I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

1962's "The Interns" is sort of the "Valley of the Dolls" of the hospital set, with a lot of young actors starting their careers in movies: Michael Callan, Nick Adams, James MacArthur, Anne Helm, Stefanie Powers, and some veterans - Telly Savalas, Buddy Ebsen and Cliff Robertson. The gorgeous model Suzy Parker, who had been getting film roles since the '50s but wasn't much of an actress, plays Robertson's love interest. Since by 1962 there was no studio system to bring these actors along, most of them wound up having careers in television and were a big part of my growing up years.Very much a soap opera, "The Interns" today seems overdone and not particularly well acted. The plot deals with mercy killing, abortion, sexism and Dexedrine; it focuses on three doctors: Michael Callan, a user who is romancing two women, one with money (Anne Helm) and one so he can get a residency with her old boss; James MacArthur, a straight arrow who falls in love with a nurse with a yen for travel (Stefanie Powers); and Cliff Robertson, an older intern who tries to help his model girlfriend (Parker) terminate a pregnancy. Nick Adams plays a buffoon who falls in love with a terminally ill patient (Ellen Davalos).It's hard to give an opinion on this film in 2008, after such excellent TV shows as "Saint Elsewhere" and "ER" - in the beginning of the movie, a woman dies, and James MacArthur has to pry her hand from his arm. Anyone who's ever read or seen a mystery or watched a medical show knows rigor doesn't set in that fast. This makes me wonder if any of the blood pressure readings made sense, though the description and treatment for thalassemia seemed correct, since bone marrow transplantation was still in the experimental stages.All in all, pretty dated and routine when seen today.

Group of medical interns (one woman and the rest men) and future nurses (all women) begin their duties at a large city hospital, cracking wise, planning parties, butting heads, and smoking pipes, cigars and cigarettes (Chesterfields, to be exact). Telly Savalas is the ego-driven chief surgeon who doesn't like women doctors ("You take up room in our hospitals until you fall in love with the wet diapers and the hot stove!"); Nick Adams is the resident goof-off (a cliché by now), however the worst offender in this medical casualty is director David Swift, lumping together more unimportant vignettes and crude slabs of 'comedy' than most TV soaps put together. The script, adapted from the bestseller by Richard Frede, hasn't an iota of natural conversation in it, and the look of the picture is flat and dull. Followed in 1964 by a sequel, "The NEW Interns", and in 1970 by a short-lived TV series. *1/2 from ****

***SPOILERS*** Soap opera-like story, much like the hospital soaps on TV, about a group of very green and inexperienced interns beginning their internships in a major municipal hospital and the trials and tribulations, as well as romantic involvements, that they all go through during their stay at the medical facility. The main player among the interns is brass and womanizing doctor Alex Considien, Michalel Cullan, who's determined to get a residency with his hero that he followed to the facility Dr. Robert Bonny, Edward McKinley, a top-flight psychiatrist whom he wants to follow in his footsteps. The handsome and personable Alex gets involved with two women at the same time, one for love and the other to further his career, that spells disaster. Later Alex ends up breaking down, in what has to be his greatest performance ever, in the hospital mess-shall. All this happens when Alex is told that because one of the patients old and terminally ill Dr. Arnold Oucr, Peter Brocco, who was in his and his fellow interns care died of an overdose of drugs that someone suspected among them slipped him their he's in danger of losing his residence.There's also doctors Paul Otis & Lew Worship, Cliff Robertson & James McArthur, who are the best of friends who have a falling out later in the movie. That happens when Otis pageant girlfriend, not by him, fashion model Lisa Cardigan, Suzy Parker, talked the love sick intern into stealing a drug, that can only be applied if the woman's life is in danger, out of the hospital to terminate her pregnancy. This after his best friend Dr. Worship catches him in the act and refuses to put it back in the locked cabinet. In the pursuing fight the erupts between Oitis Worship and the doctor in charge of paediatrics Dr. Apschut, William Douglas, Otis ends up not only being kicked out of the hospital but out of the medical profession altogether.The most touching performance, of many, in the film "The Interns" was that of Nick Adams as the both comical and sensitive doctor Sid Luckland. Sid became involved with this sad and lonely young Indonesian girl Loara, Ellen Davalos, who despite the hospitals best efforts is dying from this spine tumor. Loara is told that she has only a one in ten thousand chance of surviving the delicate and very dangerous operation that can save her life.In one of the most heart-felt scenes I've ever seen on the screen Sid hoping against hope for Loara, who had already accepted her fate, to survive looks like he was struck by a lighting bolt! That happened when he gets the shocking news from a totally unfeeling and what seems like uninvolved head nurse that Loara died on the operation table! This left him both crying and in a state of shock. Later in the movie Sid took the late Loara's advice by him, instead of making his fortune as a high priced doctor in the USA, traveling to Loara's small village in Indonesia to take care and look after the ill and infirmed who would have died without him being and working there.The movie also has an early performance by soon become famous actor Telly Savalas in one of his first leading roles. Savalas as the head of surgery at the hospital Dr. Ricco was as hard on the outside in his treatment of the doctors and nurses that he was in charge of as he was soft on the inside. By him giving a grieving and broke Dr. Brockner,Haya Harareet, the break that she needed to continue her medical studies under his residency. Even though he had to confront a prejudice that Dr. Brockner helped him overcome; that she's a woman surgeon.

I'd love to have sat in on discussions for this film, assuming there were any. Shot for about 15 cents and starring some of the worst young actors in Hollywood at the time (Nick Adams, Michael Callan and James McArthur), THE INTERNS takes us through the day to day rituals of a group of budding doctors, all of them white and male and fatally hip. You can say they reflect the period in which the film was made, and you would be right, of course. Anyhow, there is no plot -- and this is no SCRUBS, either. It is about as realistic as GREY'S ANATOMY, which is to say not at all. The dialog is horrible, the sets are a joke, the sound is awful, the lighting bad. I could go on. Watch it for one truly hilarious sequence: an intern high on speed, cracking up in the lunchroom and being carried away. I think it was that bad actor of bad actors, John Ashley, but am not 100 percent sure. And make sure you watch it for the gal (Stephanie Powers, I think) who decides abandon her education, not see the world but stay behind and marry her hunky young intern and be a housewife and make babies for the rest of her life. That should get your blood pressure percolating. Well, you can always watch it for tough but tender Telly Savalas or the goofy but droll Buddy Ebsen as chief doctors. The JFK-like Cliff Robertson is on hand as well. Man, what must have 1962 audiences thought of this one? You understand THE INTERNS was made well before EASY RIDER, the movie that wrenched the film business from the hands of aging studio execs who thought they knew what we baby boomers were all about and wanted. You want to see a 1960s hospital movie worth its salt? Catch 1963's SHOCK CORRIDOR with Peter Breck. Made by the one and only Sam Fuller. Only don't watch it alone. I'm warning you.