Coma (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Coma |
| Original title | Coma |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1978 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Michael Crichton |
| script | Michael Crichton |
| production | Martin Erlichman |
| music | Jerry Goldsmith |
| camera |
Victor J. Kemper Gerald Hirschfeld |
| cut | David Bretherton |
| occupation | |
| |
Coma is a medical thriller by Michael Crichton from the year 1978. The film is based on the novel Koma (Original title: Coma ) by Robin Cook from the year 1977. Geneviève Bujold plays a young surgeon who comes on the track of a monstrous procedure. Michael Douglas can be seen as her boyfriend .
action
The young surgeon Dr. Susan Wheeler works with her friend, Dr. Mark Bellows, at the Boston Memorial Hospital . Her best friend, Nancy Greenly, is admitted to the clinic to have a therapeutic abortion ( abortion ) performed. During the routine operation, however, she suddenly falls into a coma and dies shortly afterwards, although she is actually healthy. Although Mark and everyone else assure her that a few deaths from side effects are normal with the large number of operations, Susan remains skeptical. She finds out that there have been ten unexplained coma cases in young and healthy people after routine surgery within the last twelve months. Against the opposition of the chief of surgery, Dr. Harris, keep investigating.
When a second patient, Sean Murphy, falls into an inexplicable coma the next day, her ambition is heightened. But also Dr. George, the chief anesthesiologist, stands in the way of their investigations and strictly refuses to hand over the relevant medical records.
Then Susan learns that Nancy is no longer in the intensive care unit, but in pathology because she has since died. The pathologist, who is currently examining Nancy's corpse, tells her that a coma could be created artificially without any noticeable traces if one exchanged the oxygen for carbon monoxide during anesthesia . Mark, to whom she told about her discoveries, takes her to the hospital again to calm her down. When examining the anesthesia systems in OP 8, where all the operations in question were performed, they found no suspicious traces.
As she continues her research, she is noticed by a house technician who asks her into the engine room to show her the solution to the riddle. Susan is late, however - the house technician is murdered in front of her eyes before he can. Eventually she finds a gas bottle with the suspicious carbon monoxide attached to a thin metal pipe. She follows the line over a ladder into a shaft until she realizes that it leads exactly into the oxygen supply of OP 8 (the presumed crime scene) and that it is equipped with an electronic control.
In the clinic, she is then followed and threatened by the house technician's murderer. However, she can escape him. Even Mark doesn't trust her anymore, because she overhears at home how he talks on the phone that he'll keep her with him for the time being. Susan believes she understands that Mark is involved in the crimes and escapes.
In the course of her private investigation, she comes across the Jefferson Institute, to which all coma patients from Boston are brought. She succeeds in taking part in an official guided tour for doctors through the institute after having been turned away a few days earlier by a conspicuously locked nurse. Illuminated by UV light, the coma patients are monitored by computers that save costs and automatically regulate the necessary care. After the tour, she remains in the house unnoticed and learns from a conversation between two employees, which she overhears, that illegal organ trafficking is being carried out here under the guidance of a certain "George". Then she discovers the body of former patient Murphy on an operating table and some boxes with organs. On the roof of an ambulance that is transporting the boxes, she escapes the security guards who have since noticed her.
Back at the hospital, she tells Harris everything she knows. He offers her a whiskey, but it contains a drug. It turns out that in reality Dr. Harris, whose first name is George, is personally responsible for the crimes, not Dr. George, the chief anaesthesiologist. Paralyzed by this, she is said to be operated on under the pretext of appendicitis in the manipulated OP 8 and murdered in the process. But she can give Mark a hint in good time in front of the operating room so that he can find the carbon monoxide pipe in the engine room and interrupt the supply in the shaft.
The operation still takes place, albeit without any findings, under the direction of Dr. Harris instead. Contrary to expectations, however, Susan wakes up unscathed from the anesthesia, to the horror of Dr. Harris, who is finally arrested by the police, alerted by Mark.
Others
- Ed Harris made his feature film debut in this film. He plays a supporting role as a second pathologist.
- Tom Selleck , who only became known two years later with the TV series Magnum , plays a patient and a corpse in the role of Sean Murphy.
- The Jefferson Institute shown in the film was a former Xerox office building .
- The German thriller Fleisch from 1979 and the remake of the same name from 2007 dealt with the subject of organ donation / organ trade in a similar way.
- In 2012, based on the book and film, the miniseries " Koma " was created with Lauren Ambrose as Dr. Susan Wheeler, as well as Geena Davis , James Woods , Richard Dreyfuss and many others. It aired in the United States on September 3rd and 4th, 2012 on A&E. In Germany, it was cut by 87 minutes on the pay-TV channel Sky in two episodes.
Premieres
- USA 6th January 1978
- Germany 25th August 1978
criticism
“Perfectly staged, exciting thriller; extremely cynical. "
Awards
- Nomination for the Saturn Award 1979 for Geneviève Bujold as best actress .
See also
literature
- Robin Cook : Coma. (Original title: Coma ). Translated from the English by Martin Lewitt. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-548-25467-5 .
Web links
- Coma in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Coma in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ^ Koma Moviepilot . Retrieved October 29, 2017.
- ↑ Coma. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 5, 2017 .