-tongued Charlie’s spell is Grace (Brenda Vaccaro), a waitress who tags along with Charlie ostensibly because he owes her money. None of this material is particularly fresh, and neither is the subplot about the avaricious motorcycle entrepreneur who considers Charlie a threat. Yet the undemanding fun of a picture like this one involves watching archetypal characters dance to familiar rhythms. Carradine’s character escapes deadly traps while pulling scams and telling lies, Vaccaro’s character pushes him to ask more of himself, and the war buddies played by L.Q. Jones and R.G. Armstrong threaten Charlie with violence if he disappoints them again—you get the idea. Fast Charlie . . . The Moonbeam Rider isn’t drive-in trash, since the film’s PG rating precludes sex and vulgarity, so it’s better to describe the flick as drive-in comfort food.

Fast Charlie . . . The Moonbeam Rider: FUNKY

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977)

          A lurid psych-ward melodrama produced by Roger Corman in one of his more ambitious moments, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden suffers from schizophrenia, just like its leading character. On one level, the picture is a fairly serious examination of the troubles facing an unbalanced young woman as she seeks to end a cycle of delusions, hysterical episodes, and self-destructive impulses. On another level, the picture is as sensationalistic as an old Sam Fuller flick, because the filmmakers unwisely attempt to depict the imaginary realm that the protagonist visits whenever her mind departs everyday reality. Moreover, the filmmakers’ idea of hard-hitting drama skews toward undisciplined actors performing freak-show antics at top volume, with endless repetition the name of the game. Add in nudity and rape scenes, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden ends up resembling Corman’s typical drive-in fare, instead of evoking the movie upon which this picture was obviously modeled, Milos Forman’s extraordinary One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Thanks to sincere work by leading lady Kathleen Quinlan and supporting actress Bibi Andersson, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden isn’t completely awful, though it comes close at regular intervals.

          The simple story revolves around Deborah Blake (Quinlan), a disturbed young woman who is admitted to a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt. In quiet scenes, she does talking-and-listening therapy with the stalwart Dr. Fried (Andersson). In not-so-quiet scenes, Deborah suffers epic delusions of belonging to some imaginary primitive tribe. Deborah also witnesses the extreme behavior of fellow patients, and the nastiest narrative thread concerns orderlies who rape patients with impunity. The script, credited to idiosyncratic filmmaker Lewis John Carlino and Hollywood wit Gavin Lambert, is a mess in terms of tone, though director Anthony Page and co-producer Daniel H. Blatt must shoulder some of the blame. (Joanna Greenberg, who wrote the novel upon which the film was based, reportedly hated the way her work was adapted.) While Quinlan’s uneven work is tethered to the chaotic storytelling, costars Sylvia Sidney and Susan Tyrrell thrive on the picture’s gonzo energy; Sidney’s work has a touch of black comedy, and Tyrrell’s inhibited performance seems like a transmission from another universe. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is far too tawdry to take seriously, so it’s unsurprising that Greenberg tried to reclaim the material by cooperating with the creation of a 2004 stage adaptation of her book. Almost anything would be an improvement over this version.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden: FUNKY

The Bees (1978)

While the most enduring pop-culture artifact stemming from widespread mid-’70s paranoia about killer bees is undoubtedly the recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live depicting the striped insects as Mexican banditos, Hollywood cranked out a few overheated horror pictures on the subject, as well. Disaster-flick titan Irwin Allen was responsible for The Swarm (1978), a big-budget flop starring Michael Caine, and Roger Croman’s low-budget factory New World Pictures was responsible for this dud starring John Saxon. In fact, according to a book about New World, Warner Bros. paid New World to delay the release of The Bees until after The Swarm passed through theaters. In any event, The Bees is just as silly as the Allen production, only without the redeeming values of a kitschy cast and a melodramatic narrative. The Bees opens in Brazil, where crossbred bees attack their keepers at a ranch owned by an international conglomerate. (The murky setup tries to involve both accidental and intentional blending of insect species, resulting in a super-aggressive hybrid.) Soon after the deadly incident in Brazil, a scientist named Sandra Miller (Angel Tompkins) smuggles killer bees into New York, where she reports to John Norman (Saxon), head of a company angling to get a monopoly on the world’s honey supply. Or something. The plot is so stupid and turgid that parsing details isn’t worth the effort, and even trying to watch the movie for the “exciting” scenes is pointless. Once killer bees start rampaging across the United States, director Alfredo Zacarías employs cheap animation to show massive swarms passing landmarks, and he uses grainy stock footage to illustrate the military response. Meanwhile, Saxon gives stilted line readings and John Carradine, in a supporting role, speaks in some amateurish hodgepodge of European accents. The whole pathetic enterprise concludes (spoiler alert!) with the protagonist realizing the bees have learned to communicate, then addressing a general assembly of the UN with this urgent message: “You have to listen to what the bees have to say!” Sadly, just when the movie reaches campy terrain, it ends instead of going full-bore into craziness.

