Death Nurse 2 (1988)

Directed by:
"Nick Philips" (Nick Millard)

Picking up right where DEATH NURSE (1987) left off, a detective discovers the corpse of elderly social worker Faith Chandler (Frances Millard, methinks) in the garage of the Shady Palms Clinic. As he attempts to enter the home, he's immediately greeted by hefty nurse Edith Mortley's (Priscilla Alden) butcher knife. Despite recent attention from police officers investigating multiple disappearances and health inspectors wanting to shut them down because of a rat infestation and strange odors emanating from the basement, Edith and her murderous doctor brother Gordon (Albert Eskinazi) decide to keep their usual routine going. And by usual routine, I mean killing their patients for the insurance money and then feeding them to the rats. Or as Edith puts it, "It's good business Gordon. The patients eat the rats and the rats eat the patients." Yes, the deadly duo also save money on food by feeding their patients either rats or human remain "stew." Meanwhile, a cop decides to start utilizing the Shady Palms facility to get some scum off of the streets.

First up is knife-wielding, dumpster-diving indigent "alky" Brownie (Irmgard Millard). She doesn't last too long after she pulls a knife on Edith for threatening to take away her beloved brown bag o' hooch. Edith stabs her a bunch of times and sticks her in the basement, but Brownie isn't quite dead yet. She sneaks back upstairs, stabs Gordon and then is finally taken out with about a dozen blows to the back with a meat cleaver. Edith puts Gordon on bed rest, and goes about her business while he sits in bed acting depressed for the rest of the film. Their next patient is a mentally-ill, "self-stylized philosopher" named Mischa Brudinsky (played by the same actor who played the "Polish poet" in the same team's DOCTOR BLOODBATH). Mischa constantly screams out his long, ultra-conservative and incomprehensible political rants, thinks the income tax should be abolished and lives in fear that this country will turn into a socialist nation. What the hell? Is this suddenly turning into some kind of political statement? Who knows, but I must admit that I laughed when Edith pulled out her freshly-sharpened cleaver and started chopping him up after he yelled "Capitalism is good!" at her.

We discover that the siblings aren't even actually what they claim to be. Edith was thrown out of nursing school before graduation because of her bad behavior and is thus not even officially a nurse, and Gordon is just a veterinarian who would have preferred to have been a surgeon. Faith's twin sister Charity (also played by Frances Millard, who talks kind of like Edith Massey) pops in looking for her missing sister and promptly files a police report because of Edith's suspicious behavior. When the fuzz start breathing down her neck, our beloved death nurse attempts to cover the smell by throwing lime on the corpses, but it's all for naught. Rats have carried human tissue samples out onto their front lawn and the police have already discovered them and had them analyzed. Director Millard shows up at the very end as copper Sgt. Dave Gallagher to reveal the bad news and put the kibosh on Edith and Gordon's future activities.

Possibly behind only Jerry Warren, Millard may actually be one of horror cinema's thriftiest filmmakers, seeing as how he managed to slap together a half dozen 80s horror features using next to no money, a consumer grade camcorder, his friends and family as 'actors' and a bare minimum of new footage. Here, he again liberally recycles scenes from both CRIMINALLY INSANE (1973) and SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING (1974); passing them off as Edith's nightmares. Since this is a follow-up, he's also able to pad things out even further by including clips from the first Death Nurse to help push the run-time up to a paltry 60 minutes. Again, there's a new title card for the film, but the same credits from Criminally Insane are re-run. The music from that film is also reused. It's set in the same exact Pepto Bismol-colored San Francisco house the other movies are set in, features most of the same 'actors' from the other movies and features the same aluminum-foil-covered weapons for the close-up hacking / stabbing scenes. There are countless zoom shots, many close-ups of Edith's scowling face and numerous scenes of people sitting, sleeping, lounging on a couch or walking through the house that never seem to end.

