Film Review: The Ambulance (1990)

Marvel Comics is today one of the most powerful institutions of American and world’s entertainment industry. Few decades ago it was struggling and its management saw nothing wrong in the product placement in the form of feature film with the company actually being part of the plot. That happened with relatively obscure and unusual film The Ambulance, 1990 comedy thriller written and directed by Larry Cohen.

Protagonist, played by Eric Roberts, is Josh Baker, comic book artist who works for Marvel Comics and has legendary Stan Lee (playing himself in his first and largest feature film role) as mentor and editor. While on the street, Josh notices and aggressively tries to pick up beautiful girl named Cynthia (played by Janine Turner) before she mysteriously collapses only to be promptly taken by conveniently present ambulance. Josh tries to track her down, but none of New York hospitals has any record of her arriving. When he tries to alert the police about her disappearance, he receives scepticism from cranky Lt. Frank Spencer (played by James Earl Jones). He decides to investigates by himself and manages to get in contact with Cynthia’s friend Jerilyn O’Brien (played by Jill Gatsby) who tells him that both women are diabetics before she too gets snatched by mysterious ambulance. The whole operation is led by sinister Doctor (played by Eric Braeden) who uses his “patients” for various experiments in improvised hospital. Josh receives help from Elias Zacharai (played by Red Buttons), old man who used to be New York Post reporter and police officer Sandra Malloney (played by Meghan Gallagher).

Larry Cohen based the entire film on simple but very promising idea of turning the ambulance – the object associated with safety – into an object of fear. Cohen, whose scriptwriting abilities were always better than his direction, doesn’t allow this idea to be used to its full potential. The main problem is his clumsy direction, pace which is too quick at times, unexplored subplots and the ending which looks too cheap. What makes this watchable and entertaining is diverse but very good cast. Eric Roberts, who would later specialise for the roles of despicable villains, obviously has great fun playing quirky but near-Hitchcockian protagonist. Janine Turner, who would later become star of television series Northern Exposure, is good, but she appears relatively late in the film. “Oscar”-winning veteran Red Buttons is great as comic relief, while Meghan Gallagher does well with somewhat thankless role that would be burdened with obligatory romance. James Earl Jones is underused while Eric Braeden makes his villainous character look almost parodical. The Ambulance is, despite its flaws, an interesting and mostly entertaining film that could be recommended even to the viewers who aren’t among the most hardcore Marvel fans.