A neat, lively exploitation flick that relishes the chance to riff on Asian ghost movie clichés by using lots of over-familiar elements (7-day curses, supernaturally empowered black hair everywhere, a vengeful ghost) to its own, pleasingly warped end.

   The flashback-laden plot revolves around a corrupt Thai hospital, where a doctor and his seven-strong team of sexy nurses, routinely indulge in black-market deals with their patients’ bodies. Enraged by jealousy at the lover who cheated on her with her sister, one of the nurses threatens to tell all to the authorities, so is swiftly dealt with, her brutal murder covered up along with all the other sinister shenanigans. Fitting a popular legend, however, she soon returns from the grave to avenge her demise, beginning with relatively minor spook-some activity (black hair coming out of a shampoo bottle) and escalating to an all-out blood-fest.

   The first, most obvious thing to say about SICK NURSES, is that it more than fulfils its expected quota of hot young Asian women in nurse outfits. There’s not a lot of doubt about this movie’s target audience as the camera lingers lovingly on scantily clad / fetishistically dressed / wet bodies of sexy young women. While the plot trots out - just for novelty - a femme ghost with black face, one mad eye poking through light hair -, the horny male gaze is treated to lots of white stockings, underwear shots and even two young giggling female twins kissing and fooling around under the covers.

   None of this is bad, of course, and the movie also happens to be inventive and fun in the way it plays with its knowing clichés. In its second half, it also manages to ramp up the splatter to a stirring degree, with an emphasis on facial mutilation and some striking images. The make-up effects are very good when of the old-school variety, and there are only minimal intrusions of CG gore. Stand-outs include a girl with her jaw ripped off, a big wiggly tongue and an embryo shoved into the hole where part of her face once was ; a syringe inserted under a fingernail ; a hot-tub dismemberment ; and a ringing cell phone lighting up under someone’s face cheek. The suitably wacky and grim punch line features a woman giving birth to a live adult in a distaff spin on GOZU.

   It’s stylishly done on an obviously limited budget, nicely paced, and hinges on a climactic twist with the kind of nutty sex-change /dual-personality gimmick familiar from some of the groovier 80’s slasher flicks.