Directed by Arthur Hiller
93 minutes
In English

Were you ever in a hospital and had the sneaky suspicion that behind all the order and rational procedures, actually the place was a madhouse? Here we have a movie that could only come from the 1970s, a hard-hitting thriller about a hospital in Manhattan where everything goes berserk. The head of the hospital (George C. Scott - Dr. Strangelove) is having his own personal problems involving a smashed marriage, but when he arrives at work his problems are only compounded. Black activists are demonstrating at the front door of the hospital, nurses demand insurance information from patients dying on stretchers, doctors are found dead on hospital beds, the wrong patients are operated on through mismanagement - sheer madness. Is it all the result of an insane bureaucratic system, or is there a sinister force roaming the halls of the hospital?

Written by Patty Chaevsky (Network) at the peak of his powers, and directed with acrobatic flare by Arthur Hiller, this flick is a deep dive into nightmarish chaos. George C. Scott gives the best performance of his life, and sexy Diana Rigg (Emma Peal from the original Avengers series) also surprisingly shows up, and she's dynamite. This black comedy is pretty much all but forgotten today despite the fact that it won an academy award for best screenplay, which it definitely deserved. A horror movie, without monsters or dark shadows, about the chaos of the modern world.

This is another flick that needs to be revived... a perfect film to reflect on the privatization of our medical world, as it is being pushed into a profit-driven industry à l'américaine. Remember, before the last pandemic the Dutch government closed several hospitals to cut costs, and then when a crisis hit there was no back up anymore. And what's even worse, it seems we haven't learned anything from this experience! The madness of this film reflects the insanity during the pandemic like a glove... the over-full medical wards, the lack of staff, the confusion, the frenzy.