The Student Nurses
1970, R, 89 min.
Directed by Stephanie Rothman, Starring Elaine Giftos, Karen Carlson, Brioni Farrell, Barbara Leigh, Reni Santoni.

Rothman’s exploitation films for Roger Corman always showed their feminist backbone. These four student nurses are women of their times – meaning they are children of the drug culture and free-love stampede. They function in the exploitation film as the requisite soft-core T&A, but in such moments as when the public-health-oriented nurse gets involved with Latino revolutionaries and the “Man” busts up that scene, Student Nurses becomes a primer in radicalism.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.