Young Nurses in Love

My review was written in April 1989 after watching the movie on Vestron video cassette.

Arriving a bit belatedly, "Young Nurses in Love" is an inoffensive sex comedy going direct to video. Pic's main audience will probably consist of pay-cable viewers into mild titillation.

Evidently a low-budget response to the 1982 Fox release "Young Doctors in Love", pic wa made in New Jersey at the end of 1986 by prolific helmer Chuck Vincent, who's completed 10 films since.

Jeanne Marie toplines as a Soviet spy who infiltrates Hoover General Hospital as an all-American nurse. Her mission: steal the deposits by such geniuses as Einstein and Edison from the hospital's sperm bank to enable the next generation of Russkies to be brainier than us.

Okay slapstick antics are handled by a motley cast which includes good-natured former porn stars Jamie Gillis, Jane Hamilton and Annie Sprinkle. Unfortunately, there aren't enough laughs to distinguish this entry from the pack of similar comedies.

The late eighties were the age of glasnost when the Cold War was coming to an end and relationships between Russia and the West were gradually improving. Hollywood, however, tended to ignore this welcome development in international politics and continued to churn out films, both thrillers and comedies, in which the evil Russian commies served as convenient villains, "Rambo III" and the Bond film "The Living Daylights" being other examples. (There were occasional exceptions such as "Red Heat" in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a Russian cop who joins forces with his American equivalents to take on the bad guys).

"Young Nurses in Love" is another film which remains loyal to the idea of Russian villainy. The basic idea is that in a hospital somewhere in America there is a sperm bank used to store refrigerated samples from the great geniuses of twentieth-century history- Einstein, Thomas Edison and so on. The Russians are determined to steal these samples to learn the secrets of these great men, so infiltrate a beautiful secret agent into the hospital disguised as a nurse. Once inside, however, she falls in love with a handsome doctor- who just happens to be an undercover American spy in disguise.

The title of the film might suggest either a Mills and Boon type romance with a medical background or (if "love" is taken to be a euphemism for "lust") a softcore porno set in a hospital. I am indebted to the previous reviewer for the information that one of the cast is an "infamous adult-film star", but despite this the film is not really particularly erotic. Nor for that matter is it a romantic love story. It resembles more closely an American version of a British "Carry On" movie. (The "Carry On" team made several films with a hospital setting). Those pretty young nurses all wear rather tight-fitting, revealing uniforms, but they generally keep them on and we do not see any bare flesh. There are certainly no sex scenes.

Sex scenes are not the only thing the film lacks. Humour is also conspicuous by its absence. The script is witless, based around a few clichés which are never really developed- the doctors are all drunk or incompetent and the nurses are all mercenary, hoping to hook up romantically with a high-earning doctor. The acting is equally bad; comedy is harder than it looks, and none of the cast here show any signs of having a gift for it. The "Carry On" films varied in quality from the reasonably good to the terrible, but "Young Nurses in Love" is even worse than the very worst of that series. 1/10

In the attempt to watch every movie ever made there will always be those speed bumps. During the attempt, they could arrive in any shape, genre, or format of film. One must always keep a strong eye out for those that may cause a snag, or a possible distrust in cinema, but you can't catch them all. Occasionally, these films will fly well below the radar and deep within your homes. They may create a souring taste for cinema, but continue forward … remember, there is always a light at the end of the theater. Twice, in nearly a week, different films have been viewed, randomly, which caused a slight disgust. The first was the previously reviewed, utterly chaotic "The Young Americans" with Harvey Keitel – now, three days later, it is the low-budget direct to VHS cinematic exploit, "Young Nurses in Love". A combination of "Grey's Anatomy" (sans the medicine and overplayed music) and about a baker's dozen shots of espresso, "YNiL" begins with the gumption of any 80s sex-romp, full of Cold War innuendo and half-dressed nurses, all the while never slowing down, never asking for forgiveness, and never requiring any part of the mind. It a film that is unknowingly intense due to the amount of jokes, characters, and frivolous story attempted to be packed into a mere 90-ish minutes. It is also a film that is excessively frugal with its budget, allowing our nurses' humor to fall flat, be overwhelmingly repetitive, and never quite reaching the level of comic gold. With independent features like this, a viewer could be guaranteed one crass joke or impressive scene of genius, with "YNiL", it never approached the thought. Sure, it was crass, it was vigorous, it was completely out there – but it was a parody, and it was in that idea that this entire film faltered.

"Young Nurses in Love" felt like a knock-off Troma film, without the Lloyd Kaufman touch. It had a raunchy plot; steal the livelihood of famous dead people so that the Russians can overtake the US of A. Agents from both sides are placed in a hospital where the nurses care more about the wealth of the doctor than the actual practice of medicine and the doctors are riddled with clichés from being drunk to providing false diagnosis. The remainder of the plot falls quickly into place, a storyline that we have seen over a dozen times in multiple films, the two agents *gasp* fall for each other. Introduce to the plot very angry and unsatisfied side-characters, and you basically have the entire film "YNiL". As mentioned before, the immediate script is quite simple and could have provided a laugh or two, but due to the hyper nature of our characters and the inability for anyone in our cast to deliver a joke, it just fell short. This wasn't a film with high expectations, but there was a hope for at least one gold nugget or two of genuine comedy, alas – it was never found. The two main characters, Alan Fisler and Jeanne Marie are horrible as our love-interest slash spies. They are so focused on making sure they deliver the correct lines that no development is ever produced, no chemistry is even studied, these two actors flop around like fish out of water and we are to consider this a soap-opera medical parody? Add into this mix another cliché take on the mafia and the introduction of Twin Falls, played by the infamous adult-film star Annie Sprinkles. These are all elements that could have worked, making this a cult classic – it had all the robotics to do so – but director Chuck Vincent couldn't pull it together. "Young Nurses in Love" is embarrassing, not only to watch, but for those involved in the creation of this film.

Let's recap. Our story was simple, yet horribly developed. Our characters were amateurs, caring nothing for development only delivery of lines and the fast paced nature of the film corrupted both of these already failing elements. Our music, perhaps the only excitement of this film, was quintessentially 1980s. With bands like Zen for Primates, Buzzard Luck, and Tiger Lily every moment was successfully synthesized, perfectly harmonized, and ironically upbeat. It kept my toes tapping and my nostalgic feel for a decade lost to rock and or roll. Yet, outside of the sound, this film failed. If it were a Troma film, perhaps Lloyd would have pushed it to the next level, but Vincent kept adding, and adding, and adding without any hope of development. I had strong hopes for this film, but none of them came true.

Overall, as if you couldn't already tell, "Young Nurses in Love" provided only the slightest form of entertainment – and that was merely in the sound. Everything surrounding this film was low-budget, which isn't bad if handled better, but the intensity of the script, the lack of development with the characters, and the painful stretch to try to make this into a feature length film just fell short. Chuck Vincent, our director, should have created a strong cultish film with these elements, but he couldn't put the puzzle pieces together. If another production company had handled this, I think we may have had a winner – but instead we had a movie stuck in VHS-land forever. "Young Nurses in Love" also boasts an R-rating, which by 2009 standards, would have been a soft PG-13. There was nothing positive surrounding this film, and it will ultimately disappoint.

Grade: ½ out of *****