By Richard Winters
My Rating: 2 out of 10
4-Word Review: Sex makes good medicine.
Barbara (Patty Byrne), Janis (Alana Stewart), and Sandra (Mittie Lawrence) are three young women starting out in the nursing field. The film analyzes their various and sometimes amusing predicaments while on the job as well as their sex lives.
The film moves at a decent pace, but seems disjointed with poor story and character progression. Things are thrown in just to keep it moving, but with no real connection to anything else. Amateurish production values permeate and Jonathan Kaplan’s directorial debut is for the most part best forgotten. The only mildly interesting scene involved a therapy group where all the members strip off their clothes as well as having one of the members think that she is being driven insane by the group’s instructor.
The attempts at lightheartedness and humor are strained and flat. Only one brief exchange during the entire duration managed to elicit a small chuckle from myself and it goes like this:
Male Patient: (While looking at the nurse’s nametag on her uniform) Is Janis your name, or the name of your left titty?
Janis: (While giggling) Janis is my name. Irene is the name of my left tiitty.
The acting is quite poor with everyone phoning in their parts. Alana Stewart who was at one time the wife of actor George Hamilton and later rock legend Rod Stewart as well as the mother of Ashley Hamilton and Kimberly Stewart mouths her lines in a lifeless and emotionless fashion that resembles her beautiful but blank blue eyes. However, recent pics of her are amazing as she looks like she hasn’t aged a day since she has done this and I’ll give her credit there. Despite only doing one other picture besides this one Byrne is the one that gives the strongest performance particularly her effective crying, which seems real.
There is enough nudity to satisfy the voyeurs including the opening sequence where one of the mentally-ill patients’ strips off her clothes and then jumps off the roof of a building. However, you basically only see their breasts and the sex is handled in such a mechanical and unimaginative way that it fails to titillate at all.
The Shout Factory DVD issue has a great picture quality much like Private Duty Nurses, but the sound is a problem. There is a background rumbling heard throughout that resembles talking to someone on the phone with wind blowing through the receiver, or speaking to someone in the car with the windows down and wind blowing in.
My Rating: 2 out of 10
Released: June 10, 1972
Runtime: 1Hour 14Minutes
Rated R
Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Studio: New World Pictures
Available: DVD (Roger Corman’s Nurses Collection)
Scopophilia 