NURSES FOR SALE (1976) **

 

An epidemic breaks out in a third world country, and freshly inoculated American nurses are sent to administer a vaccine.  A corrupt police official mistakes the vaccine for heroin and steals the shipment.  He places the blame on a crusty sea captain, played by Curd (The Spy Who Loved Me) Jurgens and throws him in jail.  Jurgens eventually escapes and comes to the aid of the nurses, who have been captured by revolutionaries.

Nurses for Sale came about when producer Sam Sherman acquired a German movie he couldn’t do a whole lot with.  Seeing that Roger Corman was making a mint with his sexy Nurses series, he had Al Adamson add some spicy footage of horny nurses.

Adamson’s work on the film amounts to about ten minutes of screen time.  His major contribution was the pre-opening title sequence in which two sexy nurses engage in a three-way with their stud lover.  Whereas Adamson’s previous patchwork features had some semblance of cohesion, it’s pretty apparent that this beginning has been crassly tacked on as it really doesn’t match the rest of the movie.  The lighting is poor, the acting is bad, and the whole scene feels like a crummy stag reel that’s somehow managed to play as a short subject before the main attraction.  The girls briefly show up later as prisoners in the revolutionaries’ camp for a bit of lesbian lovemaking.  There’s also a forced blowjob scene that’s awkwardly cut in with the prison break sequence, but overall, these extra snippets don’t add much to the picture. 

The rest of the movie (directed by Rolf Olsen) is OK.  About halfway through, the film takes a detour into the jungle.  Because of the grimy cinematography and the jungle setting, it’s easy to see how drive-in patrons would mistake this for one of Corman’s lensed-in-the-Philippines actioners.  Unfortunately, the sleaze is limited to a scene of the nurses showering, a few tame sex scenes, and one gratuitous wardrobe change.  We also get a decent acid-to-the-face scene.  The comedy is lame too, and the dubbing is cheesy, but Jurgens makes it watchable.  (I liked the part where he butted heads with the dirty cop who tries to confiscate his shipment of alcohol.)

The good news is, it’s short.  At only 66 minutes, it’s by far the shortest film so far on the Al Adamson boxset.  (Although he was only responsible for about eight minutes worth of footage.)  Of course, it FEELS much longer than the running time suggests (the finale is especially protracted), but it’s far from the worst cut-and-paste flick featured on this set.

Two years later, Adamson and Sherman would take another Jurgens/Olsen collaboration, The Doctor of St. Pauli and repackage it as Bedroom Stewardesses.

AKA:  Captain Typhoon.  AKA:  Captain Roughneck from St. Pauli.