Love this picture. It should have become a suspense classic but for some reason it has ended up being aired on anything but prime time on various TV-networks. I believe that this might be due to it not being one of Michael Douglas's most memorable films. His heart really didn't seem to be in it. Maybe he and Genevieve Bujold didn't hit it off or that it's more of her film than his. The other actors did swell, especially Widmark, Torn and Ashley.
Bujold gives an energetic performance and is utterly believable as the paranoid yet justifiably suspicious doctor seeking the answer to the question: "There have been 12 cases of unexplained coma in young healthy patients the last year; don't you find that surprising?" And everybody replies: "No." And there's of course the priceless Jefferson Institute.
The sequence where the protagonists approach its sinister exterior is very well done in a Hitchcockian fashion. Its inside and creepy activities are fundamental, not merely to the story, but to the overall impact of this picture. I was somewhat disappointed to be informed of it being owned by Xerox at the time of the shooting. And now by a shoe brand...
Bujold gives an energetic performance and is utterly believable as the paranoid yet justifiably suspicious doctor seeking the answer to the question: "There have been 12 cases of unexplained coma in young healthy patients the last year; don't you find that surprising?" And everybody replies: "No." And there's of course the priceless Jefferson Institute.
The sequence where the protagonists approach its sinister exterior is very well done in a Hitchcockian fashion. Its inside and creepy activities are fundamental, not merely to the story, but to the overall impact of this picture. I was somewhat disappointed to be informed of it being owned by Xerox at the time of the shooting. And now by a shoe brand...