Schizophrenic film that can't decide whether it's Playhouse 90 or Airplane!. In one corner are Scott and Chayevsky making with the intense psychological realism and some really powerful moments; in the other is chaotic urban hospital laboring at zany gallows humor with a few scattered laughs. In between is director Hiller hoping for single workable whole. Result is awkward pastiche that doesn't live up to super-rich potential. Film is object lesson in how miscasting of even top-notch talent can produce disappointment. I keep wishing gifted amateurs like Zucker Bros. & Jim Abrams had gotten hold of idea first. Sure, Scott is great actor, but he's so authentic he overwhelms ambient efforts at satire; yes, Chayevsky gets off some good lines, but keeps piling on the prose long after it's peaked out. What the movie really needs are more sight gags and a lot less talky angst. In short, let the visuals carry the message -- something word master Chayevsky could never allow. My advice: once hippie chick Rigg starts bragging about Scott's restored virility, switch off, because it's a downhill ride from there.

"The Hospital" is pretty much what you'd expect from a Paddy Chayefsky movie on healthcare. Its Manhattan Hospital Center is a Gothic horror funhouse in which patients are killed either due to neglect, the wrong diagnosis or any other manner of bureaucratic nightmare. All of this is played to the ridiculous extremes and it makes for some hilarious dark comedy.George C. Scott is the film's fiery main attraction (the man is incomparable, really), and his frustrated character is both energizing and exhausting. And his one-on-one dialogues with Diana Rigg help give this movie its emotional core. But the outlandishness of this hospital is what makes this movie memorable for me. Which honestly isn't supposed to subtract in any way from Scott's contribution (seriously, watch this for him), but there's also Barnard Hughes' tirade in the OR, Mrs. Cushing's badgering of despondent patients for their Blue Cross numbers, and the kind of farcical healthcare environment that really hits a little too close to home, these days.This is riveting absurdity.8/10

"The Hospital" is a 1971 satire written by Paddy Chayefsky, and while it contains a slew of original ideas and creative plot lines, it never gels or forms one cohesive story or film.It's easy to see the similarities between this movie and Chayefsky's "Network:" he clearly did extensive research on his subjects, creating bold characters that embodied the best and worst of their respective industry, and while his satirical plot lines were mostly reality-based, he had no problem exaggerating or taking a fantastic turn in order to drive his points home or resolve his characters' stories. In "Network," this formula succeeds brilliantly, as Peter Finch's madman-prophet is just the sort of phenomenon that might be embraced by the viewing public and the TV industry. (There's even a "Network" reference as George C. Scott opens the window and shouts out to the world outside.)In "Hospital" the plot lines are just too bizarre. An Indian doing a healing dance over a comatose man's bed... a serial killer who murders doctors because it's "God's will"... an impotent hospital administrator who is "cured" by raping a hippie chick... ethnic victims who protest and storm the hospital... it's too much. Had Chayefsky streamlined his story and condensed his list of targets the movie might have been more organic, more believable. As it is we're given so many unrealistic scenes in a row that there's no foothold, no chance to catch your breath and ground the proceedings.George C. Scott is great as the tormented, impotent doctor, but his dialogue becomes so heavy and deliberate he loses all credibility. Once the sultry Diana Rigg appears, (who owed us at least one topless shot) the movie forgets it's a satire of the medical industry and becomes a cockeyed, unconvincing love story with no clear motivations for any of the characters. Rigg's father is this film's madman-prophet, but he loses all credibility when we learn he's killed multiple people- murderers lose the right to make a point, even in the movies.This is a script that needed a rewrite from a neutral party, and a reminder of why the director- and not the screenwriter- should be the ultimate author of a film. Chayefsky is so busy forcing dialogue and back-story into Scott & Rigg's mouth that he never allows the characters to Breathe, or to demonstrate who they are not by what they Say but by what they Do, which is a key to good screen writing and filmmaking. To see Paddy Chayefsky at his most brilliant, watch "Network." To see him wielding too much power and missing his own point, watch "The Hospital." It might have been brilliant.GRADE: C+

The Hospital is a movie that was made ahead of its time. This film, produced by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who gave us the Oscar-Winning film, "Network", deals with overworked staff, gross incompetence, and bureaucratic corruption at a large conglomerate hospital in Manhattan. George C. Scott, in a superb performance as the head physician, is driven to alcoholism and a death-wish, as he tries to recover from a divorce, throwing his son out of the house, and worst of all, a medical facility where corruption and incompetence take precedence over caring and healing of the sick and injured.Mr. Scott makes the movie his own, and viewers will be shocked at what they observe at this medical establishment. You can feel the "pain" (pun intended) of what this hospital has done to him. The vivid images of this hospital's incompetence are so vivid and dramatically powerful that you may find yourself laughing and being deeply disturbed from scene to scene.If only the film had stayed with that premise in a documentary style fashion as it starts out, this picture would be brilliant. Unfortunately, there is a sub-plot of Scott falling for the daughter of a senile patient. The patient has been murdering people at the hospital. This is where credibility of the picture becomes strained. The romantic dialog scenes add nothing to the picture, and the mental patient, posing as a doctor, I found to be totally unbelievable. A simple security call and records check should have prevented the senile patient from doing the killings. It takes almost the whole movie, before security people are brought into the film to get the patient out of the hospital. I could not see ONE PERSON doing that much damage, even as corrupt as this hospital is.Furthermore, George C Scott's character is "overworked" (another pun intended) because the script has too many things happening at once. For example, within a period of 20 minutes, you could have as many as 20 different doctors accused and denying what they should have done or didn't do. With the nurses and aids, it's the same story. Someone's chart was read wrong, someone was given the wrong medication and died, the doctor operated on the wrong patient, than another doctor does the same thing, blaming a third nurse who was not on call because the second nurse who was supposed to be admitting the patient was on her coffee break. There is also a lot of subtle, dark humor with the same messages of incompetence and corruption being fed to the viewer.This repetition of medical ineptness is unforgettable. However, the murder subplot is a distraction more than a help to this movie. When the focus of this film is on the incompetence of the staff and Scott's reactions to this, you are glued to the screen. But the conversations between Scott and the mad patient's daughter force the film into a mystery type "Who Done it?" scenario that seriously hurts the quality of the movie. When the loony patient is revealing how he did the killings, I wondered the following: Why did the producers need the "find the killer" mad-patient sub-plot? I think the only point of Scott's character having a relationship with the senile patient's daughter, was to give him anybody with whom to communicate. The Hospital should have maintained its scathing indictment of the medical profession by removing the love-interest and mad patient scenes. It should have focused on the incompetent B.S within its walls more frequently. In an era where this movie could have been phenomenal, the sub-plot stories make the film very good instead of the great masterpiece it could have been.