I love a good exploitation flick and I know that so many of our readers do too. They are campy, funny, filled with action, and they usually have a ton of boobs in them. As a result, it seems likely that this was a male-dominated corner of the film industry, but that's actually not true. One of the most vibrant and hardworking directors of 60s and 70s exploitation films was a female director named Stephanie Rothman who made some of the hottest movies that we have ever seen. Let's take a look at her life and career!
Stephanie Rothman was a pioneer filmmaker in the 60s and 70s who worked in the exploitation market. She made low-budget flicks that were filled with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll while also making a revolutionary point. That's pretty much the dream, right? Get paid to make art and subtly make points. Now that's what I call working the system. A lot of her movies had strong and sympathetic female characters and radical feminist points of view while also giving us a lot of beautiful females to look at. She proved that feminism can be really sexy and a lot of her work has been praised by feminist critics decades later. That's not to say that they don't feature a lot of the frivolous nude scenes that this genre was best known for. I'm merely trying to point out that Stephanie Rothman was going above and beyond the requirements for film in this genre.
She studied film at the University of Southern California which is a long way from home for this Jersey girl. She was actually the first woman to receive the Directors Guild of America fellowship. With that, she worked as an associate producer on a few notable B-movies with the king of schlock, Roger Corman, in the early 60s such as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Queen of Blood.
She wrote 9 films and directed 7 with her final film being 1974's The Working Girls which is also known as Elvira Naked because it starred the one and only Cassandra Peterson as a topless dancer! That's true - Rothman basically gave Elvira her start. What a match made in mammory heaven. Between Cassandra dancing topless and Lynne Guthrie showing off her perfect hooters, The Working Girls did a great job at showcasing its female leads.
Her breakthrough film was her original feature called Blood Bath. Only a year later she directed It's a Bikini World and then she made The Student Nurses which is likely what you know her from. She worked with Roger Corman's production studios on those latter two films. She credits Roger Corman as her only real mentor which means that she is yet another young filmmaker that Corman helped! The Student Nurses was a part of a series of Corman-produced exploitation flicks about nurses, but this one was the most popular.
The Velvet Vampire was one of her most accessible films, taking a Stephanie Rothman look at the campy vampire genre. I feel like every director worth their salt at that time had to make a vampire movie. Hell, even Andy Warhol made one. So I'm happy that Rothman put her spin on one, too. A couple is invited to be a third in vixen Diane LeFanu's (played by Celeste Yarnall) bedroom and learn that their hot hostess is a vampire who has other plans for the pair. The bloodthirsty vampiress had her way with both halves of the hetero couple!
She followed up that film with Group Marriage which took a look at some of the swingin' ideas that the sexual revolution brought into American landscapes. In this film, some blissed-out Californians work out a plan to divvy up housework and make sure that everyone is pleasured by having a group marriage. It starts off fun and flirty, but it inevitably leads to trouble as they start to quarrel over the smallest things. It seems that there is no easy answer to marital bliss no matter how many people are involved! This early look at polyamory is both funny and sexy as Rothman plays with sex, domesticity, and gender roles. She also, of course, gives us a lot of nude scenes as the foursome share a bed together in the flesh.
Her last film was Terminal Island which featured Russ Meyer starlet Phyllis Davis and the blonde bombshell Barbara Leigh. In this jailbird exploitation flick, California sends its criminals to an island called Terminal Island in which the women are turned into sex slaves. Well, Barbara and Phyllis are not about to take that sentence lying down! They pop out their breasts and they put up a fight.
Rothman did not continue making films after the 70s and a lot of that has to do with the changing film landscape as well as the different options for women in film. She has since said that if she were to do it differently, that she would not have made exploitation films. That being said, she did so because it was the only spot in which she could actually work creatively as a female filmmaker. Think about it: there really were not that many notable female filmmakers at the time. Almost ALL of the working female filmmakers had to work independently or abroad. Whether they were French directors like Agnes Varda and Chantal Akerman or film-turned-TV directors like Ida Lupino, women were not prominent behind-the-camera at that time. Sure, there were a few outliers like Elaine May who directed three films in the 70slmBarbara Loden who wrote and directed the incredible film Wanda, and Claudia Weill who was behind Girlfriends. For the most part, women either showed their pretty faces (and chests) in front of the camera as actresses or they worked on scripts. The 80s saw a marked shift in that with directors like Susan Seidelman, Penelope Spheeris, and Amy Heckerling making mainstream films that we still know and love today.
As a result, as you can imagine, she struggled to be taken seriously by the mainstream world. She tried to work in television which was then seen as a step-down from the movies, but she didn't even find luck there. She wound up collaborating with her husband on a few scripts, but she ended up leaving the industry and working as an activist before investing in real estate. She looks back on her own career with a mix of emotions which definitely makes me personally sad. I wish that the film industry had been much kinder to Rothman because then we may be looking back at her today the way that we look back at Roger Corman: a strong creative persona who made a wide range of work. It is a big shame that the industry at the time could do that for Corman and not Rothman, but we here at Skin Central will not let Rothman's pictures be forgotten. How could we? She gave us our first glimpse at Elvira! For that alone, there should be a parade for Rothman!
So let's celebrate Stephanie Rothman today and all days by rewatching her sexiest work:
