Thirty seconds is all it takes for nurse-school dropout Edith Mortley (Priscilla Alden) to kill her first victim in Death Nurse 2. As viewers of its previous year’s predecessor know, timing is not among writer/director Nick Philips’ strong points. Hell, I’m not sure he has any strong points, thereby resulting in an auto-accident watch made more difficult by being shot on video.
This sequel offers more of the same: more of Edith grousing, “You nosy old bitch”; more scenes from Philips’ Criminally Insane/Crazy Fat Ethel films passed off as her dreams; and more minutes, yet this still fails to hit an hour by a handful of seconds.
Plot? Edith continues to kill patients, but at least DN2 offers a twist: This chapter’s new admissions are indigents the mayor finds pesky, from the alcoholic Brownie (Philips’ wife, Irmgard Millard, playing a different drunk from DN1) to some crazy guy who spouts rhetoric in front of City Hall about the country being headed toward socialism. (Yes, Philips apparently predicted the establishment of the Tea Party.)
Still, Death Nurse 2 is so lazy that it even reuses scenes from its big sister. This follow-up easily boasts the saga’s best sequence, when Brownie and her butcher knife chase Edith ’round and ’round the living room furniture — so cartoony, it lacks only a Carl Stalling score.
Once more, the movie just ends by petering out mid-scene. Oh, how were all the loose threads supposed to conclude? —Rod Lott