DEATH NURSE (1988) (DVD Review)

DEATH NURSE (1988) 

Label: Olive Films / Slasher // Video 
Region Code: 1 NTSC
Duration: 58 Minutes 
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 
Video: Full Frame (1.33:1) 
Director: Nick Milland
Cast:  Priscilla Alden, Albert Eskinazi, Royal Farros

Welcome to the Shady Palms Clinic, a medical facility where Nurse Edith Mortley (Priscilla Alden) and her demented brother, Doctor Gordon Mortley (Albert Eskinazi) will welcome you in with a smile and murder you with a grin. This trashy SOV entry may be one of the most laborious and boring of all the Shot-On-Video movies... and that is saying something quite damning. Director Nick Millard also brought us the SOV oddity Cemetery Sisters (1988) a year a later, a movie that shares the murder for profit motif and also also borrows a lengthy scene from his earlier movie Criminally Insane (1975) to pad out the running time. And even then this anemic production comes in at just under 58-minutes.  A short run time seems to be the director's stamp of grade-z awfulness, but after watching it I couldn't imagine it running any longer without inducing a cinema-coma. 

The movie seems to borrow a thread from the proto-slasher Blood and Lace (1971) in which the culprits reuse the corpses of their victims by staging the stiffs to fool a nosey social worker into thinking all patients have been accounted for, so they can keep on murdering for profit. When it comes identifying the worst movie ever made I cannot definitively say that Death Nurse is the winner, but I will say that anyone who says Troll 2 or even Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space might be the worst clearly have not see any Nick Milland movies, a man who knows a thing or two about extending a scene of scooping ice cream and grave digging to the point of ridiculousness. This boils down to a whole lot of nothing punctuated by some mind-numbing moments of murder with some schlocky splashes of blood and an angry looking nurse who scowls a lot. 

Audio/Video: Disclaimer: Death Nurse, originally Shot On Video, is presented using the best available elements provided by Slasher // Video. That's right, it looks awful and sounds bad, this was shot on video back in the '80s and it looks and sounds exactly how you would imagine a VHS sourced movie should appear - not very good. 

I have so much admiration for Slasher // Video's Jesus Teran for the love and care he puts into these straight-to-video releases, he goes above and beyond what is called for. This release comes fully loaded with an arsenal of bad movie goodies, beginning  with an audio commentary with Director Nick Millard and Producer Irmi Millard moderated by Terán of Slasher // Video. There's also a scathing but completely honest video review of the movie from Paul Zamarelli of VHSCollector.com. Additionally we have a Q and A with the director, an image gallery, a tribute to actress Priscilla Alden, and trailers for the movie and the... sequel. As they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary with Director Nick Millard, Producer Irmi Millard, and Jesus Terán of Slasher // Video
- Exclusive Film Review By Paul Zamarelli of VHSCollector.com (14 Mins)
- Remembering Priscilla Alden (Featurette) (14 Mins)
- Shady Palms Waiting Room (1 Mins)
- Death Nurse Q and A (15 Mins)
- Photo Gallery (39 Images)
- Original VHS Release Intro
- Death Nurse Trailer (1 Mins)
- Death Nurse II Trailer (3 Mins) 

Quite a slice of trashy SOV awfulness through and through, there's nothing redeemable about this one and if you're a fan I think you need to question the decisions you've made in you're life. On the plus side, if someday you are told you only have 58-minutes to live I promise you that if you have the resources to find this movie and watch it you will have felt like you lived for at least eight more hours, but then you have to ask yourself if was it worth it? No matter how long you have left in this life I promise you that there will never be enough time for you to have sit through this movie in your lifetime, or the next. 1/5