Tender Loving Care (1973)

Although most of his sexy-nurse flicks were released through New World Pictures, Roger Corman issued Tender Loving Care through one of his other entities, Filmgroup. Like its New World counterparts, Tender Loving Care follows the private and professional adventures of three young women who room together while working at the same hospital. Yet while the New World sexy-nurse movies had glimmers of style as well as pretentions to social relevance, Tender Loving Care is written, photographed, and acted in the rudimentary fashion of a porno movie, telling a stupidly melodramatic story that climaxes with a ridiculous explosion of violence. Naturally, each of the three ladies has a showcase sex scene, and of course there’s a rape sequence. That said, does Tender Loving Care have any redeeming qualities? Depends how you define that notion. The liveliest scenes involve minor cult-fave actor George “Buck” Flower, appearing here clean-shaven instead of with his usual frontier-coot drag. He plays a demented orderly whose sexual violation of a nurse involves lots of creepy ad-libs about which nipple she wants him to pinch next. Just as frequent Corman collaborator Dick Miller added a welcome blast of energy to some of the New World nurse movies, Flower enlivens brief stretches of Tender Loving Care with compelling weirdness. The movie also has ’70s texture to burn, including a long sequence of a hot R&B band playing in a pimped-out nightclub. Speaking of ’70s texture, this review should not omit the dirt-bike rider who brings a girl back to his swingin’ bachelor pad so she can writhe on his waterbed while he sucks her toes.

Tender Loving Care: LAME