The Bees: LAME

Sweet Kill (1972)

An embarrassing credit for everyone involved, this sleazy killer-thriller emerged from the bowels of Roger Corman’s ’70s operation, representing all the worst qualities of the Corman brand and none of the best—with the exception of giving a promising filmmaker his first crack at directing. Curtis Hanson, who later graduated to sophisticated dramas and thrillers including L.A. Confidential (1997), displays zero flair while helming the sordid saga of Eddie Collins, a twisted gym teacher who gets off on killing pretty young women and, eventually, sexually violating their corpses. In the fine tradition of low-rent shockers that rip off Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Sweet Kill also introduces a mother fixation, since Eddie’s problems date back to a childhood trauma. In any event, the movie is painfully dull to watch because long stretches of time pass during which nothing happens; worse, even when Hanson unleashes something colorful like the disposal of a body, events unfold in quasi-real time, thereby eliminating momentum and suspense. Plus, naturally, the movie reflects Corman’s tendency to compensate for weak narratives with gratuitious nudity, so nearly every actress who appears in Sweet Kill parades around either topless or fully nude in sequences that are more perfunctory than erotic. (The movie actually climaxes with a sort of greatest-tits montage comprising quick glimpses of all preceding skin scenes.) Adding to the overall awfulness of Sweet Kill—which is occasionally exhibited by the alternate titles The Arousers and A Kiss from Eddie—is the presence of 1950s heartthrob Tab Hunter in the leading role. While his willingness to play against type is admirable, he attacks the part with more gusto than skill, resulting in a flat and somewhat inept characterization.

Sweet Kill: LAME

Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

New World Pictures’ tacky series of sexy-nurse flicks finally sputtered out with the release of Candy Stripe Nurses, a dull and formless compendium of empty characters, flat storylines, and perfunctory sex scenes. Once again, the movie follows the interconnected adventures of three attractive young women who work as nurses—actually nonprofessional support staffers known as candy-stripers—while navigating romantic entanglements in their private lives. Written and directed by Alan Holleb, the movie lacks anything resembling a consistent purpose, style, or tone. Whereas some of the previous sexy-nurse movies had counterculture elements and/or wiseass humor, Candy Stripe Nurses is merely amateurish and episodic and uneven, without any memorable high points to reward viewers’ attention. Adding to the general sleaziness of the endeavor, all three of the movie’s leading characters are high-school students. Promiscuous blonde Sandy (Candice Rialson) sleeps with a string of men, eventually working her way into the bedchamber of a rock star suffering from sexual dysfunction. Artistic blonde Dianne (Robin Mattson) studies dance and dates a doctor while preparing for medical school herself, but she takes a wild turn by having an affair with a basketball player who’s being doped by an unscrupulous physician eager to fix games. Latina troublemaker Marias (Maria Rojo) decides that a young man accused of robbing a gas station is being framed, then plays detective in order to clear his name. Each storyline includes at least one extended sex scene, since the New World people were a lot more interested in showing the actress’ breasts than in showing their dramatic range, and poor Rialson—a charming girl-next-door type who also appeared in the bizarre talking-vagina comedy Chatterbox! (1977)—seems to spend nearly all her screen time dressing and undressing. Nothing particularly interesting happens in Candy Stripe Nurses, although colorful B-movie stalwart Dick Miller shows up for a tiny role as a basketball-game heckler who shouts, “Your mother blows goats!” So there’s that.

