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The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Camp vampires! Frisky throuples! How Stephanie Rothman became queen of the B-movie
Stephanie Rothman first came across the term 'exploitation' in a review of one of her own films. It was 1970, and her second solo-directed feature, The Student Nurses, a small-budget indie about trainees at an inner-city hospital, set against Los Angeles's bubbling counterculture, was doing well at the US box office. (It eventually made more than $1m from a $150,000 budget.) Rothman was pleased but the review took her aback. It called it an 'exploitation film' with 'surprising depth'. Fifty-five years on and Rothman is a cult legend who fully embraces the label. 'I started out with a very snobbish attitude,' she says on a video call from California. 'I was shocked that's what I was making! But as time went on, I began to appreciate what I was able to do, which was to take elements of popular entertainment, weave them into a tapestry of more interesting ideas, and end up with something very different. So while I started out as a snob, I have not ended up as one.' The seven features she directed during her brief, explosive career bear all the traditional exploitation hallmarks: low budgets, quick turnarounds, breasts, sex, violence and risque marketing campaigns. They're also funny and subversive, with explicit politics to match the (equal opportunity) nudity. Now 88, Rothman is warm and funny – and also pin-sharp and precise. The determination and clarity required of a female director pursuing her vision and preserving her principles in the male-dominated 1970s exploitation industry is fully apparent. Nevertheless, becoming exploitation's cult heroine was not what she had in mind when she was one of three women who enrolled on a graduate film course in California in 1962, where she met her husband and future collaborator Charles S Swartz. After graduating, she worked for pulp cinema impresario Roger Corman, the self-described 'Orson Welles of the Z movie' who had built an empire by churning out low-cost, high-shock genre flicks. Always willing to take a chance on a young film-maker (as long as they delivered on schedule and under budget), he immediately put Rothman to work. Soon she was landing her first significant credits, co-directing a messy 1966 horror called Blood Bath (a salvage job, after the initial director dropped the ball), then as sole director, with Swartz as producer, on the beach movie It's a Bikini World (1967). The 14-day shoot was hectic, but Rothman delivered on time and on budget. 'I was thrilled and I threw myself into it,' she says. 'I wasn't afraid.' The Student Nurses followed, with which she translated a thin brief – 'a film about nurses, primarily sexy, with a little violence' – into a multi-layered tale. Rothman personally picked out the film's poster, featuring four alluring nurses gazing outward under the tagline 'They're learning fast!' The film sparked a series of nursesploitation copycats. The Velvet Vampire, a seductive horror set in the California desert, was less commercially successful but has since become Rothman's best-known film, prized for its exquisite camp and European arthouse sensibility – notably its dreamy surrealist sequences inspired by Jean Cocteau. Despite a shoestring budget and the challenges of a desert shoot ('We were always backing up into cacti'), the result was an arresting Mojave gothic with a streak of transgressive queer female sexuality. When Rothman and Swartz broke away from Corman, their films became even quirkier. Group Marriage (1973), a comedy about a polycule who take on the legal system to assert their right to marry, was inspired by the theories of futurist Alvin Toffler and playwright Georges Feydeau's farces. Rothman's affectionate depiction of the central relationship feels prescient, as does a finale in which the group's gay neighbours decide they'd also like to marry. 'I don't know of any other film that, at that time, had a gay wedding in it,' says Rothman. 'When we showed the film, at the scene where the gay couple get married, the audience roared with laughter. Not with rage, not disdain, but surprise.' The Working Girls, about a trio of ambitious young women who use their wiles to navigate the job market, is by far her most personal film. 'I've always thought of it as being dedicated to the Equal Rights Amendment,' says Rothman. 'A woman couldn't get a bank account in her own name. I was a working woman, making my own living, and I couldn't get a credit card!' Ironically, The Working Girls did little to improve Rothman's own finances. She was ready to break free of the exploitation genre, but while fellow graduates of Corman's trash cinema stable such as Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola managed to move into the mainstream, Rothman did not. The Working Girls, released in 1974, was her final feature. 