Director in Person

After a sandy start with the star–studded beach bunk It's a Bikini World (1967), Stephanie Rothman, part of the Corman corps, had her finger on the pulse with her next film The Student Nurses, which created an exploitation genre. The film begins with a rape in which a nurse valiantly fights off her attacker. Handled in a rather clinical manner, the sexual assault is not just a lurid concession to drive–in drivel, but a telling intrusion-each of the young nurses will encounter an obstacle in the long procession of beds and bedpans. Our Ladies in White are Sharon, Lynn, Phred, and Priscilla, all in their final year of nursing school. The tentative diagnosis is T&A with a feminist twist-the women fall in and out of love and in and out of their uniforms, graduating worldlier and fortified. But director Rothman prescribes a strong dose of fem–lib for her novice nurses-a remedy to return health to the body politic.

Please note: At present, no exhibition-quality film print exists. In order to screen The Student Nurses, we will use a Beta SP copy transferred from the negative.