Nurse Sherri

I bought this on VHS as "Terror Hospital", and when I got home I checked IMDb and was like OMG it's the legendary "Nurse Sherri"!!! So here's another one from Al Adamson, who had clearly learned some minuscule amount about film-making since the "Blood of Dracula's Castle" days. Where that earlier effort is a more or less totally sclerotic lump, this one mixes it up a little, adding a definite element of variety and surprise amid the incompetence. Sure half of the movie is a blind post-op football player shooting the breeze with his stacked nurse, but at any moment we might be cutting away to the cackling disembodied head of the satanist mastermind, or Nurse Sherri running a farmer through with a pitchfork, or a wee bit of abstract student-film quick cutting to go with the pulsing-blob effects in the possession scene, or the most gratuitously half-hearted topless bit ever, or god knows what else (I forget, to be honest). As dumb-ass pieces of sh*t go, this one runs toward the high end. Congrats, Al.

Al gives us his take of THE EXORCIST. A cult leader has a heart attack in the desert while performing a ritual to raise a follower from the dead and subsequently dies on the operating table at a local hospital. No big deal, he'll just turn into a glowing green blob and possess Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson) to get revenge on the doctors who he feels killed him. This is bad news for Sherri's love life as her boyfriend Peter (Geoffrey Land) was one of the docs. Peter notices the changes in Sherri and it seems only a blinded former NFL player with knowledge of voodoo (!) who is a patient can offer the way for two nurses (Marilyn Joi and Mary Kay Pass) to help release Sheri from this transcendental terror. If you are familiar with Adamson's work, you'll know what to expect here as this has lots of static shots that go on too long and flat acting. There is also one of the funniest and most random car chases when a drunken follower confronts Peter – who is oddly not intrigued by this man's story, despite knowing his girl is now possessed – in a parking garage. They then burst out onto the city streets and end up in the desert within minutes. The poor follower survives having the roof of his car ripped off and leaps out just before it drives off a cliff and explodes (the film's highlight). The Shock-o-rama DVD offers an alternate version of the film title simply NURSE SHERRI and it is actually really interesting. It removes all of the drunken follower bits (including the car chase) from the POSSESSION version and replaces them with nude scenes.

Shock-A-Rama offers this DVD edition which features two different versions of the movie, commentary track on one feature by producer Sam Sherman, and the usual assortment of trailers that come with the majority of DVDs released under the Seduction Cinema umbrella.

Essentially, there are two different movies presented: Possession of Nurse Sherri, a remastered release of the horror cut with optional track with Sherman, and Nurse Sherri, the original drive-in release of the sexploitation version. Sherman provides juicy details on the canny presentation of the "horror" version, detailing what was edited/added to the initial release. At a glance, 70% of both movies are the same, but with noticeable differences: the horror cut has at least three additional scenes with character actor JC Wells being pursued by the disembodied spirit of a dead spiritualist, while three edited scenes of sex/nudity are provided by the sexploitation cut. These last three scenes are certainly eye-openers: a scene of hospital seduction between a buxom nurse and blind patient, another that has the chief surgeon receiving oral gratification at his podium while giving a lecture in front of a college classroom (!), and an extended scene between the surgeon and our Nurse Sherri with ardent lovemaking culminating in Sherri's flashback of her sole lesbian encounter. These last two segments show how Sherri fills that nurse's uniform with more than ample results!

Previous reviews at IMDB have decried the lack of horror elements and nudity, one even saying that if released today the movie would probably get a PG rating! I can assure anyone that neither of these versions are remotely PG.

Al Adamson--along with Jerry Warren and Jess Franco--had the notoriety of "film doctor", constantly re-editing and re-marketing product that had already saturated a film niche. This wonderful DVD shows how Sam Sherman and Adamson worked in that process.

A highly recommended DVD (regardless of the quality of the movies) which begs one question; whatever happened to star Jill Jacobson, and where is the inevitable Celebrity Sleuth layout?

Reanhauer (Bill Roy), the leader of a strange religious cult, suffers from a heart attack while trying to resurrect a three week old corpse. When he pops his clogs on the operating table, his spirit possesses buxom nurse Sherri Martin (Jill Jacobson) and forces her to exact revenge on those present at his death.

Nurse Sherri is incredibly cheap and technically inept in almost every way imaginable. The production values are pathetic: for the operation scene, cult director Al Adamson shells out for an oxygen mask and a saline drip—and that's it. The film also has one of the worst optical effects that I've ever seen in the form of the badly animated spirit that possesses Sherri, which looks like someone spilt some corrosive chemical on the negative and then scribbled on it with crayons. The performances are uniformly crap and the direction amateurish. The only half-decent death scene is an impalement by pitchfork. I watched the film last night and it had me drifting off quicker than a shot of Diprivan in the ass.

However, today I have learnt of an alternative edit…

Version two is, of course, still cheap and technically inept in almost every way imaginable, but Adamson compensates for this by throwing in a lot more T&A, which as all fans of low budget horror know, always makes z-grade trash far easier to bear. In the spirit of fairness, I've checked out these racy scenes on YouTube and can testify that the naughtier 'adult' cut is the more entertaining option: curvaceous star Jill Jacobson gets naked (she remains frustratingly clothed in the tamer version) and the film benefits from a lesbian fantasy and an amusing scene in which a nurse gives a doctor head while he is presenting a lecture—all of which is more likely to keep the viewer awake for the duration.

2/10 for the tame version; 4/10 for the saucier cut (which I'll average out to 3/10 for IMDb).

I first saw this movie at the local drive-in as part of a double bill with "Eyeball" - What a complete laugh-fest! The "acting" and production values are definitely par for the course for Al Adamson (In one scene alone is it daytime or night - or just blue filter over the camera lens? Who cares? Apparently not Mr. Adamson) I had to buy this one as soon as I found a copy and now that it's on DVD, I highly recommend this to any fans of the genre...I think it's Al Adamson's...uhhh...masterpiece (?!) One that truly has to be seen to be believed...

Oh yeah! Jill Jacobson's breasts should have had their own credit in the movie (if you know what I mean) Whatever happened to Jill Jacobson??