From her early collaborations with Roger Corman and Jack Hill to her breakout solo projects for Dimension Pictures, few film historians have properly credited Stephanie Rothman for her contribution to both cult aesthetics and feminist filmmaking. From her emotionally rich reinterpretation of the Valley of the Dolls-style friendship film with The Student Nurses to her queer horror classic The Velvet Vampire, Rothman’s empathy-driven approach to genre cinema allowed her films to transcend the budgetary shortcomings and cliché trappings of typical exploitation fare, setting her filmography apart as an exceptional entry into the cult canon. Although her professional career only spanned thirteen years and thirteen films, Rothman’s ingenious infusion of arthouse visuals into grindhouse genre exercises establishes her body of work as a forerunner for contemporary filmmakers like Anna Biller and Ana Lily Amirpour. By examining The Student Nurses and The Velvet Vampire’s alternative approaches to the 1960s nurse film subgenre and the classic vampire film, respectively, as well as the proto-Hunger Games prison film Terminal Island, audiences can gain a greater understanding of the artistic significance and unsung influence of Stephanie Rothman within the cult cinema landscape.
In order to completely assess the boundary pushing power of her directorial efforts, it is essential to acknowledge the groundbreaking work that Rothman achieved under the mentorship of Roger Corman. By providing Rothman with producing and creative supervising opportunities on both the summer bikini flick Beach Ball and an adaptation of the Soviet science-fiction story Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, Corman ushered Rothman into the production world of exploitation cinema, positioning her as a potential filmmaking power for Corman’s legendary production company American International Pictures. Following a small-scale collaboration with cult icon Jack Hill on Blood Bath as well as her disappointing solo debut It’s a Bikini World, Rothman took a three-year break to reassess her career. Upon returning to work for Corman at his second production company New World Pictures, Rothman finally established her distinct voice beyond Corman’s direct influence through her deft balance of social consciousness and genre-centric sophistication.
Although the director continues to acknowledge her frustration with being associated with exploitation cinema, The Student Nurses reveals that Rothman’s grasp of emotional storytelling and compelling cultural commentary pushes beyond the budgetary and ideological restrictions often associated with cult cinema. Interweaving narratives of pro-choice advocacy and immigrant representation throughout the structure of a typical Corman-produced nurse movie, The Student Nurses functions as a cinematic Trojan horse for sneaking Nixonian satire into a sophisticated Hollywood melodrama. Additionally, Rothman directly critiqued the Vietnam War effort by placing Sharon (Elaine Giftos), one of the four titular protagonists, amongst the Army nurses throughout the latter half of the film, politicizing the film as an overtly countercultural text. Perhaps the only aspect of The Student Nurses that surpasses the film’s political bent in terms of exploitation-centric boundary pushing is the film’s dabbling in sophisticated psychedelic aesthetics. In particular, the acid-inflected beach sex scene places Rothman’s opus alongside works like Easy Rider and Zabriskie Point in terms of countercultural representation and potently poetic visuals.
While The Student Nurses provided Rothman with the greatest financial success of her career, The Velvet Vampire arguably remains the most aesthetically influential work of the director’s filmography. Bridging the dreamlike divide between the classical black-and-red conception of vampirism and a Dali-esque desert landscape, The Velvet Vampire functioned as a forerunner for an ongoing cycle of sapphic vampire stories. From the sandy vistas surrounding the pivotal sex scene to the now-iconic red ensemble that Celeste Yarnall dons as the seductive vampire Diane LeFanu, The Velvet Vampire propels the sensational psychedelia of The Student Nurses into an exquisitely rendered world of sorcery and sensuality. Although The Velvet Vampire arose alongside a variety of foundational queer vampire films including Daughters of Darkness and Vampyros Lesbos, Rothman’s specific vision continues to seep into works as varied as the occult soap opera homage film The Love Witch and the high school-set horror masterwork Jennifer’s Body.
Surpassing even The Student Nurses and The Velvet Vampire in terms of narrative grit and epic scope within a specific genre structure, Terminal Island utilizes multiple layers of cult cinema stylization to satirize the state of American militarism and media distrust that permeated the sociocultural landscape of the 1970s. Encompassed within a television news stations coverage of life on the titular island, a space in which all of the world’s murderers dwell after the abolition of the death penalty, Terminal Island reveals the most divisive and violent tendencies of humanity through a creative fusion of the “women-in-prison” subgenre as well as the broader action thriller blaxploitation films of the early seventies. Even as Terminal Island was the most violent and stylistically hardened film of Rothman’s career, the civil war-centric narrative retained her signature commentary without sacrificing her adept handling of ensemble filmmaking. Falling at the center of a spectrum between the iconic A Most Dangerous Game and the YA phenomenon of the Hunger Games series, Terminal Island solidifies Rothman’s legacy as a versatile cinematic artist who remained unafraid of visual and intellectual reinvention throughout her brief career.
Perhaps the greatest irony at the core of Stephanie Rothman’s career is her own dismissal of the films that defined her career. Although she is quick to praise Roger Corman’s influence on her life and open invitation into the world of filmmaking, Rothman tends to publicly confess her own distaste for the trappings of exploitation cinema and disappointment in her groundbreaking work. In the contemporary age of revisionist feminist genre fare, the lasting impact of Rothman’s career is undeniable, as her sumptuous sense of horror stylization and politicization of coming-of-age ensemble pieces finds its way into many of the latest genre films from independent studios like A24 and Oscilloscope. From the lush and seductive surrealism of The Velvet Vampire to the shockingly prescient plotlines of The Student Nurses and Terminal Island, the diverse output of Stephanie Rothman’s career deserves to be celebrated as an essential piece in the puzzle of twentieth-century cult cinema.