Scalpel Job

By J.C.

By most standards, Doctors' Wives is a terrible movie. This does not prevent it, however, from being fun. In fact, it is an enormously entertaining slab of Hollywood kitsch because of, not despite, its outrageous plot turns, its hyperthyroid acting and its determination to out-sex and out-suds even the seamiest TV soap opera. It is an example of assembly-line, big-studio moviemaking at its grotesque best.

The sharp and frequently funny scenario is by Daniel Taradash, who cannily undercuts the elephantine melodramatics of Frank G. Slaughter's original novel with some fleet and biting dialogue of his own. He and Director George Schaefer let audiences know they are not quite serious. The story concerns itself with the sordid vagaries of a small group of California physicians and their spouses. The husbands have their mistresses, the wives their lovers, and both share a set of suburban hangups that would stagger the late Grace Metalious. The game of musical beds ends when one of the doctors finds his wife (Dyan Cannon) in bed with a colleague (George Gaynes). With somewhat more glee than is usual on such occasions, he shoots them both with a single bullet. The ensuing scandal threatens the philandering physicians and the large private clinic they operate when they are not busy bedding nurses, students or any female under the qualifying age for Medicare.

The large cast is uniformly good, and they seem to be having a good time with their roles. Particularly enjoyable are Janice Rule, who writhes prettily on a fluffy bedroom rug trying to get her bored husband (Richard Crenna) to give her a tumble; Carroll O'Connor and Cara Williams, whose fractured marriage, at film's end, seems destined to survive some severe bouts of alcoholism; and John Colicos as the homicidally inclined brain surgeon who provides one of the nicest pieces of sneering screen villainy since Richard Widmark pushed the old lady down the stairs in Kiss of Death.

Doctors' Wives may wallow in vulgarity. But no recent American movie has been quite so straightforwardly gross--or, for that matter, so soapishly entertaining.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.