This is a real time capsule in many ways, and yet it is a very good thriller that still holds up. A surgical resident in a large Boston hospital, Dr. Susan Wheeler (Genevieve Bujold), becomes suspicious when she investigates why her best friend, a healthy young woman, becomes brain dead after minor surgery. By infiltrating the hospital's computer system she finds all of the people who have become comatose after surgery in the last year, and finds ten who were young and healthy among them.
But considering that the hospital does 30000 operations a year, ten patients is statistically insignificant. And yet Wheeler keeps digging. The truth is something that is easy to believe post Watergate, which had ended a presidency just three years before.
How is this a time capsule? Well there are the numerous statements about Wheeler being a hysterical woman, even from her significant other, Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas). Boy does Douglas play this one emotionally timid and meek. He is miles from the role of Gordon Gecko he will play ten years later that will win him the Oscar, but then he said in his early career he tried to avoid playing angry fuming types so he would not be compared to his famous father.
Then there are the sexual mores of the 70s. Two employees are having casual sex on the floor when Wheeler visits the hospital lab. ("No Mrs. Baker we cannot explain why there is sperm in your blood sample, can you?"). And the surgery Wheeler's best friend comes in for? It is an abortion, and the surgery is actually shown and discussed in the film like it is no big deal. That would never happen today. It would never have happened in film just five years later in the Reagan years of the 80s.
There are other issues, but I will leave it at that. MGM, which was on its death bed at this point, must have not had much faith in the project, because they released it in January 1978, and that is a month when loss leaders generally open.
But considering that the hospital does 30000 operations a year, ten patients is statistically insignificant. And yet Wheeler keeps digging. The truth is something that is easy to believe post Watergate, which had ended a presidency just three years before.
How is this a time capsule? Well there are the numerous statements about Wheeler being a hysterical woman, even from her significant other, Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas). Boy does Douglas play this one emotionally timid and meek. He is miles from the role of Gordon Gecko he will play ten years later that will win him the Oscar, but then he said in his early career he tried to avoid playing angry fuming types so he would not be compared to his famous father.
Then there are the sexual mores of the 70s. Two employees are having casual sex on the floor when Wheeler visits the hospital lab. ("No Mrs. Baker we cannot explain why there is sperm in your blood sample, can you?"). And the surgery Wheeler's best friend comes in for? It is an abortion, and the surgery is actually shown and discussed in the film like it is no big deal. That would never happen today. It would never have happened in film just five years later in the Reagan years of the 80s.
There are other issues, but I will leave it at that. MGM, which was on its death bed at this point, must have not had much faith in the project, because they released it in January 1978, and that is a month when loss leaders generally open.