Candy Stripe Nurses: LAME

Jackson County Jail (1976)

          Thanks to credible characterizations and solid acting, Jackson County Jail is a cut above the usual drive-in sludge from the Roger Corman assembly line. Whereas myriad similar films from Corman’s ’70s companies use the women-in-prison angle as an excuse for cartoonish titillation, Jackson County Jail is played totally straight, emphasizing the horror of abuse and the tragedy of lives squandered on criminality. Calling Jackson County Jail a real movie might be stretching things, since the picture is a sensationalistic compendium of violent vignettes, but it’s a drive-in flick that a thinking viewer can watch without feeling totally ashamed afterward. Among other things, the movie features Tommy Lee Jones in one of his first big roles, and he elevates every scene in which he appears.

          Continuing his practice of providing juicy starring roles to onetime leading ladies whose careers had lost momentum, Corman cast delicate beauty Yvette Mimieux to strong effect in Jackson County Jail. Playing a confident professional woman whose sheltered life experience mostly comprises time spent in Los Angeles and New York, Mimieux seems appropriately out of place once her character falls into a web of crooked redneck cops and noble hillbilly thieves. Specifically, Dinah (Mimieux) leaves LA after discovering that her longtime boyfriend is unfaithful. Somewhere in the boonies, Dinah foolishly picks up two hitchhikers, who steal her car and possessions—including her ID—at gunpoint. Next, a local sheriff (Severn Darden) places her in jail for vagrancy. When the sheriff leaves the police station for the evening, night deputy Lyle (William Molloy) rapes Dinah, but during the assault she shoves him against cell bars, delivering a fatal head injury. Then Coley Blake (Jones), the career criminal in the next cell, grabs the inert Lyle’s keys and leads Dinah in a jailbreak. During the ensuing getaway and manhunt, Dinah becomes friends with Coley, learning his cynical perspective on life.

          Written by Donald Stewart, who later worked on fine films including Missing (1982) and the first three Jack Ryan adventures, Jackson County Jail is humane and intelligent, even if the story occasionally lapses into trite car chases and gunfights. The movie also benefits from stalwart turns by supporting players Robert Carradine, Howard Hesseman, Nan Martin, Betty Thomas, and Mary Woronov. And on some level, the horrors of this movie’s vivid rape scene provide balance for the innumerable Corman productions in which sexual assault is irresponsibly presented as erotica.

Jackson County Jail: FUNKY

Night Call Nurses (1972)

          Roger Corman’s New World Pictures continued its drab cycle of sexy-nurse movies with this third installment, another ensemble drama about the interconnected misadventures of pretty young RNs. George Armitage, who wrote and directed the previous film in the series, Private Duty Nurses (1971), penned the screenplay for this installment, and fellow New World worker bee Jonathan Kaplan made his directorial debut on the project. Somewhat redeemed by flashes of whimsical humor—as well as satirical looks at group therapy and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry—the movie is tolerable but hardly compelling. Despite the title, the nurses actually work with psychiatric patients; perhaps Corman and co. felt Psych Ward Nurses wouldn’t have quite the same box-office allure. Anyway, our heroines are Barbara (Patty Byrne), a troubled young brunette wrestling with a stalker and with a lascivious therapist; Janis (Alana Hamilton), a perky blonde who becomes involved with a trucker after he’s hospitalized during a bad acid trip; and Sandra (Mittie Lawrence), an idealsitic African-American persuaded by her activist boyfriend to help spring a black-power militant leader from the heavily guarded room where he’s receiving medical care.

          As with all of the sexy-nurse movies, Night Call Nurses is padded with empty spectacle. In addition to a dull skydiving sequence, there’s an endless scene of young women stripping during a group-therapy session, ostensibly to throw off their inhibitions. Amid the repetitive nonsense, however, are some enjoyable moments. Once in a while, for instance, Armitage inserts some of his signature offbeat humor. Kyle (Richard Young), the wigged-out trucker, courts Janis by pointing to the name tag on her uniform. “Janis—is that your name or the name of your left tittie?” Giggling, she replies, “That’s my name—the name of my left tittie’s Irene.” Sophisticated? Hardly. Droll by comparison with the rest of the movie? Sure. There’s also a somewhat amusing scene in which a sleazy drug salesman tries to peddle unnecessary medication, only to be stymied by a nurse who brings up the pesky issue of medical ethics. The movie takes an abrupt left turn into pure Corman territory toward the end, climaxing with an escape, a car chase, and a bloody shootout. One suspects the people at New World realized the novelty of nurses providing carnal TLC wasn’t enough to sustain interest across multiple movies, hence the choice to throw in random exploitation elements, whether they fit or not.