'People often ask me why I left the industry,' she sighs. 'I didn't leave the film industry, the film industry left me. It was very frustrating. I couldn't get work in television. I couldn't afford to join the Directors Guild.' In the 1980s, after turning down a few offers to return to exploitation, Rothman quit the industry for good. 'It wasn't the right time to be making films for me, the opportunities weren't there. They were there for young men, but not for me.' Her films were rarely screened in subsequent decades, but a wave of restorations is now in motion, partly due to renewed appreciation for female 'trash' cinema. A Rothman-esque spirit can be traced in work by Rose Glass (Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), Prano Bailey-Bond (Censor) and Julia Ducournau, director of Raw and the Palme d'Or-wining body-horror Titane. The playfulness of Rothman's anti-patriarchal stories also feels freshly relevant to audiences. When The Working Girls screened in Venice in 2023, she was approached by a group of students who told her it 'didn't feel dated at all'. 'That was deeply gratifying,' says Rothman, 'because of my great age and their great youth! But it also shows how things have regressed.' Stephanie Rothman's films will screen at Cinema Rediscovered, Bristol, from 23 to 27 July and at the Barbican, London, 29 July to 14 August
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Camp vampires! Frisky throuples! How Stephanie Rothman became queen of the B-movie
Stephanie Rothman first came across the term 'exploitation' in a review of one of her own films. It was 1970, and her second solo-directed feature, The Student Nurses, a small-budget indie about trainees at an inner-city hospital, set against Los Angeles's bubbling counterculture, was doing well at the US box office. (It eventually made more than $1m from a $150,000 budget.) Rothman was pleased but the review took her aback. It called it an 'exploitation film' with 'surprising depth'. Fifty-five years on and Rothman is a cult legend who fully embraces the label. 'I started out with a very snobbish attitude,' she says on a video call from California. 'I was shocked that's what I was making! But as time went on, I began to appreciate what I was able to do, which was to take elements of popular entertainment, weave them into a tapestry of more interesting ideas, and end up with something very different. So while I started out as a snob, I have not ended up as one.' The seven features she directed during her brief, explosive career bear all the traditional exploitation hallmarks: low budgets, quick turnarounds, breasts, sex, violence and risque marketing campaigns. They're also funny and subversive, with explicit politics to match the (equal opportunity) nudity. Now 88, Rothman is warm and funny – and also pin-sharp and precise. The determination and clarity required of a female director pursuing her vision and preserving her principles in the male-dominated 1970s exploitation industry is fully apparent. Nevertheless, becoming exploitation's cult heroine was not what she had in mind when she was one of three women who enrolled on a graduate film course in California in 1962, where she met her husband and future collaborator Charles S Swartz. After graduating, she worked for pulp cinema impresario Roger Corman, the self-described 'Orson Welles of the Z movie' who had built an empire by churning out low-cost, high-shock genre flicks. Always willing to take a chance on a young film-maker (as long as they delivered on schedule and under budget), he immediately put Rothman to work. Soon she was landing her first significant credits, co-directing a messy 1966 horror called Blood Bath (a salvage job, after the initial director dropped the ball), then as sole director, with Swartz as producer, on the beach movie It's a Bikini World (1967). The 14-day shoot was hectic, but Rothman delivered on time and on budget. 'I was thrilled and I threw myself into it,' she says. 