They’ll give us fast-fast-fast relief!

That’s what the poster says for this week’s movie, and I bet they mean it too! Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. Also, welcome to another review of a movie from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures! 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses was part of the company’s “nurses cycle”. However, there’s a very specific reason why we’re starting with this one, which happens to be the final entry of the five-film, loose series.

I may have used Valentine’s Day last week to do My Bloody Valentine because it’s a movie that has the day right in its goddamn title (and, frankly, the movie was overdue to get coverage here), but I won’t deny that this movie was nearly chosen instead. Thankfully, last week did feature the triumphant return of Cynthia Dale, so there’s that. But the main reason why this almost won out over that movie for the Valentine’s Day review?

Two words: Candice Rialson.

Hell yeah! Candice is B-Movie Enema’s official girlfriend. She has always been the site’s official girlfriend. So much so, the B-Movie Enema Teepublic site has two shirts for her films, here and here. But check it out… It’s been almost three and a half years since we’ve covered one of her movies. That last one was Moonshine County Express. It’s been a looooong time comin’ getting back to her. However, part of the reason why I hadn’t revisited her, um, body of work is because we’re really right up against the final movies that we can really feature here in any real depth as it pertains to her specifically. But in Candy Stripe Nurses, she is the lead. Julie Corman, producer of this movie, said she just stood out when they were looking for their leading lady. I could have told her that long before she ever arrived to audition.

Candy Stripe Nurses is directed by Allan Holleb. Holleb was fresh out of UCLA when Julie Corman hired him to direct the movie. What drew Julie’s eye to Holleb was a short film he made in high school. But some of the behind-the-scenes stuff about how this movie got its title and what Holleb was asked to do is pretty funny. Apparently, to get this movie a title, a guy working for New World set out into the world with about 30 possible titles for the movie. The winner was Candy Stripe Nurses. I’m guessing the title brought to mind how candy stripers are typically younger. So it was probably causing people to marry the words young, sexy, and nurse together in a jumbled-up brain of someone who watches too much porn.

But the thing that gives me a case of the giggles is less about the title. When Holleb was brought onto the production, he was told, “They wanted a little social consciousness, a little romance, a little comedy and a little sex. Another requirement was they wanted a sex clinic. I don’t know why!”

Ladies and gentlemen, we might have found the most Roger Corman movie ever.

Also, another perfect encapsulation of Roger Corman in this era, the credits start with a series of vaguely animated cartoons representing the candy stripers and their everyday business. All the girls are naked and doing sex things. The first naked girl is shown within about 30 seconds. Nothing like starting your exploitation sex comedy with naked cartoons.

The first of our three main ladies that we meet in this is Marisa. She’s played by Maria Rojo. She’s a bit of a problem child. Pretty, oh for sure, but she’s a delinquent. She gets hit on by a particular guy at school but just gives him the cold shoulder. She brings a knife to school and carves shit with it. In fact, when a teacher takes the knife from her to take to the principal’s office, she attacks the teacher and beats the hell out of him. She’s also a bit of a kleptomaniac too. She even steals something from the principal when she knocks a picture of his family off his desk and he turns his head to pick it up. He says that he can forgive all the shit she does if she goes to work as a candy stripe nurse.

Uppity Dianne is our next main girl in this movie. She’s played by Robin Mattson. Mattson would go on to become a fairly popular soap opera actress. Anyway, the same guy who tried to pick up Marisa for a concert that night tries with Dianne. She thinks his desire to go to rock concerts is juvenile. She even tells the poor chump to get lost. Dianne actually does want to be a candy stripe nurse because she has aspirations of becoming a doctor.

That leaves us our third girl, Sandy (Rialson). She’s already a candy striper and she has a lot of fans (no shit) among the doctor staff. She’s introduced just after coitus with Wally, one of the doctors at the hospital. They were apparently headed to a movie that night after work, but she actually ran into Owen Boles earlier in the day. Boles is the rock star putting on the show that night that the goofy kid trying to find a date for has tickets to see. Because Sandy impressed Boles so much (no shit), he gave her two tickets to the concert and she is dragging Wally to the concert.

I think we’re supposed to believe this is a world in which doctors do not like rock and roll. Wally is not looking forward to seeing the Owen Boles concert and is begrudgingly going with Sandy. Dianne thinks rock stars are juvenile. However, she does know who this guy is because she said he’s sung off-key since his second album. It’s not like she’s not interested in music, after all, I think we’re supposed to believe that she’s a ballerina based on how we’re introduced to her in a leotard and doing stretches with her foot on a bleacher. Do doctors not like rock music? Is that just a stupid running inside joke for this movie or was that really a thing in the 70s?