Criminally Insane, Satan's Black Wedding and CRAZY FAT ETHEL II (1987) were all released together on one DVD, but none of Millard's other 80s genre efforts have been. Both Death Nurse films were released on VHS by the obscure company The Incredibly Strange Filmworks.

★

Death Nurse (1987)

Directed by:
Nick Millard

You've seen her as an obese murderess who goes nutzoid when people threaten to take her precious food away in the campy, Z-grade minor cult effort CRIMINALLY INSANE (1973) as well as its belated camcorder follow-up CRAZY FAT ETHEL 2 (1987), and now you can see "Queen of Camp" Priscilla Alden at it again playing an almost identical role. The three films are so similar, they should have just called this one Criminally Insane 3... or better yet, Crazy Fat Edith. Like Crazy Fat 2, the film is shot with a consumer-grade camcorder, runs barely an hour, has some of the absolute worst amateur acting you'll ever see, is full of lame attempts at tasteless comedy (including plenty of groaner one-liners) and opens with an inserted title card and then just recycles the opening credits from the very first film, nevermind the fact they're mostly erroneous. Like its predecesor, it also pads out much of the time by reusing clips from numerous other Millard films (passing them off as Edith's nightmares); including the aforementioned Criminally Insane and SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING (1974). It truly doesn't get much worse than this, folks.



Alden portrays a portly, hard-drinking and amazingly grumpy nurse named Edith Mortley who, along with her equally disturbed doctor brother Gordon (Albert Eskinazi), run the Shady Palms Clinic out of their home. They take in patients with different medical problems, murder them, bury them in their backyard and then fraudulently bill Medicare for their services. After killing a guy on the operating table, tuberculosis patient John Davis (played by director "Nick Phillips" aka Nick Millard) is admitted and Edith immediately murders him by putting a pillow over his head and then laying on top of it. When elderly social worked Faith Chandler (whom may be Frances Millard, the producer and director's mother) shows up to check up on him, they dig up his body, clean it off with a water hose, put him back in his bed and then fake that he's alive by waving his hand.



There are several other patients at the facility, including Louise Kagel (Irmgard Millard, who I assume is the director's wife), an alcoholic who's secretly sleeping with Gordon and has a bad habit of getting into Edith's sherry, which really pisses her off. Another guy shows up with a heart-condition. They saw him open and plot to transplant a dog's heart (!) into him, but a cat runs off with the heart instead. When a health inspector threatens to shut them down because of Edith's flesh-eating pet rats in the basement, she stabs him to death. The social worker checks herself into the facility and Edith gives her human flesh for dinner before killing her. As the film ends, we're left hanging as Lt. Carl Bedowski shows up there looking for his missing nephew Charlie (the dead heart patient). But have no fear, the Crazy Fat saga continues on with DEATH NURSE 2.



Millard's horror-o-graphy also includes the ultra-obscure (and barely released) DOCTOR BLOODBATH (1987) and CEMETERY SISTERS (1987), both of which are were also shot-on-video, as well as later ventures into the genre such as DRACULA IN VEGAS (1999) and the Henry James adaptation (!) THE TURN OF THE SCREW (2003). His producer mom Frances switched career paths in her twilight years, becoming "the oldest living porn actress" at the ripe age of 83 in such films as 92 AND STILL BANGING (2000) and HEY, MY GRANDMA IS A WHORE 8 (2002)!

Amazingly, this glorified home movie has been issued on VHS no less than four different times, by Chop-Em-Ups Video, Incredibly Strange Filmworks, Video City Productions and Video Treasures. It has yet to pop up on DVD, though that's really something of a blessing.

