Männer, die das Leben lieben

This film is an excellent drama depicting the challenges faced by wannabe doctors who first need to complete their Internships before they can really get to practice. It depicts the internal struggles of greed, racism and personal ethics. The best part of the whole movie is the wild party that takes place on New Year's Eve. There is lots of booze, lots of dancing, loud music, crazy antics and even a drunken stripper. It is the kind of party that most of us would probably do anything to get invited to.

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.

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.

Everyone here is a tough crowd criticizing this movie. I remember seeing it as a young kid and it made quite an impact on me. Everything seemed so real in it. I watched it again today and looked up the illnesses that the young girl from an Asian island and the guy that was a mercy killing had. They were real diseases that might have occurred in 1962. The scene where the woman has her baby was the first time I saw something close to a real birth. I remembered her scene even as I had my own baby years ago. It seemed very well acted! I also appreciated the interracial aspect of this movie that had such a good mix of non lead characters. Pity, they weren't the leads but still, great progress for the time. It must have been a cutting edge movie at the time because it still is has interesting themes for us. It was very ahead of its time. I enjoyed it immensely!

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 ****