Looking at this image, one might think that this woman is experiencing a truly relaxing new-fangled spa treatment! Her spangly skinsuit is pretty and shiny, albeit a little snug. Alas, she is someone's "Girlfriend in a Coma," hanging in a storage facility/organ factory where she's experimented on by a gaggle of mad scientists. This image is from A & E's totally unnecessary, far too long, but still moderately entertaining remake of Michael Crichton's 1978 film Coma, based on Robin Cook's medical thriller (a book I read when I was ten years old). The book, and the original film, are rife with extraordinary images of the Jefferson Institute--the place where they store the bodies after the nefarious healthcare professionals put perfectly healthy people into comas.
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| Formerly owned by Xerox, the building is now Stride Rite's HQ in Lexington Mass. |
Michael Crichton's film stars Genevieve Bujold as the inquisitive medical resident Susan Wheeler, a talented surgeon surreptitiously dating the cocky know-it-all Mark Bellows, played by Michael Douglas w/ the peacock strutting he would go on to perfect in Romancing the Stone and Fatal Attraction. Susan is more interested in her career than a commitment, which causes Mark to whine a lot, and tell her she needs a "wife" more than a "lover." He's upset because she tells him to "get your own beer" rather than running to serve him. Project much??
Susan's friend Nancy is her closest confidante, as they both really get into their Jazzercise class. After class, Nancy tells Susan that yes, she is pregnant, and she's going in for a top secret D & C (Abortion) at Susan's hospital, Boston Memorial. Sounds like it may not be her husband's or she just might not want another child. These modern women! Either way, even though Susan reassures her that everything will be fine, Nancy ends up in an irreversible coma. (See, she was the perfect coma candidate because of her loose morals).
Susan, confused as to how such a routine procedure could end in disaster, starts to investigate. The men that surround her, including Mark, worry that she's isn't crying enough, but their sexist "concern" only propels her into further detective work.
Of course, no one believes her, especially Mark, who is asked by the head of the hospital, Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark) to distract her by taking her away for the weekend for some sexy time. Then we're treated to scenes like these:
Douglas does the shifty-eyed ambiguously motivated boyfriend role proud, and one never knows whether he's in cahoots with the likes of Dr. Harris, who intermittently responds "Women! Christ!" just to remind us that all men are total dicks. Mark has some cryptic conversations w/some of his co-workers that imply he's not to be trusted, especially when he points out over and over that Susan is merely being paranoid.
This film mirrors some similar women's film dystopias on hand in the 70s that feature intrepid female heroines who are talented and career-minded and struggling to succeed within a smothering sea of chauvinists. Everyone tells them that they are paranoid, and yet, scene by scene, these women (along with viewers) uncover horrifying plots. In The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes 1975), poor Katharine Ross is forced to move to the Connecticut suburbs where the area is overrun with creepy housewife robots intent on cooking, cleaning, and "servicing" their men; the Men's Association kill her and replace her with a robot in the end. Brook Adams, as a talented scientist, also investigates the weirdness in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman 1978), but because Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum actually believe her, she seems a little less isolated (and crazy); she becomes a pod person too. Since all of these films were directed by men, one might ask whether the anxieties these directors carried in relation to the 70's Women's Movement might have gotten displaced onto these frightening dehumanizing narratives. Yet the women in these films are the active investigators with an inquisitive gaze (but they are all severely punished for possessing that look). Both of the remakes of these films (Stepford Wives 2004 and The Invasion 2007) are beyond abysmal.
Coma places the spectator firmly with Susan, who never really seems crazy or unbelievable as she uncovers evidence that doctors at Boston Memorial are putting patients into comas if they are a match for their black market organ trafficking ring. The film implies that the conspiracy goes all the way up through the hospital hierarchy to sympathetic parties in Washington D.C. Susan is a kick-ass action heroine who can really investigate and fight back when threatened. In one scene she even clings to the roof of an ambulance. Take that James Bond!
I think that Ashley Judd was trying to channel her inner Bujold in Missing, but we know how that turned out.
The true Stepford creature in Coma is Elizabeth Ashley, who plays an amazing evil automaton/corporate tool with grace and elegance. She runs the coma farm/Jefferson Institute, and I love how cutthroat she gets when the bidding on organs is underway. Of course, she does it over archaic phones with big hold buttons, so her cold, steeliness comes off as extra absurd circa 2012. Love her in this film!