Night Call Nurses: FUNKY

Private Duty Nurses (1971)

          The second in a loose series of sexy-nurse flicks made by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, this pointless but nearly respectable drama was the directorial debut of George Armitage, who later found his niche with such gonzo projects as Vigilante Force (1975) and Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Throughout Private Duty Nurses, one can feel Armitage struggling to integrate substantial topics, and to his credit the exploitive bits of the movie pass quickly. However, Private Duty Nurses ends up failing on two levels—it’s neither the eroticized romp promised by lurid marketing materials nor a serious drama with sociopolitical heft. In trying to serve two masters, Armitage ended up making something formless and forgettable.

          As per the norm of the sexy-nurse cycle, Private Duty Nurses follows the personal and professional lives of a group of attractive young RNs. Lola (Pegi Boucher) is an African-American woman who dates a black doctor campaigning against racist hiring practices at their hospital. Lynn (Pegi Boucher) romances an ecological activist who investigates connections between mysterious deaths and oceanic pollution. And bleeding-heart blonde Spring (Kathy Cannon) tries to coax a tormented Vietnam vet into health with sex and TLC. There’s also a meandering subplot about the girls’ landlord, Dewey (Paul Hampton), a creepy would-be stud who seduces one of the ladies back to his bachelor pad, only to prove virtually impotent. And, naturally, one of the girls gets raped, because apparently no ’70s exploitation movie was considered complete without sexual assault.

          Within individual scenes, Armitage generates fleeting moments of credible drama. He’s at his best depicting the weird dissonance between Dewey’s come-on routines and the man’s shoddy bedroom performance. Armitage does weird well—but weird is not the coin of this particular realm, and Armitage (who also wrote and produced the picture) displays zero interest in delivering a straight-up skin show. Although he manages to get each of his leading actresses topless at some point, the director’s boredom with such B-movie bits as extended scenes of dirt-bike racing is evident. It doesn’t help that the cast lacks any standouts. (Minor exception: Hampton’s oily turn as Dewey.) The leading actresses are attractive and some of them are more competent performers than others. Meanwhile, jobbing actors including Paul Gleason, Herbert Jefferson Jr., and Robert F. Simon deliver work that’s merely adequate.

          Nonetheless, proving that one should never underestimate the power of salacious marketing, Private Duty Nurses did well enough to justify a continuation of the sexy-nurse cycle. Three more movies followed.

Private Duty Nurses: FUNKY

Bloody Mama (1970)

          Among the better films in the seemingly endless cycle of Depression-era crime flicks that Roger Corman produced while capitalizing on the success of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), this ramshackle drama is a grim piece of work with occasional flashes of real insight and sensitivity. As a whole, the movie is quite rickety, thanks to erratic storytelling and the unsuccessful use of montages that blend newsreel footage with voiceover to place the activities of the main characters into a historical context. Yet for periodic stretches of screen time, the picture feels substantial.
          Directed as well as produced by Corman, Bloody Mama purports to tell the story of real-life 1930s criminal “Ma” Kate Barker, who led a gang comprising her adult sons and various hangers-on during a violent string of armed robberies. Right from the beginning of the film, Corman tries to present a psychological reading of the title character—viewers meet Kate as a young girl, when her brothers hold her down on the ground while her father rapes her. Once the picture introduces Shelley Winters as the middle-aged Kate, mother to four redneck kids, the idea is that viewers should understand what made Kate so tough. As with similar imagery appearing throughout the film (e.g., Kate holding one of her sons in his arms while he cries himself to sleep after murdering a young woman), the psychological stuff only goes so far. Beyond the dissonance of juxtaposing high-minded material with such tacky signifiers as gory murders and gratuitous nudity, the movie simply isn’t deep or literate enough. The script, credited to Don Peters and Robert Thorn, rushes through episodes covering several years, which has the effect of reducing characterizations to snapshots, and the slavish devotion to generating commercial elements means the narrative periodically stops dead while something lurid happens.

