what a superb movie.... - The Hospital (1972) Discussion

[–] crash_into_me420 19 years ago

yeah. it's good. especially that tracking shot through the sick people in the waiting room. that's class.

HOWEVER. perhaps the absolute WORST murder scenes i've ever seen in a film, though... i mean... Hiller could've at least put SOME effort into them. Especially the one where a nurse in the hallway is seemingly just lightly tapped on her back with some sort of object..... and inexplicably topples over from that. HA!... yeah, right... kind of marred the film a tad for me...

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[–] fergusg 19 years ago

good point...they are probably the WORST murder scenes ever..but it could be argued that those harmless-taps-on-the-head murders added to the hilarity.

did you catch it on telly or buy it on DVD/Video?

Fergusg

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[–] crash_into_me420 19 years ago

they were amusing, certainly, but still seemed very out of place and just.. wrong.

i rented the DVD.

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[–] tramky 19 years ago

I believe there was an explanation for the murder method in the theatrical version of this movie that does not appear in the recent DVD release.

If you watch closely, those 'taps' are to the back of the victims, and the weapon is a small sandbag. The medical explanation for this is that such a blow can throw the heart into defibrillation or arrhythmia--essentially causing a heart attack.

I recall some discussion of this in the press at the time of this film's theatrical release. But I also think it was explained within the movie, but I could be wrong about that. I'll have to watch it again to see if it's in the DVD version.

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[–] den_quixote 19 years ago

I haven't seen this movie in a while but I think the taps on the head were not murders. The point was that the victims were actually murdered by the hospital. They all would have survived had they been discovered in time, but do to neglect or other reasons they were not and therefore died. It wasn't as if their skulls were crushed by the taps or anything.

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[–] Narrator_Jack_dot_com 19 years ago

Pleased to find that this has the same smartass pacing and writing as Network.

"One of my interns dropped dead this morning."
"Oh really, sorry to hear that."

And it looks like Nancy Marchand's (Livia, the mother from The Sopranos) last role before a 16 year hiatus from movies?

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[–] spope2 18 years ago

yeah. it's good. especially that tracking shot through the sick people in the waiting room. that's class

....EXACTLY what I was thinking when watching it AGAIN the other night.

Scott should have got the Oscar for this, but I guess he would have turned it down, so they gave it to the 2nd most deserving!

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[–] Zoomorph 14 years ago

I thought the tap was made to be ambiguous. You don't see the doctor's face and then the main doctor talks in the following scene about how he stole the girl some clothes from the nurses room.

~ Observe, and act with clarity. ~

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[–] jeremy3 18 years ago

Yes. An excellent movie. The point of the murders was not how they happened, but they just further revealed how incompetent things were in the hospital. The old man's plan was just to arrange things so incompetent staff would inevitably do it at their own hands. That was the point of the murders.

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[–] catmydogs 18 years ago

Well, I'm a doctor, and I just saw this film today. I can't decide whether it's a hilarious black comedy or a nightmarish horror film. One thing for sure, I never ever want to be a hospitalist. If I ever work at a hospital like that, I'd quit in a heartbeat. *Shudder*

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[–] krakhouse 18 years ago

This is definitely one of the best black comedies of the 1970's but I also had a similar thought about its genre classification. Sometimes it does feel like a horror movie or a serious drama or a detective story, it just goes all over the place through twists and turns which is what makes the film so wonderful.

George C. Scott really nailed this one, he seems like the only really competent person in the whole hospital, his reactions to his coworkers ineptitude is priceless stuff.

The way I see it, is that we weren't retreating, we were just attacking in a new direction.

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[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jeremy3 17 years ago

It was set in the early 70s, and probably not far off from what inner city hospitals were like in those days.

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[–] tgibbs279 17 years ago

I LOVE this movie. The script, direction, and acting are superb, but I have one complaint, and touches on a comment by an earlier poster:

"The old man's plan was just to arrange things so incompetent staff would inevitably do it (accidentally kill staff members) at their own hands."

Drummond is testing this hospital and its staff.
Drummond's argument -- in essence -- is this: "I'm creating scenarios that ordinarily would NOT lead to a person's death, if that person was being treated by a competent staff in a smoothly-running hospital. In a competently-run hospital, these mistakes would be noticed and corrected, and the deaths wouldn't occur. But because these deaths ARE occurring, it proves just how incompetent this hospital staff really is. They can't catch the mistakes I'm creating."
Except Drummond isn't the neutral catalyst he claims to be. Here's an example. He arranged for one of the nurses to be operated on by mistake. But Drummond -- by his own admission -- switched the name tags AND charts on the two women. That's not something that would have happened on its own. The name tags alone? Maybe. The charts alone? Maybe. But both, at the same time? That's unlikely to happen. In short, Drummond CAUSED something to happen that otherwise wouldn't have.
For this to be a fair test of the hospital, Drummond can't do anything that wouldn't naturally occur -- on its own. By switching the name tags and charts, simultaneously, he went too far. He did something that couldn't be expected to occur on its own. He did something that even a competently-run hospital might NOT catch. So it's not a fair test at that point.

Still, terrific movie.

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[–] blancmange79 17 years ago

yeah, I also was a little annoyed by Drummond being a sort of altruistic murderer. I would have liked the film to have been a little more ambivalent and not so heavy handed in it's moralizing. The murders sort of became a clever plot device with little payoff. I would have much preferred a more Robert Altman style of film that just sort of lived in the world of this hospital. There seemed to be more than enough drama and humor without the murders or at least not having to catch the murderer. As the person above points out, the murders actually detract from the real problems at the hospital. I got that insurance was bad in the first ER scene and didn't need the final scene with Drummond crying over the forgotten doctor.

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[–] Studman_Productions 16 years ago

...must rent this film!

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[–] scorsese-1 15 years ago

Masterpiece.Not due to Hiller , But Paddy and Scott.

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[–] Mohsen-Qassemi 12 years ago

I'm your side. It was great, and Scott was, as usual, great. Only his acting in 12 Angry men (1997) disturbed me a little. But I love him.

Mohsen Qassemi

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