★

Crazy Fat Ethel II (1987)

...aka Criminally Insane II

Directed by:

Nick Millard

So, you made a bad film over ten years ago that was so bad it developed a small cult following over the years. Now, you want to make a sequel and don't have any money: What do you do? If you are Nick Millard, you fire up the trusty camcorder, track down the star of the original film and use tons of the old footage to save money and pad out the running time. Now I don't mind the random flashback used here and there, but when at least half (maybe as much as three-fourths!) of the run time consists of recycled scenes, then I do have a problem. Hell, you have to draw a line somewhere! I don't even really have a problem with the filming format. Sure it looks incredibly cheap, but this is a sequel to an obscure B horror movie, so I wasn't exactly expecting production values. Nevertheless, that's no excuse for either the merciless padding or the terrible sound. The latter was obviously recorded with whatever shoddy microphone came built into the camcorder, so it's usually either too quiet or too muffled to make out what people are saying half the time. And all the camera does is basically zoom in and out on Ethel eating or sleeping, which becomes the lazy filmmakers cue to "flashback" to the first film. This goes on for I don't know how long, but it seems like an eternity.

Anyway, Ethel's back in a nuthouse and even though she killed six people in the first movie, is set free once again because of budgetary cuts or some such nonsense. She's first seen eating pudding, and the camera stays put on her until she scrapes the damn bowl entirely dry. A kind elderly lady named Hope Bartholomew (probably played by the director's mother/producer Frances Millard, who is also probably the same person as Irmgard Millard) has an opening at her halfway house, and Ethel ends up going there for a protracted stay. Ethel (looking a little grayer, but also a little skinnier) glares at everyone, eats, sleeps, laughs and meets a few of the nuts sharing space with her. There's a guy named Edgar who claims to have murdered his wife. Another guy (who is played by the same actor who played Ethel's brother in DEATH NURSE) thinks he's an insect. Well, I think he thinks he's an insect. It's kind of hard to tell, but several minutes are wasted with him running his hands up and down walls and wiggling his fingers. There's another long scene with him running around out in the yard trying to capture flies because he likes to put them in his soup.

Ethel's not taking too kindly to her surroundings or limited meals and she refuses to take her medication. A mean orderly (whose haircut almost defies description) serves everyone dog food instead of corned beef hash. He also eats an entire Three Musketeers bar in front of Ethel, which really pisses her off. She kills him by throwing a noose over his head and hanging him over a staircase. A detective, Lt. Frank Miller, shows up to ask some silly questions and basically just leaves because Ethel has a foolproof alibi (she was watching an episode of Gunsmoke alone in her room). Soon enough, Ethel and Edgar are fighting. He saw what she did to the orderly and blackmails her, demanding she give him her pudding for an entire month or he's squealin'! Pissed off again, she tries to put rat poison in Edgar's tea, but he's not dumb enough to fall for the same trick twice (his first wife tried to poison him also). Disappointed her first attempt was unsuccessful she instead decides to just stab him in the back with four different knives and leave his dead body in the kitchen. The cop shows up again, says "I might as well set up shop right here!" and leaves again without questioning anyone or making any arrests. So basically, Ethel resumes her killing.

Hope tries to take away Ethel's bag of pretzels and is bashed over the head with a candle stick. Dr. Stevens (pretty sure it's the director in this role) shows up to check up on Ethel. She chases him around the couch with a knife, stabs him in the back and goes outside where she dances around for several minutes with a bloody knife. There are many close-ups of feet and legs for some reason. The bloodiest scenes are all from the original and every single second of the new footage is completely perfunctory. Dumb, boring and the takes are gruelingly long. Priscilla Alden was funny in the first film, but is given little to do here and her dialogue sucks. This thing was so cheaply spit out that instead of making new credits, they just used the old ones from the original, nevermind the fact that no one from the original appears in this sequel other than the leading lady.

NO STARS!

