Directed By: Jonathan Kaplan
Starring: Patty Byrne, Alana Stewart, Mittie Lawrence
Tag line: "It's always harder at night"
Trivia: Martin Scorsese recommended Jonathan Kaplan to Roger Corman as director for this film
1972’s Night Call Nurses was the third installment in Roger Corman’s “nurse” series (after 1970’s The Student Nurses and ‘71s Private Duty Nurses), and while I have yet to see the first two, I doubt either would inform in such a way that it might be difficult to follow this movie.
Helmed by Jonathan Kaplan, making his debut in the director's chair, Night Call Nurses follows the exploits of three beautiful caregivers, all of whom work in the hospital’s crisis center. The first is Barbara (Patty Byrne), who, along with her boyfriend Zach (Christopher Law), attends a therapy group in her spare time. When she overhears the instructor talking about her to the others, Barbara experiences a level of paranoia that sets her mind to spinning. Before long she is acting in ways she never dreamed possible.
Janis (Alana Hamilton) develops a crush on patient Kyle Toby (Richard Young), a long-distance truck driver who is addicted to speed. Once Kyle is cured, Janis starts seeing him socially, and the two quickly fall in love.
Sandra (Mitti Lawrence) is approached by Jude (Felton Perry), a former convict and current militant, who wants her help in springing a radical named Sampson (Stack Pierce) from the hospital. A prisoner who, according to official reports, attempted suicide, Sampson is in a secure ward, and with the prison’s bigoted warden (Bobby Hall) keeping an eye on him, getting Sampson out isn’t going to be easy.
What these three beauties don’t realizes is that, while dealing with their respective issues, someone has been watching them, sending the occasional threatening note (written in lipstick) their way. None of the girls take this potential threat seriously, but is it really the work of a practical joker (as they believe), or a disturbed psychopath hell-bent on doing them harm?
The trio of very different storylines that make up Night Call Nurses are, for the most part, intriguing (especially Barbara’s, whose near-mental breakdown results in a few interesting scenes), and, as expected, the leads shed their clothes more than once (there’s even a scene during a group therapy session where all the female attendees, hoping to prove they aren’t uptight, perform a striptease).
That said, Night Call Nurses has a few too many characters. There’s a regular patient named Bathrobe Benny (Martin Ashe) who is a serial flasher; and the film opens with a dramatic, albeit confusing sequence in which Cynthia (Lynne Guthrie), another patient, commits suicide (this tragedy is only mentioned in passing afterwards, and is then forgotten). Throw in the subplot about a possible stalker, and a fistfight between Kyle Toby and a drunken orderly that seemingly comes out of left field, and you have a movie bursting at the seams with lots of ideas, but very little time to explore them in a meaningful way.
With a cast of pretty young ladies who aren’t afraid to bare it all, Night Call Nurses is not merely a typical early ‘70s nurse exploitation film; it’s a typical Roger Corman movie, and while that’s not a bad thing, there’s little here that we haven’t seen from the legendary producer before.
No comments:
Post a Comment