          Nonetheless, some of the characters and performances resonate. Don Stroud is menacing as the psychotic Herman Barker, while a young Robert De Niro gives an alternately frightening and goofy turn as the drug-addled Lloyd Barker. Playing the other two brothers, Clint Kimbrough and Robert Walden don’t have much to do, and in fact they’re overshadowed by the sterling work of costar Bruce Dern, who plays latter-day gang member Kevin Dirkman with his signature idiosyncratic edge. Pat Hingle’s vulnerable performance as a kidnapping victim and Diane Varsi’s bitter portrayal of a cynical prostitute-turned-moll make distinct impressions, as well. Alas, leading lady Winters is the movie’s weak link, since her cartoonish and shrill performance exists in an unpleasant dimension all its own. Oddly enough, Winters played a comical (and pseudonymous) version of the same role a few years earlier, portraying “Ma Parker” in two 1966 episodes of the camp-classic TV series Batman. Her work suited that milieu more closely.

Bloody Mama: FUNKY

Cover Girl Models (1975)

          Ostensibly a thriller about beautiful American women mired in foreign intrigue, Cover Girl Models actually feels more like a dull melodrama about a horny photographer trying to score with his models, with an anemic subplot about Far East crime bubbling under the surface until the ludicrously contrived action finale. Like most exploitation films from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, Cover Girl Models provides exactly the sort of cheap thrills that viewers might expect, including car chases and gunfights and nude scenes. Nonetheless, the picture is executed with so little imagination that it’s difficult to sustain even prurient interest, and the actress given the greatest prominence has the least screen presence of the three “cover girl models” mentioned in the title. The picture begins promisingly with a scene in Los Angeles, where acidic fashion editor Diane (Mary Woronov) instructs he-man photographer Mark (John Kramer) to escort three models to Hong Kong for a fashion show and a photo shoot. Unlike the rest of the picture, this one scene has a modicum of snap and wit. Then Cover Girl Models settles into its normal stultifying groove.

          Before leaving for his trip, Mark does a poolside shoot during which his mousy assistant, Mandy (Tara Strohmeler), accidentally gets doused, resulting in a wet T-shirt. Suddenly cognizant of her assets, Mark recruits her for the Hong Kong trip, along with busty and glamorous blondes Barbara (Pat Anderson) and Claire (Lindsay Bloom).  Upon arriving in Hong Kong, Mark spends his downtime trying to get his models naked on camera—since he moonlights for girlie magazines—and he romances whichever model seems the most amenable at any given time. Meanwhile, Asian criminal Kulik (Vic Diaz) takes advantage of the unsuspecting models by trying to hide illicit items in their luggage. Eventually, a suave Asian cop named Ray (Tony Ferrer) shows up to karate-chop bad guys and to protect the ladies from Kulik’s minions. The movie also features lots of slow-motion shots of ladies twirling in dresses. Yawn. With horrific lounge-style music undulating behind most scenes,  Cover Girl Models fails to generate excitement or novelty, except perhaps for one very strange line of dialogue: During a topless photo shoot, Mark tells Mandy that she’s wearing “the 49th-most luxurious g-string in the entire world.”

Cover Girl Models: LAME

A Little Night Music (1977)

          Considering his godhead status in the world of musical theater, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim has been strangely unrepresented in movies. Although most of his major plays have been telecast in some form or another, to date only six have become feature films: West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd (2007), and Into the Woods (2014). The 30-year gap between A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd is partially attributable to musicals going out of fashion, and it’s fair to say that West Side Story is, to date, the only unqualified smash Sondheim movie adaptation. Still, a talent of Sondheim’s stature surely deserves better in general—and better, specifically, than the middling film version of A Little Night Music.

          Adapted from the Ingmar Bergman movie Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), which also inspired Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), A Little Night Music premiered onstage in 1973, introducing the bittersweet ballad “Send in the Clowns.” Cover versions by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins popularized the tune. Like many of Sondheim’s musicals, A Little Night Music is a sophisticated collage of intricate musicality and rigorous wordplay, to say nothing of complex plotting, so it was hardly a natural for a mainstream adaptation. Indeed, the movie version was financed by a German company and distributed in the U.S. by, off all entities, Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

          Elizabeth Taylor, far from the apex of her box-office power but still a formidable presence, leads a cast including Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg. Set in turn-of-the-century Austria, A Little Night Music tracks the romantic travails of a group of wealthy but lonely people. For instance, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik (Cariou) has recently married his second wife, 18-year-old beauty Anne (Down), though he carries a torch for middle-aged actress Desiree (Taylor). Meanwhile, Fredrik’s son, priest-in-training Erich (Christopher Guard), wrestles with sexual longing and family friend Countess Charlotte (Rigg) laments the passage of time.