'I wasn't afraid.' The Student Nurses followed, with which she translated a thin brief – 'a film about nurses, primarily sexy, with a little violence' – into a multi-layered tale. Rothman personally picked out the film's poster, featuring four alluring nurses gazing outward under the tagline 'They're learning fast!' The film sparked a series of nursesploitation copycats. The Velvet Vampire, a seductive horror set in the California desert, was less commercially successful but has since become Rothman's best-known film, prized for its exquisite camp and European arthouse sensibility – notably its dreamy surrealist sequences inspired by Jean Cocteau. Despite a shoestring budget and the challenges of a desert shoot ('We were always backing up into cacti'), the result was an arresting Mojave gothic with a streak of transgressive queer female sexuality. When Rothman and Swartz broke away from Corman, their films became even quirkier. Group Marriage (1973), a comedy about a polycule who take on the legal system to assert their right to marry, was inspired by the theories of futurist Alvin Toffler and playwright Georges Feydeau's farces. Rothman's affectionate depiction of the central relationship feels prescient, as does a finale in which the group's gay neighbours decide they'd also like to marry. 'I don't know of any other film that, at that time, had a gay wedding in it,' says Rothman. 'When we showed the film, at the scene where the gay couple get married, the audience roared with laughter. Not with rage, not disdain, but surprise.' The Working Girls, about a trio of ambitious young women who use their wiles to navigate the job market, is by far her most personal film. 'I've always thought of it as being dedicated to the Equal Rights Amendment,' says Rothman. 'A woman couldn't get a bank account in her own name. I was a working woman, making my own living, and I couldn't get a credit card!' Ironically, The Working Girls did little to improve Rothman's own finances. She was ready to break free of the exploitation genre, but while fellow graduates of Corman's trash cinema stable such as Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola managed to move into the mainstream, Rothman did not. The Working Girls, released in 1974, was her final feature. 'People often ask me why I left the industry,' she sighs. 'I didn't leave the film industry, the film industry left me. It was very frustrating. I couldn't get work in television. I couldn't afford to join the Directors Guild.' In the 1980s, after turning down a few offers to return to exploitation, Rothman quit the industry for good. 'It wasn't the right time to be making films for me, the opportunities weren't there. They were there for young men, but not for me.' Her films were rarely screened in subsequent decades, but a wave of restorations is now in motion, partly due to renewed appreciation for female 'trash' cinema. A Rothman-esque spirit can be traced in work by Rose Glass (Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), Prano Bailey-Bond (Censor) and Julia Ducournau, director of Raw and the Palme d'Or-wining body-horror Titane. The playfulness of Rothman's anti-patriarchal stories also feels freshly relevant to audiences. When The Working Girls screened in Venice in 2023, she was approached by a group of students who told her it 'didn't feel dated at all'. 'That was deeply gratifying,' says Rothman, 'because of my great age and their great youth! But it also shows how things have regressed.' Stephanie Rothman's films will screen at Cinema Rediscovered, Bristol, from 23 to 27 July and at the Barbican, London, 29 July to 14 August
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
12 Sleazy '70s Movies That Don't Care About Your Respect
These 12 sleazy 1970s movies don't care about respect — they care about entertainment. We aren't talking about movies with an X rating, which are their own category. And we aren't talking about movies like Serpico, The French Connection and Mean Streets that depict sleaze but are, you know, classy about it. We're talking about movies that ruthlessly shock and pander for the sake of good clean — or not so clean — thrills. So here we go. When Penthouse founder Bob Guccione set out to make a mainstream movie, the result was Caligula — a story of the indulgent Roman emperor with big names attached. Led by rather fearless Clockwork Orange veteran Malcolm McDowell, the film stars Teresa Ann Savoy (above), as well as Helen Mirren and Peter O'Toole. But what it's best known for is its over-the-top sex scenes. It was written by the very respected Gore Vidal, who disavowed it after director Tinto Brass substantially altered his script. A gloriously shameless movie (starting with that title) that uses ickiness to its great advantage. It's one of the most effective and captivating horror movies ever made thanks to its hardcore atmosphere, oozing with sex and violence. Filled with the sounds of animals and buzzing flies, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes clear from the start that it has no limits, even before we hear the first rev of Leatherface's chainsaw. lsa, She Wolf of the S.S. affects high-minded ideals with a ridiculous opening card (see above), but it's all just an excuse to tell the story of Ilsa, an evil Nazi warden who wants to prove women are