Show Notes
They say sex sells, but can sex also sell feminist ideas? That's what director Stephanie Rothman did in the 60s and 70s. European movies and groovy new ideas inspired the bold director to make low-budget movies with big impacts. She began working for the great B-movie director Roger Corman, who trusted her to direct her first independent films.
She directed The Student Nurses, launching a wave of "sexy nurse" movies in the 70s. However, it was so much more than a sexploitation film playing at drive-in movies to teen boys. The film followed its young female protagonists through a variety of dramas that touched on issues that were affecting real women in the outside world. From pregnancy to addiction to revolution, The Student Nurses was about a lot more than sex. Don't get me wrong - there IS sex in the movie, but there's more than that.
Rothman cleverly "snuck" feminist ideas into raunchy movies. She also infused her sexy vampire film, The Velvet Vampire, with plenty of dreamy visuals that inspired later horror films such as The Love Witch. Her films touched on politics, sex, and love, and even included a sex-work film starring a young Cassandra Peterson (that's Elvira!). She did all of this while working within the exploitation genre, simply because it was the only avenue that she was offered. As a result, she fought against notions that her films were silly genre movies or filth. Rothman is still disregarded in feminist film studies for that reason. Let's change that! It's time to recognize Rothman's work as valuable for feminist filmmaking and female directors as a whole.
Thank you for listening! This episode was originally published with Grab Bag Collab. Special thanks to them! Thanks to Brock Alter for the podcast art and tech help. Directora is researched, written, edited, and hosted by Stephanie Weber. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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