Terminal Island
UW Cinematheque 821 University Ave., UW Vilas Hall, Room 4070, Madison, Wisconsin
press release:
USA | 1973 | DCP | 89 min.
Director: Stephanie Rothman
Cast: Ena Hartman, Marta Kristen, Tom Selleck
On a co-ed island serving as a prison for convicts with life sentences, Carmen (Hartman) finds herself in the middle of two warring factions of inmates. Terminal Island touches every seventies exploitation base from female nudity to killer bees as it heads towards its surprisingly non-apocalyptic gunfight/molotov cocktail finale. Through all the ultra-low-budget camp mayhem, Rothman displays her signature light touch and equal opportunity ethos.
The Equal Opportunity Exploitation of Stephanie Rothman
Sex, violence and spirited mayhem define the early 1970s feature films of the pioneering genre director Stephanie Rothman. Although mostly shown in grindhouses and drive-ins, Rothman’s low-budget movies have been recognized in the proceeding decades for their subversive content, as in her breakthrough Roger Corman production, The Student Nurses, which Interview magazine described as “a bait-and-switch of the traditional exploitation formula, stacked with fleshed-out characters, topical social consciousness, and an uncompromising feminist agenda.” The Student Nurses will be shown via a restored 35mm print from Academy Film Archive and Terminal Island, Rothman’s wild 1973 Hunger Games forerunner, will be shown in a new DCP from the American Genre Film Archive.
All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.