BEFORE: I've been meeting a lot of new people lately, people hired at both jobs who I'm then left alone with, and I have to decide when to let them know about my other job, and my even other-er life as a blogger and OCD movie-watcher. Yes, I'm THAT weirdo, but once we've worked a few shifts together, I might feel comfortable enough to reveal my secret identity. When I let slip that I watch 300 movies per year, no more, no less, that sometimes raises their interest level, and then when I reveal the whole linking thing, well, they may find that incredibly interesting, or I may notice that they then back away from me slowly and leave the room. It's too much, I get it, too much for someone else to wrap their brain around, so that tends to be followed by "How..." and then "Why..." and then I think they usually just shake their heads and write me off as a weirdo. WHICH would be absolutely correct, I admit and own that.
But part of the answer to "How..." comes in understanding my listing system, I have lists of movies that I HAVE and want to watch, another list of movies that I DON'T HAVE but think might be culturally or cinematically important, and then another list of movies that are, well, available. I'm only able to put together 25 to 31 horror movies each October by maintaining a list of scary films that may not be right up my alley, but society has deemed them to be "successful" or "relevant" in some fashion - "good" of course is subjective and not necessarily a factor. A "bad" film is just as likely to get on my radar as a "good" one, and I've decided that "good/bad" can only be determined by watching each film, so instead I go with "Hey, I heard about that movie.." or "Hey, MAD Magazine once printed a parody of that movie..."
Tonight, it's that last one, I remember reading MAD's parody of "Coma" many years ago, and therefore I added it to the "possibly relevant and probably available streaming somewhere" a few years back - then of course, it took me two or three years to figure out how to work it into the chain. Lois Chiles carries over from "Creepshow 2" and once I finish this year's horror chain, that will leave about 110 films as a combined total on both the "HAVE and want to watch" list and the "DON'T HAVE but might be important" lists. However, this total does not include such famous franchises as the "Saw", "Child's Play", "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween" films, but really, I've got maybe 6 months before I have to think about what I should add to the list to increase my linking opportunities for next year. Just thinking about it now to get ahead of it, that's all.
THE PLOT: When a young female doctor notices an unnatural amount of comas occurring in her hospital she uncovers a horrible conspiracy.
AFTER: Set in the fictitious (I think) Boston Memorial Hospital, this film both highlights the tremendous need for organ donors in the 1970's, sure - but also I think it's a snapshot of the feminist movement, right about the time that the U.S. failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Oh, yeah, I remember that time well. How easy it is now to say that women should be paid the same as men, given exactly the same opportunities as men, and basically should be treated, well, equally across the board in all things, given that all thing are equal, which apparently they were NOT, because the amendment never passed. Well, jeez, why not just pass it now? Oh, there was a deadline? March 22, 1979? What the hell happened?
OK, hold everything while I look this up. The E.R.A. got ratified by 35 U.S. states, but I guess it needed 38. And then conservative women got involved and pointed out that it could disadvantage some women, like they could be drafted into the army and others would lose the right to alimony, and might lose custody of children in some divorce cases. This caused five states to revoke their ratifications, so then the E.R.A. was D.O.A. The deadline was extended to June 1982, but it didn't matter, nobody picked up the cause again until 2017 or so. At this point I think it might make more sense to start over, can't somebody draft a new version of this amendment, maybe keep what people liked about the first one and drop the parts that some people had a problem with?
The reason I bring this up is that the central character, Dr. Susan Wheeler, is really caught in a bind here, being a female doctor in a Boston hospital whose best friend has just fallen into a coma after an abortion procedure. Her husband apparently didn't know about it, which implies that she had an affair, I guess, but I'm not going to open up THIS can of worms, now that abortion is no longer legal in some parts of the U.S. (But once again, it's conservatives screwing everything up - they scuttled the ERA, they reversed Roe v. Wade, and they're currently banning all books they find offensive all across the American South.). But if Dr. Wheeler shows too much concern for her comatose friend, then she's perceived as high-strung, overly emotional and potentially hysterical. And if she shows too little concern for her comatose friend, than she's a cold, unfeeling, frigid bitch.
