COMA

title: COMA

year: 1978

cast: Michael Douglas, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Widmark, Tom Selleck, Lance DeGault, Rip Torn, Lois Chiles

rating: **1/2

Michael Crichton-directed films "Westworld", "Looker", and this one suffer from "Post-Hour Syndrome". A fantastic sixty-minute build-up with terrific scientific intrigue and then a big bad guy (or machine... or both) chases the main character around and we're left with an average thriller. Crichton (a far better novelist than director) sets things up so well that the chase, no matter how intense, is a let-down... and goes on way too long. Plot of this film (based on a novel by Robin Cook with a script by Crichton) involves snooty feminist doctor Genevieve Bujold wondering why so many healthy patients (including best friend Lois Chiles), undergoing run-of-the-mill procedures, are slipping into comas. She investigates till hospital bigwig Richard Widmark catches wind and he - or someone in charge - sends a tall scary thug to kill her. This is where things get bland and ordinary as the baddie (Lance DeGault) stalks her through the ward like Michael Myers in (the original) "Halloween 2". Then she investigates a separate clinic where comatose bodies hang like puppets on strings; and has to dodge security guards and escape. Which finally leads back to the main hospital for confrontation with Widmark - and the last stretch involving our heroine going through surgery (after being drugged) and it's now up to Michael Douglas, her skeptical doctor boyfriend, to finally figure things out and save the day. Tom Selleck, a few years before MAGNUM P.I. (and a starring role in Crichton's 1983 thriller "Runaway"), makes a cameo as a patient who slips into a...