Violence/Gore: A man has his head blown off while his girlfriend watches. A woman is abducted. A scantily clad girl is whipped. The girls are heroin addicts. A gardener is shot in the head and impaled on a garden gnome. The nurses are cannibals. Bloody bags are disposed of. A gagged woman has her throat slit and her innards played with, while later her corpse is disemboweled with a chainsaw. A woman skewers herself on a branch before being shot by a machine gun. An old man is mercilessly whipped. A camping family is attacked with machine guns. A woman is shorn of her shirt and then taunted with a knife before having her throat slit. Two women engage in a catfight, and after one is killed, the other molests the corpse with a sharpened staff. A young man has his feet ripped off by trip wire. A girl gets her head blown off with a shotgun. A young man is blown away after sex, like with a shotgun. A girl goes on a killing spree with a machine gun.

Sex/Nudity: Breasts popping out of nightgowns. Nurses wear outfits more fitting for fetishists than a hospital. Lots of flimsy lingerie wearing. Long, dull topless dances. Light fondling among the scantily clad women folk. A mother tries to sleep with her daughter.

Best Line: “Her obsession with violence is crystallized in the contents of her comic books, most of all in the adventures of her hero, Natchell Burkman - a super-strong mercenary who shoots before thinking, whose gun does the talking, who knows every possible killing technique. A man who can’t be stopped by anything. A man who single-handedly destroyed whole armies.” (part of a narrator’s analysis of Sabrina’s obsession with violence, told while Sabrina reads a poorly drawn comic as names like “Mao” and “Ed Gein” flash around her.

Score:

When not watching the cinematic antics of Misty Mundae in the latest Bill Hellfire release or pondering how Tina Krause and Mia Copia can exist in the same universe and yet neither sports a goatee, I’m sure to be watching MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY. “Why,” you may ask? Simple, MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is stuck in my DVD player. Of course, to most this would be the definition of hell, but I’ve decided to concoct some insipid philosophy on viewing film so as to save a trip to the repair shop. This philosophy is that to truly know a film you must make it your life’s viewing. There’s some other crap I wrote, but I seem to have spilled coffee all over my notes.

Although I haven’t been able to verify this for sure, MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is apparently a Hungarian porno film that’s been edited into one of the most delirious Dada delights you’ll ever see, I’m talking about you, not the other guy who reads this review. Taking a page out of the “if you show skin, you don’t need a coherent plot” handbook, the folks at Troma (the greatest film studio ever for those who don’t know, aka morons) have given us this marvel of absurdity. Here’s the (tee hee) plot: A wicked warden, Ilsa, has a love interest, Sabrina, that is also her daughter. Ilsa’s past lover is jealous and…oh Christ, I give up. And you will too.

MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY is a journey that will hold you transfixed like a deer caught in headlights. Your jaw will drop within the first few seconds. Never have you seen such shameless disregard for coherency in your life…Hollywood blockbusters excluded, of course. To attempt to describe this journey in any more detail is futile. You must experience the event first-hand in order to truly know the world of MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY.

However, there are some interesting items I would like to mention. First is the inclusion of the Ilsa character - here a wicked nurse. Is this then the fifth ‘Ilsa’ movie? My answer is yes. Secondly, in one of the numerous segments featuring a voiceover, the nurses are described as living the life of the undead because there aren’t any thrills for those who’ve dipped so deep into deviant desires. If this is true, then why the hell is the film called MANIAC NURSES FIND ECSTASY? Shouldn’t it be called MANIAC NURSES ATTEMPTED TO FIND ECSTASY BUT FAILED AND NOW LIVE IN DESPAIR, or MANIAC YET BUMMED OUT NURSES? Finally, in the blood bath ending, why whenever the visual scorecard comes up does it keep track of points with plus symbols instead of numbers?

Of course, by asking these questions, I’m revealing that I don’t get it - ‘it’ being that there’s nothing to get. My regards to Harry M. Love for both a stunning directorial job and nom de plume.

WARNING: Don’t be fooled by the cover, fellas - this film ain’t got Tiffany Shepis in it.

DVD Extras: The DVD release from Troma is but a skeleton of what that label offered before. There is no Tour of Troma, No T.I.T. test, no tongue-in-cheek trailer for the feature, no Tempting Tromabilia, No informative intro by Lloyd Kaufman…stop me before I start crying. All we get is the feature digitally remastered, the trailer, a smattering of trailers for other Troma features, interactive scene access and the Radiation March commercial, which has been proven to cause cerebral aneurysms! The presentation is 1:33:1. The sound is fine, the picture clear, no subtitles. The disc plays when you put it in your player. What more can be said? Well, I’m off to write hate mail to Alec Baldwin, so take care.

AH