From the man who brought us
School Spirit, comes a pretty lightweight sexploitation flick from Roger Corman's New World Pictures. I'm sure it was fun at the drive-in in '74; let's see if it holds up...
A cool intro featuring animation, amateur artwork and music from a band that wants to be Supertramp.
And so, we follow the exploits of three candy stripe nurses: Sandy, Marisa and Dianne...
SANDY
She's a rich girl who doesn't really need this job, but she does it to get close to her doctor boyfriend (and other patients around the hospital).
A particularly amusing scene that introduces us to Sandy features her mother raving about her good grades to another parent, and what a wonderful upstanding girl she is... and then it cuts to her taking a hit of weed in the tub.
Sandy is played by
Candice Rialson, a favorite of Quentin Tarantino who supposedly patterned Bridget Fonda's character in
Jackie Brown (1997) after her. She starred in
Pets (1973), Mama's Dirty Girls (1974) and Summer School Teachers (1974). She's probably best known for her role as aspiring starlet Candy Hope in
Hollywood Boulevard (1976). She retired by the end of the decade.
I love how the Scandinavian VHS makes this look like a porno, with pictures only featuring nudity. Buyers would be very disappointed - the nudity is few and far between.
MARISA
Marisa has been suspended from school for assaulting a teacher, and she's been placed in a position as candystripe nurse as punishment - and teach her some lessons in discipline and responsibility. There she starts to fall for a poor guy named Carlos who has been wrongfully accused of holding up a convenience store...
Mexican actress
Maria Rojo has continued to steadily work - all through the seventies, eighties, nineties to today. Pretty impressive. I don't recognize her many film and TV credits as they are almost all Mexican productions.
DIANNE
Lastly, we have Dianne, a bookish and eccentric girl who doesn't go for the music kids these days listen to. She's all about becoming a doctor, and becoming a candy stripe nurse gets her one step closer to her dream.
Dianne is played by
Robin Mattson. I didn't recognize her at first with the pixie haircut, but Mattson is a well known soap actress, starring in
General Hospital for over three decades!
She was also on
Santa Barbara and
Days of Our Lives for a good while. Mattson also appeared in single episodes of some great TV including
Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk, Six Million Dollar Man, Flipper, Gentle Ben and
Happy Days. She was also in a number of good movies such as
Wolf Lake and
The Phantom of the Paradise.
Dianne ends up falling for a basketball player and they have sex in the gym. He's not her type, as she fancies herself the bookish, studious type - but opposites attract.
Marisa decides to help out her wrongfully accused patient, and does some detective work getting to the bottom of the case.
Sandy finds out that a rock star Owen Boles (
Kendrew Lascelles) is staying at the hospital, so makes it her goal to get with him. Meanwhile, Dianne is working on her basketball boy...
Soap opera hall-o-famer Robin Mattson delivers a surprising amount of nudity as she gets intimate with the athlete.
Dianne is trying to culture and enlighten this dumb jock, and help him pass his exams. She also won't let him have his amphetamines.
Marisa gets deeper and deeper into the case, and eventually the true culprits start to get nervous with her snooping around.
Marisa is almost raped, but manages to wrestle the gun away.
Marisa confronts her bedridden charity case. The evidence she uncovers seems to point to him - it looks like she fell for someone feeding her a bunch of bullshit.
Predictably, Marisa learns that her guy was telling the truth after all. She confronts the real baddies, and gets shot while simultaneously hitting the shooter with a tire iron. Marisa's story ends with her in the hospital, but happily in love with the now-exonerated boyfriend.
Sandy gets into the rock star's residence only to find out he's really rapey. She manages to escape and learns a valuable lesson - rock stars are rapists; so, she gets back together with the doctor.
We have to sit through a really long and boring basketball game, but at least we get to see Sandy and Dianne pour popcorn on the head of none-other-than
Dick Miller. THE END
In terms of sex appeal, all three girls show their boobs, but it's infrequent (for a film called
Candy Stripe Nurses). Candace Rialson's nudity is particularly disappointing in that it all occurs at the start of the film. We're introduced to her character, see the boobs... then no more. That's harsh.
The storytelling kinda sucked - the girls' stories don't overlap at all, and none are particularly interesting. Also, this movie could have really benefited with some humor here and there.
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
