Nurse Sherri (1978)

The most interesting thing about this horror flick from schlockmeister Al Adamson—in fact, probably the only interesting thing—is the absurd number of alternate titles the picture has carried while worming its way through various distribution channels. We’re talking Beyond the Living, Hands of Death, Horror Hospital, Killer’s Curse, Terror Hospital, and the expanded moniker The Possession of Nurse Sherri. More creativity has gone into rebranding this clunker than went into making the movie itself. A dull compendium of clichés related to cults, demonic possession, mind control, sexy nurses, and other ’70s-cinema tropes—there’s even a dash of blaxploitation—Nurse Sherri concerns an RN who becomes possessed by the spirit of an evil cult leader. He uses her as an instrument of revenge, killing enemies as well as innocent bystanders. Yet huge swaths of Nurse Sherri are not horrific, because the storyline tracks the adventures of three attractive nurses. One has a sexual affair with a patient. One helps an athlete overcome the shock of becoming blind. As for Sherri, she makes time with a handsome doctor whenever she’s not offing people. (Despite the prominence of sex in the storyline, the onscreen content is quite chaste, meaning that Nurse Sherri doesn’t even make the grade as an exploitation flick.) By the standards of producer/director Adamson’s other movies, Nurse Sherri is fairly cogent and linear, although the acting and production values are as terrible as always. By any other standards, Nurse Sherri is laughably bad. The FX used to depict an ethereal figure menacing Sherri look as if they cost about $1.98. The dialogue scenes are clunky. (Sample line: “I’ll introduce you to the bliss that lies beyond the borders of hell!”) And the music, which sounds as if it was copped from prints of 1940s horror pictures, works overtime to inject Adamson’s lifeless footage with energy. 

Nurse Sherri: LAME