Movie review – Nurses#3 - “Night Call Nurses” (1973) *** (warning: spoilers)

One of Roger Corman’s best pieces of advice to young directors making a genre film was to make the best possible genre film they could, i.e. don’t slum it until you find material that’s personal to you, make what you’ve got work. Jonathan Kaplan took this to heart with this third "nurses" film - where all the leads work in a psychiatric hospital - and the result is energetic, flashy entertainment, where there’s lots of crazy editing and scenes with non-synchronous dialogue.

The three girls are all very pretty and likeable - Patti Byrne is particularly winning (whatever happened to her? Kaplan apparently offered her the lead in The Student Teachers but she turned it down and disappeared); Alana Collins is a rare "nurses" star who went on to have an ok career - she married George Hamilton and acted under the name of Alana Hamilton. The support casting includes Dennis Dugan and, as always, Dick Miller.

The adventures are typical of the time: the brunette (Byrne) gets involved in a sex cult run by a manipulative chap who accuses her of being a sex deviant (to do an experiment and to get her into bed) - this has a lot of creepy overtones which are quite effective; the black nurse (Mitti Lawrence) falls for a black revolutionary and ends up going on the lam at the end (the way the hispanic nurse did in The Student Nurses); the blonde (Collins) wants to marry a rich doctor but falls for a speed-addicted trucker (who at the end still seems to be addicted to speed - they don't do a good job of wrapping up this story).  There's another plot line about a stalker at the hospital who seems to be after Byrne but also perves on Collins.

There are lots of love making scenes and nudity, and the men are more prominent than in Student Nurses - was this because of a male director? But like that film (and unlike the others in the series) there are plenty of scenes of the girls together; they have real camaraderie and you get the sense that they are friends. (e.g. Collins and her boyfriend help Lawrence and her guy bust a prisoner/patient out of gaol)

There are lots of random sports interludes – water skiing, sky diving – which make it seem like a Beach Party movie at times. George Armitage wrote the script, although Kaplan claims it was rewritten; he also directed Private Duty Nurses, which wasn't very good, so I think Kaplan was right. One of the best of the series - people such as Joe Dante claim this is the best; I would rate The Student Nurses up there as well, because it's got the best "serious" subplot (i.e. about abortion) and my favourite is Summer School Teachers but these three are easily the best of the genre.