Where is the middle ground, if any, where she's just a concerned friend using her medical knowledge to investigate her friend's post-operative state to, you know, just figure out what happened and maybe FIX IT? Nope, doesn't exist - if she strays too far into either emotion or callous lack of emotion, she's going to hear about it, and that JUST wouldn't happen to a male doctor in the same awkward position. Obviously she's got an emotional investment in figuring out what happened to her friend - and then when the same thing happens to another patient (played by Tom Selleck!) who's having routine knee surgery after a touch football accident, Dr. Wheeler tries to figure out JUST how many patients at this hospital have gone comatose in the last 2 years.
The number is, well, a bit overwhelming - why didn't anybody else notice this before her? It's like every third patient at this hospital ends up as a vegetable and gets sent to the Jefferson Institute for examination. No, wait, not examination - storage, yes, that's it. Somebody is clearly up to something at the Jefferson Institute, but what? Come on, surely you've figured it out by now...
I've heard various breakdowns over the years about how much a human body is "worth". I once read that it you break it down into component chemicals, the materials in a body are worth like maybe $1.98. I just Googled it and got a different answer, about $585 for all the oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, calcium and phosphorus. Ah, but this all depends on how you break down that body, because you could take out the corneas and help a blind person see, or take out the bone marrow, kidneys, lungs, liver, and other organs and given the right buyers, a WIRED magazine article from 2012 calculated you could make $46 million. OK, so maybe they're on to something over at the Jefferson Institute.
Wheeler then signs up for the official tour of the facility, and finds out that the bodies aren't stored in beds, or even in those morgue drawers, they're suspended by wires and are kept stacked and hanging in temperature-controlled rooms. And if a family member should ever want to visit, a person's body would be taken down from the wires and brought into a fake hospital-like setting with a bed and a fake chart and a fake ventilator, and then when the family is gone, it's back up on the wires. So one assumes that eventually that family is going to STOP visiting and then a couple days later some lungs, kidneys and corneas are up for sale?
Why, just imagine what they could get for Tom Selleck's mustache! Surely there must be someone somewhere who can't grow a mustache of their own and would be willing to pay a cool million for that thick, luxurious and very famous lip hair! Wait, can you transplant a mustache?
Dr. Wheeler confides in her lover, who's a resident at the same hospital, but is often more concerned with hospital politics than treating patients - and he's a really selfish boyfriend, apparently, who still thinks that women should cook him dinner after they BOTH worked an equally hard day - so, a typical 1970's man, in other words. Jeez, man, would it kill you to cook dinner once in a while, or you know, take turns maybe? That would be fair, right? Or come on, don't let this be a sticking point in your relationship, you're both DOCTORS why can't you afford take-out? Sure, this was before GrubHub and Uber Eats was a thing, but still, you've got a phone and there are restaurants in Boston that deliver, right? Again, it was a tough time for women...I know my Dad never cooked at home, it was always Mom.
Where was I? Oh, right the coma investigation - Wheeler suspects that the chief of anesthesiology is behind it all, but is he? Or is his character just played by one of those actors who always plays the villain. She then brings her concerns to the chief of surgery, but is she putting her trust in the right people? Darn, if only she knew somebody at the hospital who was more concerned with hospital politics than treating patients....
NITPICK POINT: What was up with all those DOGS in cages at the hospital? What was that all about? Were they there for some kind of medical research? Did doctors walk their dogs on the way to work and then leave them in some kind of doggie daycare? I've just never seen a room in a city hospital with a room full of dogs in cages, so I'm kind of scratching my head about this.
Also starring Genevieve Bujold (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Michael Douglas (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Elizabeth Ashley (last seen in "Oceans' Eight"), Rip Torn (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Richard Widmark (last seen in "Against All Odds"), Hari Rhodes, Gary Barton, Frank Downing, Richard Doyle (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1"), Alan Haufrect (last seen in "Crazy People"), Lance LeGault (last heard in "Home on the Range"), Michael MacRae, Betty McGuire (last seen in "Up in Smoke"), Tom Selleck (last seen in "Lassiter"), Charles Siebert, Joanna Kerns (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), Kay Cole (last heard in "Igor"), Tom Borut, Philip G. Brooks, Benny Rubin (last seen in "The Other Side of the Wind"), David Hollander, Mike Lally, John Widlock, Robert Burton, Ed Harris (last seen in "Creepshow"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Person to Person"), Nicholas Worth (last seen in "Swamp Thing").
RATING: 5 out of 10 dogs in the hospital (?)
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