His inverted values showing, Shaun Costello has written the IMDb synopsis for his paste-up job TEENAGE NURSES and seems to take rude delight in how crummy it is. I'm a big fan of his better work, but this clunker is literally unwatchable.
Times have changed and the film's making fun of the VA hospital and the veterans who stay there has lost its satirical edge and emerges as merely poor taste 40 years later, with the usual (if unfair) "how did you manage to dodge the draft, Shaun?" a logical reaction. The clownish auteur may think this farrago is funny, but it is lame from start to finish.
In fact, Costello's frequent interruptions wearing a Halloween fake nose and glasses on his face as a newscaster are horrendously unfunny, as is his running gag of perpetrating a "no comment" Sam Donaldson interview outside the hospital over and over. He also throws himself into the film as a vet in a bed near Jamie Gillis to get serviced by the nurses, en route to a staggeringly amateurish climax of Costello hobbling down the street on crutches - cut to insert shot of nurses yelling "Look out!" and our paste-up auteur is run over by a hit and run driver. Cut back to filler of him still alive (out of sequence) back in Ward F humping while the crummy laugh track plays.
The earlier film of vaudeville acts is no better, featuring singers, dancers and a band that make the guests on the late Joe Franklin's TV amateur show look talented. A sexy, oiled-up belly dancer was about the only tolerable performer on view.
Of course, bamboozling the public is nothing new in show biz, but I can't understand how SC can be proud in his dotage of insulting the customers who I must remind him helped him make a living by going to his films. I've sat through 50 Costello movies (although only six back at theaters in the '70s and '80s, the rest via video revivals) and I would rate this sow's ear converted into an even worse sow's ear the SKIDOO of his career, using Otto Preminger (all of whose films I've seen) as the yardstick.
Times have changed and the film's making fun of the VA hospital and the veterans who stay there has lost its satirical edge and emerges as merely poor taste 40 years later, with the usual (if unfair) "how did you manage to dodge the draft, Shaun?" a logical reaction. The clownish auteur may think this farrago is funny, but it is lame from start to finish.
In fact, Costello's frequent interruptions wearing a Halloween fake nose and glasses on his face as a newscaster are horrendously unfunny, as is his running gag of perpetrating a "no comment" Sam Donaldson interview outside the hospital over and over. He also throws himself into the film as a vet in a bed near Jamie Gillis to get serviced by the nurses, en route to a staggeringly amateurish climax of Costello hobbling down the street on crutches - cut to insert shot of nurses yelling "Look out!" and our paste-up auteur is run over by a hit and run driver. Cut back to filler of him still alive (out of sequence) back in Ward F humping while the crummy laugh track plays.
The earlier film of vaudeville acts is no better, featuring singers, dancers and a band that make the guests on the late Joe Franklin's TV amateur show look talented. A sexy, oiled-up belly dancer was about the only tolerable performer on view.
Of course, bamboozling the public is nothing new in show biz, but I can't understand how SC can be proud in his dotage of insulting the customers who I must remind him helped him make a living by going to his films. I've sat through 50 Costello movies (although only six back at theaters in the '70s and '80s, the rest via video revivals) and I would rate this sow's ear converted into an even worse sow's ear the SKIDOO of his career, using Otto Preminger (all of whose films I've seen) as the yardstick.