When he started New World Pictures, one of Roger Corman's earliest successes was with the Nurses series of films. Starting with Stephanie Rothman's "The Student Nurses" in 1970, he made a series of light sexploitation films that would follow 4 young women, each with a separate plotline that included topical elements and nudity in films that managed to combine sexploitation with women's liberation. By 1973, he had made four of these, and was looking to take the idea in new directions. Stewardesses are an obvious choice.
Corman was also starting to make films in the Philippines. Jack Hill's early women in prison films had been shot there, and a country that had an existing film industry that was a lot cheaper than the US was attractive. He struck a multi-film production deal with Philippine producer/director Cirio H. Santiago, and this was the first film they made.
This film drops one character from the formula, and we follow three stewardesses very conveniently flying to Southeast Asia on a trip that ends in the Philippines. New stewardess Pat Anderson finds that her mother (Naomi Stevens) has bought a ticket and is accompanying her to keep an eye on her. She tries to romance young doctor Richard Young, while her mother gets in the way and complains about the food. The other two, Lenore Kasdorf and Lyllah Torena, run afoul of sex traffickers. By the end, both plots converge, leading to one issue with the film ... the comedic subplot crashes headlong into the sex trafficking plot resulting in a really abrupt shift in tone.
Generally, this one doesn't really work. It's an early experiment in making essentially a Philippine film disguised as an American one and the seams really show. It feels like entire scenes that might connect parts of the plot together just weren't shot, and some scenes seem to have been shot much later and just patched in. There's an opening sequence involving Dick Miller as a cab driver that was shot in LA by Curtis Hanson, and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut was shooting a really terrible martial arts sequence that's dropped in mid-film (and never really explained.
Santiago made more films for Corman and they are all better than this one, including another pass at the Nurses formula involving models. Philippine exploitation icon Vic Diaz pops up as a police man.
Corman was also starting to make films in the Philippines. Jack Hill's early women in prison films had been shot there, and a country that had an existing film industry that was a lot cheaper than the US was attractive. He struck a multi-film production deal with Philippine producer/director Cirio H. Santiago, and this was the first film they made.
This film drops one character from the formula, and we follow three stewardesses very conveniently flying to Southeast Asia on a trip that ends in the Philippines. New stewardess Pat Anderson finds that her mother (Naomi Stevens) has bought a ticket and is accompanying her to keep an eye on her. She tries to romance young doctor Richard Young, while her mother gets in the way and complains about the food. The other two, Lenore Kasdorf and Lyllah Torena, run afoul of sex traffickers. By the end, both plots converge, leading to one issue with the film ... the comedic subplot crashes headlong into the sex trafficking plot resulting in a really abrupt shift in tone.
Generally, this one doesn't really work. It's an early experiment in making essentially a Philippine film disguised as an American one and the seams really show. It feels like entire scenes that might connect parts of the plot together just weren't shot, and some scenes seem to have been shot much later and just patched in. There's an opening sequence involving Dick Miller as a cab driver that was shot in LA by Curtis Hanson, and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut was shooting a really terrible martial arts sequence that's dropped in mid-film (and never really explained.
Santiago made more films for Corman and they are all better than this one, including another pass at the Nurses formula involving models. Philippine exploitation icon Vic Diaz pops up as a police man.