Considering the lack of content, media, and living souls from that era… The world may never know.

What I do know is that Candice Rialson is looking extremely pretty in this movie and we first met her tits out. That’s what B-Movie Enema is all about, folks. What’s more, while Sandy’s mom rattles off a bunch of achievements for outgoing Sandy at school (including finding time to be a candy striper), she is in the tub bathing for the concert, smokin’ dope, eatin’ a donut, and doing her homework while her girls get a little bit of fresh air. God, I love this woman.

Alright, so the next scene might come off as a bit of a shock, but it will ultimately play the biggest part of this movie. We see a guy who is kind of a drifter wandering about. He tries to get into the bathroom at a gas station only to need to get a key from an attendant. When he goes to ask for that, two guys try to stick the joint up. This guy, who we find out is named Carlos, is shot by the attendant who, along with the police, believes he is an accomplice of the robbers. This brings him to the Oakwood Hospital where our candy stripers work.

There, he’s first approached by Marisa who is already in a uniform and working there despite the editing and order of scenes indicate she was just earlier that day being told she will be enrolled there as a volunteer. She’s doing her rounds and is bringing some juice to patients. She doesn’t spot right away that he’s suspected of being involved in the robbery until she sees he’s cuffed to his bed.

Also at the hospital doing her shift is Dianne. She asks a doctor to go on his rounds with him to get some experience. He initially agrees because it’s nice to have a candy striper take an interest in more than just the menial tasks they are assigned. This goes south fast though because she begins overstepping her boundaries by suggesting procedures as if she knows better what to do.

After catching Sandy in a patient’s bed preparing to have sex with the guy, the doctor and Dianne are called into an emergency room. There, they find star basketball player, Cliff, freaking the fuck out and needing to be restrained. There is concern he has a concussion after taking a hit to the head. What I believe is the team’s athletic trainer comes in wanting to be alone with Cliff and even tells the other doctor he doesn’t want him to order any tests. The following day, as Cliff prepares to be discharged, Dianne talks with him and they get close.

She talks to him about how similar basketball could be to dance with how he moves and the rhythm that goes along with it. He agrees to let her film some of the next team practice. He takes her to what looks to be the gymnastics closet to find out more about the project she’s filming his practice for. This is where he plans on making a move on her, but she rejects it. They have a little playful banter and fighting and he chases her around where she finally gives in to their passion.

I kind of hate to break it to you folks, but I don’t think I care for this movie whatsoever thus far. There is no real plot to this story. It’s kind of obvious that Holleb is a first-time director. The performances are pretty not great. Everything feels stilted and poorly timed. That would be more on the director than the actors. It’s not like this movie doesn’t have some seasoned talent in the cast but no one has any actual chemistry.

Plus, this does kind of feel like a porno that isn’t a porno. The style of acting, the vignette style of following one character at a time as she interacts with a man she will eventually have an affair with is very much what you’d expect in hardcore porn. The music matches that too. But it just feels amateurish.

And it is definitely not hardcore porn.

Look, I know this is most definitely exploitation. What else were we to expect? Exploitation films were light on heavy thought and consideration for quality and heavy on what sold no matter if anything made sense. We have three pretty girls who are portraying nurses, one of the sexier professions until one comes into your room telling you it’s time to take your temperature from your butthole… Actually… That might be fun. Never mind, everyone loves a pretty nurse. My point is we have pretty actresses who are hired to look pretty, take their clothes off, and hop into beds with patients.

Shiiiit. Candice Rialson has had more screen time with her tits out than she has with her candy striper uniform on. In the scene in which Dianne and Cliff end up having sex, she is literally wearing only a dress and shoes. When he pulls her dress off, BOOM, naked. Then, with Marisa, she’s the bad girl so that’s an enticing element all its own. But the problem is this movie is poorly written, poorly acted, paced like shit, and very bland to look at for most of the shots. A movie like Hollywood Boulevard is so much better and that one was using scraps from other Corman productions to Frankenstein together a cohesive satire movie. This movie is just bad.

Now, if there is any kind of plot, it’s this… there are three tasks each candy stripe nurse is assigned to help a patient. The first begins at the start of the second act. Marisa starts to believe that Carlos is innocent of robbing the gas station. However, he is pretty despondent. He believes the system is going to railroad him and an innocent man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time will take a ten-year sentence. There is a witness. He had a very specific motorbike. Carlos tried to get a light from him before going to get the key to the gas station bathroom. All this we saw and all of this is actually something quite worth exploring in this otherwise exploitation flick.

