The Carey Treatment (1972) Here's yet another mistreated, misbegotten 1970's MGM film tampered into oblivion during the toxic reign of studio chief James Aubrey (a.k.a. 'The smiling cobra')
And like most of the films that suffered under Aubrey's terrible tenure, it was roundly denounced and disowned by its writers and its director, Blake Edwards. (Edwards had already weathered the lethal butchering of his previous MGM effort, 'The Wild Rovers')
To our surprise, what's left of this trim little thriller after travelling through the Aubrey buzzsaw is a passable fast paced time waster.......and in its own way, a time capsule of 70's attitudes and culture.
Its origins come from a quickie paperback mystery dashed off by the good doctor himself, Michael Crichton, who pumped out such books to help pay his way through medical school......
So it's no surprise that our hero here is hot shot pathologist Dr. Peter Carey (James Coburn) , a wolfish. West Coast too-cool-for-school smoothie who's switched over to a Boston hospital, lured by a way fatter salary.
In no time at all, Carey's conducting his own private investigation to clear a colleague (the ever eternal James Hong) who's been charged with murder. It seems a girl bleeding out from a botched abortion named the poor sucker as the perpetrator before she breathed her last.......and she was no less than the daughter of the hospital's chief surgeon. (Dan O' Herlihy)...yikes
And keep in mind, this takes place in the horror show era before Roe Vs.Wade.....when girls took to aborting their fetuses with coat hangers.
Coburn isn't much different than the super spy Derek Flint that he played in those two 1960's Bond-ian imitations. He's still the the smartest guy in the room, instantly collects a hot babe to share his bed and cavalierly interrogates potential suspects as if a police detective's badge came with his medical degree.
At one point, he even terrorizes one his interviewees, a pathetic college girl, by taking her on a hair raising car ride on a curving highway. We can only guess we're not supposed to think badly of Dr. Carey after he's reduced the simpering girl to a hysterical wreck........cause he got some vital info out of her and he's such a cool guy.
No big surprises unfold here........and the movie settles for a standard action-oriented finale as the revealed villain wreaks all kinds of chaos in the hospital and on Carey himself. But somewhere along the way, you'll actually hear a character voice the opinion that maybe a woman should have domain over her own body. Wow....what a concept for 1972........
We've reviewed any number of 70's film's botched in the Aubrey Dark Ages of MGM, but this one we found close to tolerable........and a bit of a politically incorrect, un-woke blast from the past in term's of Coburn's sexist, arrogant throughout.
If you find 70's films still worth watching, you could do a lot worse than this one - 2 stars (**)
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