Criminally Insane (1975)

...aka: Crazy Fat Ethel

Directed by:Nick Millard

At first glance you might think that CRIMINALLY INSANE (also known as CRAZY FAT ETHEL) is cheap, dumb and bad. And it is indeed cheap, dumb and bad in just about every way a film can be bad. But while it digs its claws at the bottom of the trash movie barrel and moves from one ineptly staged scene to the next, I just couldn't help but like it because it's incredibly entertaining and packs more laughs than most straight-forward horror comedies. Some of the laughs are intentional, some aren't, but a laugh is a laugh, right? The whole thing is short (running barely over an hour), poorly written, full of laughable continuity errors, lamentable characters, terrible editing cuts, lame gore fx and horrendous performances, and most of it takes place inside one cramped home. The amusingly deadpan central performance from Priscilla Alden (who seems to have carefully studied Louise Lasser's performance from THE HONEYMOON KILLERS) is one of the main reasons it remains watchable all these years later. Ethel's a morbidly obese compulsive eater with major mental issues. Or as the video box states, she's "250 pounds of maniacal fury!" As the film opens, she's receiving electroshock treatments at a mental home. A doctor informs Ethel's Granny that it's against his better judgment to set her free and that she still suffers from severe paranoid manifestations, long periods of depression and violent outbursts. Nonetheless, she is released, so get ready world cause here Ethel comes! She and Granny go back to Granny's home in San Francisco and almost immediately all hell breaks loose.

Ethel is anti-social, bitchy, anti-Semitic ("That God damn Jew doctor!"), racist (she'll blame a later crime on some "colored" guy) and hungry. Very, very hungry. As soon as she gets to a kitchen, she immediately fries up a pound of bacon, a dozen eggs and converts an entire loaf of bread into a heaping pile of buttery toast. A midnight snack consists of a pound of hard candy, an entire box of Nilla wafers and a half gallon of milk. And even that's not enough to satisfy her! Later that night she goes downstairs to get even more grub and notices the refrigerator is empty and the cupboards are locked up. See, Granny's social security checks sure as hell can't cover Ethel's binge-eating sessions and she has taken preventative measures. A heated argument soon follows. Ethel loses her cool and stabs Granny in the back with a butcher knife. When she notices Granny's got a death grasp on the key she begins to frantically stab her hand over and over again while repeatedly screaming "I... want... that... key!"

She sticks Granny in a locked upstairs bedroom and then calls and places an order from a grocery store. When the delivery boy shows up, she smashes a bottle over his head and stabs him to death with a piece of jagged glass because she doesn't have enough money to pay for the 4 half gallons of ice cream she ordered. Before she can hide the body upstairs, her worthless outcast sister Rosalie (Lisa Farros) is ringing the doorbell looking for a place to stay. As soon as she takes a look at Ethel she says "I don't believe it but I think you've gotten ever fatter. What did they feed you in that nuthouse?" Subtlety and tact are not Rosalie's strong points since she's a cheap, drunken whore. And by cheap, drunken whore, I mean she's a hooker who drinks and snorts coke a lot. She also has an equally worthless boyfriend named John, who beats her, pimps her out and smacks her across the face when she laughs at him for putting on make-up (?) Both end up staying at the house a lot, where they notice a terrible odor emanating from Granny's room. Ethel attempts to mask the smell by emptying bottles of air freshener on the rotting corpses, but to no avail. And she can't seem to get rid of the bodies. Detective McDonough (played by "C.L. Lefleur" aka George "Buck" Flower!) shows up looking for the missing delivery boy and has several long and awkward dialogue scenes that sound nothing like questions a policeman would actually ask.

The gore scenes (including victims hacked up with a meat cleaver and beat over the head with a lamp) employ bright orange-red blood and mannequin parts. The food scenes employ an entire chocolate cake consumed at one sitting, a platter full of baked potatoes and several gallons of ice cream dumped into one giant bowl. There's one priceless 'freak out' nightmare sequence where Ethel repeatedly rushes at the camera with a knife, chops up a mannequin and runs around in a park in a flame-red moo-moo as frightened birds flee for their lives.

Yep, tis hilariously dreadful stuff indeed, but I cannot give it a "1" because I have seen CRAZY FAT ETHEL 2 and know this is a masterpiece by comparison. Oh hell, Part 2 was sooo damn bad, I'm going to go ahead and give it another point... And I still haven't seen DEATH NURSE or DEATH NURSE 2 yet, but I have them on stand-by. Expect this one might to move up to at least the 5 range by the end of the week.

★★