          The movie opens with the characters performing onstage as the song “Night Waltz” presents rarified central themes (one lyric states that “love is a lecture on how to correct your mistakes”). After a graceful transition to location photography, the movie winds through its narrative, and most numbers are staged as intimate dramatic scenes. As always, Sondheim’s language is dazzling. Anne assures the sex-crazed Erich that “my lap isn’t one of the devil’s snares,” and Fredrik offers the following observation: “I’m afraid being young in itself is a trifle ridiculous.” In one of A Little Night Music’s nimblest numbers, “Soon,” Fredrik contemplates ravaging his wife, who remains a virgin nearly a year into their marriage (“I still want and/or love you,” Fredrik sings). Although Broadway veteran Cariou has a strong voice, the best performance actually comes from Rigg, who imbues “Every Day a Little Death” with hard-won wisdom. Conversely, Taylor fails to impress when she delivers “Send in the Clowns.” In fact, Taylor is the film’s biggest weak spot, thanks to her distracting cleavage and flamboyant acting and weak singing.

          Yet the ultimate blame for the mediocre nature of this film must fall on Harold Prince, who directed the original Broadway production as well as the movie, and on Sondheim. Prince’s filmmaking is humorless and mechanical, failing to translate the elegance of the material into cinematic fluidity. And for all their intelligence and sophistication, Sondheim’s songs are frequently cumbersome and pretentious. The film version of A Little Night Music contains many fine elements, but if it served as any viewer’s first introduction to Sondheim, the viewer might be perplexed as to what the fuss over the Grammy-, Oscar-, Pulitzer- and Tony-winning songsmith is all about.

A Little Night Music: FUNKY

The Arena (1974)

          To get a sense of what The Arena has to offer, think of the Kirk Douglas gladiator classic Spartacus (1960), subtract all the sociopolitical themes, and replace them with bloody catfights and sleazy nude scenes. As directed by pulp-cinema specialist Steve Carver, The Arena is as briskly entertaining as it is shamelessly exploitive, so it makes for a zippy viewing experience. Furthermore, except for a couple of secondary cast members who camp it up by playing avaricious women and/or queeny men, the actors play their roles straight, resulting in the sort of overwrought intensity one normally associates with comic books. Combined with the picture’s most overtly appealing elements—think leading lady Pam Grier and her lissome costars parading around in the altogether at every possible opportunity—the movie’s Saturday-matinee vibe ensures 83 minutes of gleefully tacky escapism.

          Set in the era of the Roman Empire, the picture begins in England, where Roman slavers interrupt a pagan religious ceremony and kidnap statuesque blonde Bodicia (Margaret Markov). Next, slavers bust up an African dancing-and-drums ritual to kidnap voluptuous Mamawi (Grier). Together with other recent abductees, Bodicia and Mamawi are taken to a place called “Burundium” and sold at auction to Priscium (Silvio Laurenzi), a fey Roman who helps operate a gladiatorial academy. The ladies are tasked with menial duties, and they’re also expected to provide gladiators with companionship. (Or, as one incensed woman exclaims, “Oh, Gods, do you mean we have to satisfy their animal heat?”) Eventually, a catfight in the academy’s kitchen gives Prisium and his gluttonous boss, Timarkus (Daniele Vargas), the notion to present female gladiators as a novelty attraction. Audiences love the girl-on-girl action, turning Bodicia and Mamawi, among others, into arena superstars. All the while, the women plot their escape. Betrayal, bloodshed, and bonking ensue.

          Carver gives the material gonzo treatment from start to finish, his whiz-bang style abetted by slick editing from future director Joe Dante. (Dante enjoyed a varied apprenticeship at New World Pictures, the Roger Corman-led company that produced and distributed The Arena.) Only one scene in the movie breaks the spell by attempting full-on comedy, so for the most part The Arena remains true to itself by giving viewers one breathless scene of sex and/or violence after another. Grier and Markov, previously paired in the grungy exploitation saga Black Mama, White Mama (1973), make a physically attractive pair even if it’s a stretch to describe their onscreen interactions as evidence of genuine chemistry, and both women are displayed to flattering effect. Better still, while neither actress seems to have any illusions about what's expected of them, they each notch a credible moment periodically, contributing to the overall zestiness of the movie.

The Arena: FUNKY