better at suffering than men, and should therefore be allowed to fight for Hitler. Of course, she proves this through a series of "experiments" on women who are scantily clad, at best. Let's all say it together now: "They couldn't make this today." A Canadian film by director Don Edmonds, it managed to get reviewed by Gene Siskel, who called it "the most degenerate picture I have seen to play downtown." We can't tell if that's a thumbs up or thumbs down. Abel Ferrara has made some straight-up classics — including King of New York and Bad Lieutenant — but the Bronx-born director cut his teeth with The Driller Killer. (His debut was an adult motion picture in which he also performed.) Ferrara also appeared in The Driller Killer (above) about a New York City artist who deals with his urban angst by going on a killing spree with a power tool. The film made it onto the United Kingdom's list of "video nasties" criticized for their extreme content. Look, we love Dolemite, but when the hero of the movie is a pimp, you're watching a sleazy movie. Rudy Ray Moore's endlessly entertaining Blaxploitation icon sprang from his filthy standup comedy routines: He passed on stories of a streetwise hustler named Dolemite who explained, "Dolemite is my name and f---ing up motherf---ers is my game." Dolemite was also a triumph of DIY, indie moviemaking — as spelled out in the recent Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy. Widely regarded as one of the best exploitation movies ever made, this Swedish film by director Bo Arne Vibenius stars Christina Lindberg as as a mute woman who endures a series of unbelievable traumas — which Vibenius isn't shy about showing onscreen. She eventually finds herself a double-barrel shotgun and goes on a revenge mission that she — and her targets — very much deserve. We hate this movie, because it's so incredible effective. One of the most shameless 1970s movies of all, it has a handmade quality that makes it violence and cruelty feel all the more real. Director Wes Craven made his debut with Last House on the Left — a story of abduction, brutality and vengeance, scored by eerie hippie music — before going on to create the classic Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream horror franchises. With all due respect to those films, they aren't remotely as scary as Last House on the Left. Inspired by the writings of Marquis de Sade, this film by Pier Paolo Pasolini is about a group of fascists who round up a group of adolescents and do horrible things to them for 120 days. Just make a list of things that gross you out, and we promise they're in Salo. Interestingly, Abel Ferrara, who you may remember from our Driller Killer entry, made a movie about Pasolini in 2014 about his life around the time he was making Salo. It stars the great Willem Dafoe, a good friend and frequent collaborator of Ferrara's. You probably remember the disco, but not the desperation. Saturday Night Fever is a nuanced and gritty character study of Tony Manero (John Travolta, above) that unflinchingly depicts racism and sexual violence. Tony is deeply flawed, and no hero by today's standards, but the movie tries to win back our affection for him by the end. For such a successful film, it's a very sleazy movie and a rough watch — but the dancing is fantastic, at least. One of many killer-animals movies rushed to the screen after the blockbuster success of Jaws, Piranha — unlike, say, Orca, to use one example — made no pretense of respectability. And we respect that. A Roger Corman production through and through, this movie existed to show swimmers get attacked by toothy fish, and we love that. It's the epitome of a B movie. But it was also important to the careers of some great filmmakers, including Corman: Six years after Piranha, Joe Dante went on to direct the massive hit Gremlins. And Piranha co-writer John Sayles would go on to make films including Eight Men Out and The Secret of Roan Inish. A movie we both love and respect, The Kentucky Fried Movie is a sendup of grindhouse and sleaze that is also, itself, pretty sleazy — but in a good way. It leaves no joke unturned, and parody-movie sendups go waaay further than necessary to satirize the things they're satirizing. The Kentucky Fried Movie is one of funniest of all sleazy movies, and it led to more mainstream, less sleazy success for director John Landis and writers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, who would later go on to make Airplane. If you liked this, you might also like our list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon. And you might also like this behind the scenes look at The Kentucky Fried Movie. Main image: The Kentucky Fried Movie. 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