Stephanie Rothman: one of exploitation cinema’s most pioneering women
The history of exploitation movies is perhaps one of the most interesting in all of cinema. Divided into countless bizarre sub-genres, exploitation cinema has allowed audiences to delve into some shocking worlds full of gore, violence, nudity, sex, monsters, cannibals, and zombies. From sexploitation to women in prison films, many of these cheaply-made B-movies had a distinctive appeal to male audiences due to their use of naked women, particularly at a time when nudity was banned in mainstream cinema.
At closer inspection, many exploitation films were more feminist than they initially appeared to be on the outside (whether the director, typically male, intended them to be or not), as demonstrated by movies like Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go To Hell. Still, an overwhelmingly large collection of exploitation movies aimed to please male audiences with their gratuitous nudity, which eager viewers couldn’t access easily anywhere else.
Most exploitation filmmakers were male, as were most directors who made films in the mainstream. Women weren’t given easy access to the cinema industry, which was ruled by men who helped to perpetuate patriarchal ideas. Yet, there were several women who managed to earn their directing chops in the exploitation realm, giving these films a well-needed feminine touch. As mentioned above, Wishman was a key figure within the genre, as were Beverly Sebastian and Stephanie Rothman.
Today, we’re focusing on the latter, who made many movies which, at first glance, looked like male-gazey movies with no inherent feminist value. Yet, dig a little deeper, and you’ll notice that Rothman was using many techniques to subvert the expectations of male viewers. She began her career in the 1960s after she earned a Directors Guild of America fellowship – the first woman to achieve this feat. From there, Rothman was offered a job with Roger Corman, the indie cinema legend who directed and produced many iconic exploitation films of the period.
Working alongside Corman as an assistant, Rothman honed her skills in the industry, subsequently directing enough sections of Jack Hill’s Blood Bath to be considered the co-director. Her first film as a solo director was It’s A Bikini World, but she much preferred her next project, The Student Nurses. Released in 1970, it took the popular ‘nurse’ sub-genre of exploitation flicks and imbued it with a feminist edge.
As a result, themes like abortion are explored among the women within the film. This wasn’t a work that Rothman made with the intention of attracting men to revel in watching young, attractive nurses finding their way – The Student Nurses was simply a low-budget B-movie that aimed to explore a myriad of themes that the typical exploitation film didn’t.
Talking to the Vienna International Film Festival, Rothman explained that due to the success of the movie, “the lesson Roger derived from my film’s success was that you could make exploitation films whose narratives included contentious social issues, including feminism, and he consequently encouraged his directors to do it”.
Her next project, The Velvet Vampire, was a vampire exploitation movie that remains an iconic ‘70s horror B-movie. The film contains a classic set-up—a female vampire tries to seduce a man and his girlfriend—but it stands out with its sumptuous visuals, soaked in deep crimson, which aid the film’s glamorous and seductive feel. It might not have performed incredibly well, but it now has a passionate cult following.
Rothman made a few more movies before retiring from filmmaking, such as Group Marriage and The Working Girls, with the latter being her last. While her oeuvre is short, she made an impact on the exploitation genre by bringing feminism and relevant issues to these typically male-appeasing films. She wanted to emphasise themes such as female desire and ensure that women weren’t simply objectified for the pleasure of male viewers without also considering how men were presented.
