Night Call Nurses is a 1972 film directed by Jonathan Kaplan.
As one might guess from the title, it's an Exploitation Film about sexy young nurses. As one might not guess from the title, it's about nurses in a psychiatric ward. Barbara, Janis, and Sandra are three beautiful nurses who both work together and (possibly) live together. Each gets their own plot line. Barbara goes to a sort of free love, liberated therapy group which eventually leads to a romantic encounter between her and the psychiatrist who runs said group. Barbara also has a deranged stalker who is writing threatening letters. Bubbly Janis winds up dating a patient, a truck driver named Kyle who's committed to the ward after having a psychotic episode after popping too many amphetamines while truck driving. Sandra, who happens to be African-American, winds up tending to Sampson, a "black power" activist who has been admitted to the ward after he tried to kill himself in prison. After finding out that Sampson didn't try to kill himself—rather the warden tried to kill him, and is determined to finish the job—Sandra agrees to help Samson escape.
Produced by Roger Corman, as the third in a series of five Exploitation Films about hot, scantily-clad nurses. Dennis Dugan, who decades later would make a career directing Adam Sandler movies, plays Barbara's insane stalker. Director Jonathan Kaplan later directed Jodie Foster to an Oscar in The Accused.
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: One of the patients on the ward is a rich guy whose face is covered with bandages after he was badly burned. Sandra gets Sampson out of the ward by wrapping his face up in bandages and disguising him as the rich guy.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Barbara's stalker is a psycho named Kit who dresses up in a nurse's uniform and even puts on makeup.
- Driven to Suicide: The film opens with one of the patients on the ward jumping off the hospital roof to her death. Naturally she takes her clothes off first.
- Empathy Doll Shot: The woman who kills herself by jumping off the roof is a mental patient who's been given a doll. We see the doll shattering when it hits the ground.
- Exploitation Film: Cheesy, low-budget 70s exploitation, featuring terrible acting, awkward dialogue, and nurses taking their clothes off.
- Fan Disservice: The creepy opening scene has one of the patients in the mental ward strip down to panties before throwing herself off the roof to her death. Another gorgeous young woman walks naked into the nurse's lounge, as she's having a psychotic breakdown.
- Gaslighting: Barbara overhears a recording of Dr. Bramblett saying that she is mentally disturbed and on the point of insanity. She goes back to Dr. Bramblett who tells her that there was no such recording and she hallucinated it. After Barbara and Bramblett wind up having sex, he tells her that he made the recording and arranged for her to hear it as part of a deliberate attempt, For Science!, to see if he could make someone go crazy.
- Hospital Hottie: Three sexy nurses who take their clothes off a lot. Third in a series of Roger Corman "sexy nurse" movies that started with The Student Nurses in 1970.
- I Call Him "Mister Happy": After Kyle goes through detox and is leaving the ward, he points at Janice's name tag and says "Is that the name of your left titty?" Janis shoots back that "The name of my left titty's Irene."
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: A scene where Kyle beats up not one but two angry bikers, while out on a date with Janis, cuts directly to Kyle and Janis going to bed together.
- Left Hanging: The plot line with Barbara and her stalker Kit ends with Kit brandishing a cleaver before bashing Dr. Bramblett over the head with a vodka bottle. Kit thinks he's a nurse, so Barbara talks Kit into helping the injured man...and that's where the scene, and the whole plot, ends. The film throws in a shot of Barbara walking to work at the end to indicate that whatever happened with Kit, she isn't dead.
- Naked Nutter: Features an opening scene in which a young woman suffering a psychotic break climbs to the roof, strips to nothing but a pair of panties, then jumps to her death.
- Never Suicide: Sampson says that he is a political prisoner and he did not attempt to kill himself. And Warden Kelly pretty much confirms that he intends to finish the job.
- Red Light District: When the guy who picked up a hitchhiking Barbara (Dick Miller, a Corman regular who later became a Joe Dante regular and played the dad in Gremlins) starts getting a little creepy, Barbara demands that he let her out. He does... right in the middle of a red-light district filled with Streetwalkers and porn theaters. High-strung Barbara has a minor breakdown.
- Repeat Cut: Warden Kelly's death by shotgun blast to the gut is shown with several repeat cuts as he topples over.
- Scenery Censor: Roger Corman's directors were under strict orders that while there should be plenty of T and A in his T&A movies, private parts were not to be shown. So when a woman at Barbara's therapy group strips naked to make a point about being comfortable with one's body, a log in a fireplace is positioned so that a knot in the log just covers her privates.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: The women at the group therapy meeting who let the psychiatrist talk them into taking their clothes off. Barbara does not join.
- Shower of Love: Janis and Kyle have sex in a shower while her creepy stalker watches.
- Snake Oil Salesman: One random scene has a snake oil salesman who glories in the name of E. Eddie Edwards trying to sell the hospital bogus medications. When the doctor points out that one of the medications is known to cause Parkinson's, Eddie says that he has another medication that can cure that.
- Visual Innuendo: Audio innuendo. Kyle the truck driver's sex scene with Janis ends with a stock footage clip of his truck's air horn sounding.
