The Student Nurses is a 1970 film directed by Stephanie Rothman.
It's a story about four hardworking young plumbers—no, just kidding, it's about four beautiful young student nurses. Sharon, Priscilla, Phred, and Lynn, who share a house together, are nearing the end of their instructional program and will soon get their RN degrees. All four of them get involved in their own adventures. Phred falls for Jim, a handsome young OBGYN at the hospital where the four nurses work. Priscilla dates Les, a rascally drug dealer who gets her to drop acid. Sharon develops an emotional bond with Greg, an 18-year-old young man who is terminally ill with cystic fibrosis. Lynn winds up getting involved with Victor Charlie, a left-wing radical who is leader of a Hispanic revolutionary organization.
Also, the nurses take their clothes off a lot.
Produced by Roger Corman, the second film for his New World Pictures. The first of a series of "sexy nurse" Exploitation Films produced by Corman, including Private Duty Nurses, Night Call Nurses, The Young Nurses, and Candy Stripe Nurses.
Tropes:
- "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: Victor Charlie is an Angry Hispanic Man. He is an anti-establishment radical who fights against "the pigs" with his revolutionary cell, La Causa de la Raza. After a shootout gets two cops killed, Victor Charlie goes on the lam, and Lynn goes with him.
- Attempted Rape: In the first scene of the movie Priscilla is assaulted by a patient, but she escapes by kneeing him in the nuts.
- Back-Alley Doctor: By the end of the movie it seems Lynn is becoming a Back Alley Nurse. She rips up a job offer with a hospital, content to live a life as a revolutionary fugitive with Victor Charlie, tending to La Causa's casualties.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: All the nasty sniping between Victor and Lynn in their first few meetings (he's disgusted that she is named "Lynn Verdugo" but speaks no Spanish) clearly telegraphs that they will fall in love, and they do.
- Cessation of Existence: Discussed Trope. Poor young Greg is pretty bitter about being terminally ill with cystic fibrosis at the age of 18.Greg: For each person, the end of the world comes after he dies.
- Chekhov's Skill: Remember Jim, Phred's dashingly handsome boyfriend? Remember his specialty? He's an obstetrician. Jim winds up giving Priscilla an illegal abortion in the home the nurses share.
- Coitus Interruptus: Phred goes to Jim's apartment for sex—but it seems that Jim forgot to mention that he has a roommate. Phred does not realize that the man who enters the darkened bedroom isn't Jim, and they are rolling around in the sheets when Jim shows up and interrupts them. (This is Played for Laughs.)
- Door-Closes Ending: Ends with a sliding hospital door closing behind the nurses as they walk off for their graduation ceremony.
- Exploitation Film: Director Stephanie Rothman later said in interviews that she had never heard the term "exploitation film" and did not imagine that she had made one. Instead she took the conditions that Corman gave her (sexy nurses, lots of nudity) and mixed it up with a left-wing political message that dealt with feminism and patriarchy and anti-establishment radical groups. The result was a movie that hits all the beats of the Exploitation Film (naked ladies, violence, drugs, more naked ladies) while at the same time having a strong political point of view.
- Fan Disservice: There's a lot of Fanservice in this movie, but there's also the pasty white butt of the guy who tries to rape Priscilla, as the doctors jab him with a sedative.
- Going Commando: Busty Priscilla says that she never wears a bra. When she has to have her interview with the psychiatrist to get an abortion (pre-Roe v. Wade, folks), her roommates tell her to make sure to wear a bra. She squirms with discomfort.
- Groin Attack: A swift knee to the crotch allows Priscilla to escape from a would-be rapist.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heard in the scene where Sharon finds Greg gone from the courtyard outside, then finds his bedroom empty. She runs through the hospital accompanied by a Heartbeat Soundtrack, until she finds a doctor who tells her that Greg suddenly died.
- Hospital Hottie: The whole point of the movie, as four gorgeous nurses wear snug uniforms.
- Intimate Psychotherapy: Practiced on an amateur basis by Sharon. The climax of her relationship with angsty, bitter, terminally ill Greg comes when she takes all her clothes off and crawls into his hospital bed. Thanks to a Sexy Discretion Shot it's hard to tell, but it seems more like emotional closeness than sex.
- Intro Dump: In an early scene Miss Boswell, the nurse in charge of the student nurses program, rattles off the names of her students and the places in the hospital where they'll be working. The camera catches each of the four protagonists in turn as Miss Boswell calls roll, so the audience learns their names.
- Jump Cut: The most pointed scene in the film comes when Priscilla is trying to get an abortion at the hospital. Roe v. Wade is three years in the future so she has to submit to an interview with the hospital psychiatrist in order to get an abortion on mental health grounds. The psychiatrist asks her a series of degrading, humiliating questions, like why she didn't try to stop herself from getting pregnant and just how much sex she had with Les. Priscilla's embarrassment and humiliation in this scene is illustrated by a series of jump cuts as the psychiatrist fires questions at her. (Her abortion is denied.)
- Mood Whiplash: Director Stephanie Rothman makes a point about patriarchy and the oppression of women when Priscilla has to have an interview with the hospital psychiatrist, so she can have an abortion on mental health grounds. This dramatic moment is undercut by a joke, when Priscilla squirms with discomfort because, for once, she's wearing a bra.
- Motorcycle on the Coast Road: Played straight, as Les the "bad boy" (he's a hippie drug dealer) takes Priscilla on a motorcycle ride down the Pacific Coast Highway before they stop on the beach to drop acid and have sex.
- Pool Scene: Well naturally, the house the four nurses are renting has a pool out back, where the ladies lounge around in bikinis.
- Scenery Censor: Roger Corman gave his filmmakers strict orders that while there was to be plenty of T and A in his movies, private parts were not to be shown. So when Priscilla and Les are lying naked on the beach together, they each have their right legs cocked so as to hide their nether regions from the camera.
- Straw Vegetarian: Les gets real obnoxious when Priscilla invites him for dinner, ranting about his body is a temple, proclaiming himself to be a vegetarian, refusing even a peach that Priscilla offers him because it wasn't grown organically. Jim, in the next room, gets steadily more irritated and finally calls Les out on his bullshit.
- The Voice: In the humiliating scene where Priscilla has to submit to an interview with a psychiatrist to get an abortion, the psychiatrist is off-screen.
- Window Love: Played straight when Sharon finds Jim stuck inside a clear plastic box obviously designed to prevent infection. They each put up a hand to one side of the plastic.
