Coma (film)

The film is in color with stereo sound and runs for 113 minutes. It is notable for the intense paranoia which pervades the film, similar to other films of the 1970s such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Conversation, The Stepford Wives, and earlier, Rosemary's Baby.

Plot

She discovers that the patients had been rendered brain-dead while on the operating table by substitution of carbon monoxide for oxygen. The patients were transferred to the Jefferson Institute: a very impressive building from outside, provided with viewing rooms where family members could see their loved ones receiving standard hospital care: firm bed, clean sheets, tubes and wires, and beeping monitors. In reality, patients are only moved to the viewing rooms by prearrangement—no unannounced visits are allowed—and patients are kept, long-term, in a huge room, hanging from a high ceiling by wires attached to steel rods through the long bones, which allows them to be kept in a level, head-up, or head-down position by adjusting the traction wires. The same tubes and electrical wires are present as in intensive care: All inputs are controlled and all outputs are monitored by one huge computer in its own room.

The organs of these patients were being sold on the international black market, by a telephone auction. When the organs are sold, the patient is moved to an operating/autopsy room, where the organs are removed, packed in ice, and rushed by ambulance to Logan Airport for shipment to other hospitals, where surgical teams are waiting to transplant the organs into desperately ill (and wealthy) patients.

Just as Wheeler discovers all this, she is noticed on the institute's extensive security system, whereupon armed guards and dogs chase her around the building. By hiding in a suspended ceiling, Wheeler eventually escapes from the institute on top of an ambulance. She races back to Bellows and tells him the whole story of what she has found, but he does not believe her, which leads her to think that perhaps he is part of the conspiracy. She races out of their apartment and to Boston Memorial, where she breathlessly tells the chief of surgery, Dr. Harris, of her discovery. He offers her a drink: Scotch on the rocks, with something extra the audience never sees clearly. Dr. Wheeler promptly doubles over in pain.

Dr Harris diagnoses appendicitis. Since he is a brilliant surgeon and available at the moment, he schedules her for an appendectomy—stat—in Operating Room 8, the room with the carbon-monoxide fitting. On the way to the OR, she whispers to Bellows (who has come to the hospital looking for her) where she is going. Finally believing her, he goes into hidden areas of the hospital, where the oxygen and carbon-monoxide tanks are kept (surprisingly, the tanks are the same color, despite the standard color codes for compressed-gas tanks), and traces the CO tube through a maze of twisty, little passages and up and down ladders to OR 8, where he manages to turn off the carbon-monoxide flow, rescuing Wheeler. The final scenes in the film show Dr. Harris alone in the operating room, with a band of police officers outside; a voice says "We're waiting for you, Dr. Harris", implying that Dr. Harris et al. will soon receive their comeuppance.

Cast

See also

References

External links