So it’s time for Marisa to go on a mission! She begins tracking down this guy with this special motorbike. Along the way, because I guess this movie needed a few extra minutes to try to get to a runtime of 76 minutes, she gets her purse snatched by some no good kids and she needs to chase them down and beat the hell out of one of them. She also gets propositioned by some shady mechanics who try to rip her off. She also tries to get the gas station man to change his story and say Carlos wasn’t part of the plot to rob the place, but he decides to be fucking racist instead by saying “they’re all alike” indicating that Hispanics are all crooks.

Later, Marisa finally gets a useful lead on the guy with the special motorbike. His name is Ray. She finds where he lives and some of the places he gets work done on his bike. The problem, though, where she found that lead, she was also found by one of the real robbers who knows she’s up to no good for his interests in staying out of jail. He begins following her as she collects info on Ray.

That guy ends up intercepting her and says he knows a guy who can help her find Ray. He calls his partner who takes her hostage and plans to rape her for trying to find a witness to help put them behind bars. Like an idiot, he lays the gun on the floor next to Marisa where she can easily pick it up and turn the tables on him. Then, she leaves. That’s… that’s the end of that scene I guess.

Anyway, she continues on in her search for Ray. I feel like by the time she finds him, Carlos will be released from the hospital and already tried in court and thrown into the electric chair before she can clear him. But after discovering that Ray works at a junkyard, she finds him. The problem, though, is that it seems Ray truly believes that Carlos is the leader of the robbers. Buuuut what Marisa doesn’t realize is that one of the robbers is there holding Ray at gunpoint to make sure he says nothing at all.

Marisa returns to the hospital to tell Carlos that he’s a piece of shit. She then breaks down crying to the head nurse who comments on her dress being torn from a fender she ripped it on when she was at the junkyard. This suddenly makes her remember the later pages of the script that reveals she knows what’s about to happen. Also, apparently, Carlos was released and immediately teleported to the junkyard where he is tied up with Ray for Marisa to save them both. She knocks one robber out and the other gets caught by a cop who just so happened to pass by.

So… that’s… that?

So we get the idea of what Marisa will be doing for the rest of the movie. We also know that some of the frigid exterior of Dianne has been melted or chipped away by Cliff. We return to the hospital where Sandy is working the check-in desk for the sex study part of the hospital. In comes none other than Owen Boles. I guess Owen’s wang isn’t workin’ too good. This will be Sandy’s task for the movie – get that wang working properly.

Remember I said that Alan Holleb was told there had to be a sex clinic in this hospital? Yeah, here we go. Exactly why there is a sex clinic makes perfect sense for a sex comedy movie even if it does take place in a hospital. What I’m struggling more with is why does this guy needing sex therapy from Candice Rialson have to be a rock star? It makes basically no sense. It can be any guy that catches her eye and he needs his balls and dick and stuff worked out. The rock star element is just to, I guess, have a wacky character to parody or satirize?

To get her shot at treating Owen herself, Sandy decides to sneak her way into his circle. Apparently, the sex clinic has registered nurses on staff that will go to patients’ homes to, uh… treat them. Talk about getting top-notch treatment on house calls! Anyway, she gushes about owning all his albums and how great she thinks he is and he doesn’t seem to care at all about her admiration of him. She then tries kissing him but he only cares about eating. She gets disgusted with his disinterest in her and tries a different tactic. She says his personal assistant has more passion and is more of a man than Owen is. She storms out with Owen saying he needs her.

Now, for the next part of that new tactic. A few days later, Sandy returns to Owen’s place to pick up the purse she left behind to give her a reason to return. She kind of does that old trick with Owen where she pretends to be uninterested in what he’s saying to make him want her more. He says that she returned to apologize about something she said about his records and she says she hardly ever listened to them and so forth. You get it.

He gets a little violent. The more she refuses to care about anything he has to say, the more he wants to wrestle her to the ground and have his way with her, and not let her leave until he’s done with her. His assistant pulls him off her and she says that all she wanted to say after today was that she slept with the famous Owen Boles but now he’s this pathetic jerk who is begging to sleep with her. She wants nothing to do with him. When she slips away as he now attacks his horny groupies, she tells his assistant that he’s cured and she’s going to a basketball game to watch Cliff play with Dianne.

So… that’s… that?

