★★½
“Nurse! The screens!”
That this Belgian flick starts off with a dedication to Ilona Staller (a.k.a. Italian porn star, Cicciolina), artist provocateur Jeff Koons, and Traci Lorde, likely tells you it should not be taken too seriously. Certainly, the amusement to be found largely requires the viewer to be aware of the genres to which this is a homage. This is best exemplified by the Ilsa trilogy, yet there are also aspects borrowed from women-in-prison and Naziploitation in general. The more you’re familiar with those, the more you’ll get out of this: if you’re not, this will seem just a bad movie. A really bad movie.
The plot, such as it is, takes place in a facility of indeterminate, yet likely medical, purpose overseen by the evil and sadistic Ilsa (Brown) – actually, let’s just take “evil and sadistic” as read for the rest of the characters, since it applies to pretty much everyone. There’s her second-in-command, Greta (Farago), who is increasingly jealous of the attention Ilsa pays to the younger, prettier Sabrina (Makay), who spends her time reading poorly-drawn comic books when not engaging in random acts of carnage.
Thinking about it, the latter element also applies equally to everyone else here. As does Sabrina’s fondness for lingerie. Anyway, when not hijacking cars on the nearby roads, or hunting those unfortunate enough to camp in the woods, these maniac nurses are torturing their victims. Yet Greta’s jealousy eventually leads her to reveal the (not very) shocking truth about Sabrina’s origins. This triggers the most casual of rampages by the latter, in which she wanders round the facility at a moderate pace, gunning down everyone in her path.
The most notable artistic element here though, is the narration – something which may have been added by distributor Troma, since he is not mentioned in the film’s credits. If you’ve seen the opening of Faster Pussycat, this is basically that kind of over-ripe exposition, yet goes on for virtually the entire duration. It’s surreal, borderline insane and likely further evidence this is intended as a thoroughly self-aware pastiche of cult, B-movies, whose incoherent narrative is a deliberate stylistic choice. As such, it’s almost bulletproof, critically speaking. When a film is intended to be terrible, saying it is, doesn’t have much impact.
While the actresses here are certainly easy on the eye, their performances are virtually non-existent – although in their defense, they could have been Meryl Streep, and would still probably not have survived the dubbing. Again: this is quite possibly intentional. Yet, even as I certainly got the joke, it was one which out-stayed its welcome. The genres in question are ripe for parody – and I speak as a fan of them, more or less. If done right, you get the glory of something like Reform School Girls, which had energy, invention and Sybil Danning. This needs more of all three. Particularly Sybil Danning.
Dir: Leon Paul De Bruyn [as “Harry M. Love”]
Star: Susanna Makay, Hajni Brown, Celia Farago, Nicole A. Gyony
a.k.a. Maniac Nurses Find Ecstacy