Oh, Tom Selleck has an awesome cameo in this film, giant furry mustache and all! I guess Tom wasn't famous yet, even though he starred in Daughters of Satan from 1971. He plays a relatively healthy patient who also gets put into a coma by the evildoers. One minute he's joshing with the doctors at the hospital; the next, Tom is lying on a slab at the Jefferson, flesh cut open as his organs are greedily harvested.
Susan's investigation gets too close to uncovering the truth, so she has to be punished. She subsequently is poisoned in a way that mimics appendicitis, and the evil Dr. Harris rushes her into OR 8 in order to put her nosy ass in a damn coma where she belongs! Mark/Michael Douglas ends up finally believing her, saving the day, and the cops are waiting outside the operating room door to nab the evil doctor. Done and done. Good thing her boyfriend saved her!
Thirty-four years later, the mini-series loving A & E network (who brought us the terrible Bag of Bones) decides to remake Coma with an all star cast including Ellen Burstyn, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfus, James Woods, and Lauren Ambrose as the super-curious Susan Wheeler. Steven Pasquale plays Mark Bellows, and after perusing IMDB I know that I've never seen him in anything he's been in, ever; after this show, I'm still not a fan.
I believe without the slightest doubt that this mini-series did not need to be made, and that some of the remake's "improvements" now make the original film look like a serious FEMINIST CLASSIC. Burstyn and Davis's N.O.W. memberships need to be rescinded because their roles take one giant leap back for womankind. What did they put in their kool-aid?
The Good
Lauren Ambrose makes a pretty good female action investigator, and you are rooting for her throughout. In this incarnation, she's only a lowly medical student rather than a surgeon, and the only reason she's perceived as competent at all is through nepotism. Turns out grandpa was a world famous doctor/surgeon type who became super-rich and put his name on an entire hospital wing. Susan is curious about all the comas because it's in her blood. Old farts like Dreyfus and Woods knew her grandpappy and are eager to remind her.
Also, the series sports great images of the Jefferson Institute, which has only become more scarily high-tech and sinister.
The Bad
The romance between Susan and Mark is so-o-o boring.
The chemistry between these two actors is non-existent, and I found myself more interested in the crazy psycho that stalks Susan in a near identical scene to one in the original film. The back story for the stalker with some weird tree fetish introduces some truly stunning visuals, but the guy's a serial killer who tortures and kills women, so he's not good boyfriend material. Mark appears to be not only interested in Susan but genuinely concerned for her welfare, which makes the stupid twist at the end even more stupid. **Spoiler, he tells Susan "it was all just a bad dream" and then gets a text from the Dragon Lady, which proves he was working for the bad guys all along. Sigh.
and The Ugly
Exhibit A: The Dragon Lady, aka Dr. Agnetta Lindquist, aka Geena Davis
Dr. Lindquist is an evil cougar who sets her sights on cute younger male doctors or residents and helps them climb up the Hospital ladder if they will sleep with her. She not only is fiercely jealous of Susan, but sics the evil psycho on her in order to get her competition (for Mark's bed) out of the way. She gives the evil psycho guy bad therapy and bad drugs so that he'll become completely unhinged and go after Susan. She also seems to orchestrate (behind the scenes) Dr. Howard Stark's near fatal car accident so that she can use his body as a test subject for her nefarious Alzheimer's experiments. And no, she's not in any way nuanced or even morally concerned about the consequences of her actions.
Exhibit B: The Psycho Baby Lover, aka Mrs. Emerson, aka Ellen Burstyn
Burstyn takes the crazy psycho portrayal way past eleven as she cackles non-stop during her interactions with other actors, and utters some amazing lines when she's not chomping on the scenery. Turns out that she couldn't have babies, and it has something to do with God's will, and now she has plenty of babies because the Jefferson is not only a human experiment facility and an illegal organ warehouse, but they now also hatch babies from pregnant women in comas! Yes indeed. Well, if you liberals keep insisting on stem cell research then this is what you get!! Ugh, the horror.
Still, my all time favorite moment in the whole mini-series is when Mrs. Emerson pulls some frozen rods out of storage--the better to skewer Susan with--and quibbles about the size saying, "I'll have to use number eights. These tens might shatter her pelvis. She's quite petite." Nice. All the other people working at the Jefferson Institute are nowhere near as scary as this lady. Or Davis's Dr. Lindquist. Even after Richard Dreyfus turns out to be the King of all the Villains, in cahoots with Susan's saintly granddad, and shouting about "culling the herd," he still comes off as not so bad. I'm shaking my head at the folly of it all.
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| Scary Hallways! |