You know what would’ve made the best plot for this movie? Figure out a way to take the plot that Dianne and Cliff are a part of and basically expand from there. What is their plot? Well, it turned out that Cliff had been prescribed speed by one of the doctors at the hospital. The speed was why he flipped the fuck out in the emergency room. Well, that’s some pretty serious malpractice and Dianne wants to help expose that.

Wouldn’t that make the most sense for all of this movie to revolve around? Instead of having a rock star goofball who isn’t fucking or a guy wrongly implicated in a robbery, why not have a team of basketball players all with various problems being caused by either the stupid doctors at the hospital or the team doctor? That sounds like a great idea! But, no… we gotta do the bullshit plots instead of one that could really play out with some interesting angles.

Okay, as mentioned, Sandy and Dianne are at a basketball game to watch Cliff play. Oh, look… We have a Dick Miller sighting as a heckler who keeps complaining about Cliff!

Leading up to the game, Dianne asked one of the doctors what would have caused Cliff to act like he did the night he met her. The doc says that it’s possible just a plain ol’ concussion could make a man turn into a raving lunatic. But at the game, Cliff’s energy level is cratered. He asks the doctor who came to the emergency room with him for some helpers. He takes a whole bunch of pills and he has a pretty spectacular second half and hits the game-winning shot.

The end of the basketball game does have the legit funniest thing in the whole movie when the announcer exclaims, “Gallagher did it! Holy shit!”

After the game, Dianne and Sandy go for a ride with a super high and bonkers Cliff who is driving like a total asshole and nearly getting them killed. He eventually crashes out and is rushed to the hospital. Dianne reveals to the doctor she knew that the shady doctor was supplying the basketball team with speed and when he took the blood sample from him the other night, he hid everything and if they do a transfusion while they operate on him, it will be the wrong blood type. After a super tense of unmasked surgery (seriously the doctor doesn’t wear one of those coverings over his clothes nor did he wear a mask as he operated on Cliff), he’s going to be just fine. Sandy reunites with Wally, the doctor who is treating Marisa for the injuries she sustained helping free Carlos at the junkyard, and they go to the linen closet to play a game of hide the tongue depressor.

This was a pretty bad movie. Frankly, there were many ways to do better here. Marisa’s storyline could have had all three of the nurses involved. They could still have messed around with various doctors or patients or whatever, but you can just go with all of them trying to help Carlos because Marisa is into him. I mentioned previously that another better option would have been the basketball team and the nefarious doctor thing. They’re nurses. The doctor is the bad guy. Perfect!

It’s very clear there was only a day or two of shooting with more than one of the nurses together in a single scene. The plot threads spreading out from there were solely to maximize runtime and minimize how many of the actresses had to be all together at once. It feels awkward. It’s edited like shit. It results in a movie that would have been better to be an out-and-out XXX film instead of a softcore exploitation comedy. It makes a lot of sense this was the last of the “nurse” cycle at New World Pictures.

I’m pretty disappointed with this outcome as this was the last movie that Candice Rialson had a leading role in that hadn’t been covered here at the site before. She has something of a significant role in the 1977 film Stunts, but that’s not a large role. So we kind of ended here on the worst of her movies (I don’t care if you are shouting right now that clearly Chatterbox is her worst movie, but not to me… not to me).

Candice having a short career that could have led to much bigger things if she had stayed in the business before retiring to be a wife and mother, then her early passing means she didn’t get the opportunity to revel in the appreciation exploitation films of the 70s has since gained. So that’s disappointing. What’s even more unfortunate is that this movie does feature two other leading ladies who are also very interesting. Robin Mattson went on to be quite popular on daytime television. She had a decent career after this that even included the 1979 Reb Brown-led Captain America movie that I covered here on this site many years ago.

The most fascinating person is our de-facto lead of this movie, Maria Rojo. She really is the lead of this movie because I would say her storyline with trying to clear Carlos’ name was the largest in terms of runtime and was the most interesting and exciting. However, Ms. Rojo would go on to become a politician and even a Senator in Mexico. She was born in Mexico City and was already 30 years old when this film was shot. I do think she was probably not listed first because she did speak with an accent and it’s probably a little easier to showcase the two white women in 1974 and have them take top billing, but she’s perfectly fine in this movie and would lead a very fascinating life as part of Mexico’s progressive-socially liberal Party of the Democratic Revolution. So… good on her.

This week was a disappointment, but you know what? Next week is also going to be a disappointment but in another way. Join me in seven days for one of the best-known “I dare ya to watch” movies of all time. Yeah, it’s about time we discussed Faces of Death.

Until then, I’m going to time travel back to 1974 and see if I can get a house call from Candice Rialson.