Mother, Jugs & Speed

'Mother' chronicles the adventures of a group of privatized ambulance drivers (in 1976?) working for the Fishbine Ambulance company. You get the usual assortment of stiffs for the mid-70s; the new guy, Speed (Harvey Keitel), the hot chick, Jugs (Raquel Welch), the lecherous loser, Murdoch (Larry Hagman), the overbearing boss, Fishbine (Allen Garfield), the nerdy effete guy, Bliss (Allan Warnick), and your resident smart-ass, Mother (Bill Cosby). Now, these days, you don't think of Bill Cosby when you think of smart-ass, but this was almost thirty years ago. Things were different.

'Mother' is a product of its time, very 70s, with a rant about inflation and how bad the economy is; Mother's partner Leroy (a very young Bruce Davison) gets high all the time, and there's a flap later on when Jugs earns her EMT certificate and wants to ride in the ambulance with the guys. Such a thing wouldn't even bat an eye now, but was an issue back then. But 'Mother' is also amusing. Some of the comedy is obvious – one extremely obese black woman is too heavy to carry and her gurney slips from their grip, taking a joyride down a hilly street. But a lot of it is surprisingly sharp, thanks mostly to Cosby's excellent timing and deadpan delivery. Mother has a one-liner for every situation, and, surprise, most of them are really funny.

While the rest of the cast is fine – Keitel portrays a slightly nicer version of the cool, collected guy he often plays, Welch is pleasant but her character isn't particularly deep, and Garfield is good as a sort of proto-Louie DePalma – the movie is really Cosby's show. From bribing the cops to drinking beer on the job, from ‘buzzing' the nuns with his siren to eating his hamburgers with peanut butter, onions, and mayonnaise on them, Mother is a real character in every good sense of the word. While the film does not always excel and in some places falls sort of flat, Cosby is always spot on here, and it's worth sitting through some of the slower stretches for him alone.

I was thinking as I was watching this film that it would be prime fodder for a remake. Bernie Mac would ace the Cosby role, you could find any number of women to play Jugs (I suggest Heather Graham), and it would be almost painfully easy to update the 70s-isms into modern day slang/events. You could even be topical and switch Bliss from metrosexual to full-out gay (which is implied but never said in the film anyway). In looking up this film on the IMDB, however, I discovered someone already did try to make this into a TV show, so apparently I wasn't the first one who thought this had potential (though TV is the wrong venue; much of the film's humor is ribald, and you sure as hell couldn't call any woman on TV ‘Jugs'). 'Mother' is an enjoyable film, not much more than your average summer filler, but still able to elicit several good chuckles almost thirty years later. It's certainly worth it to see Cosby play the bad boy with aplomb.

The ads for this 1976 comedy described the film as "'MASH' on wheels" and that is the perfect description. It follows the exploits of paramedics in Los Angeles and the trouble they get into with the police, rival ambulance services, and each other. The film is very funny at times and deadly serious as traces of black comedy seep thru.

Bill Cosby heads the cast as Mother and gives, I believe, his best performance on the big screen. He's hip and funny. By no means is this film a classic but it is worth watching, especially if you're in a goofy mood. And Raquel Welch ain't bad to look at either.

This is a very funny, interesting and worth-watching movie from the 70s. It ought to be seen as a product of the early American indie that helped kick-start the anti-Hollywood boom that mirrored the social and cultural changes happening in the 70s. I liked it and I recommend it to anyone who wants to experience something with a rebellious flair. This film has an edge, not unlike Mean Streets or even Repo Man, and it addresses social issues while maintaining a satirical tack. I love movies from the 60s and 70s because they were made before the whole PG-13 watering down of American Cinema, before political correctness took hold of Hollywood, and before we all thought that we already knew everything there was to know.

I remember hating this on release in '76, but seeing it again made me realize it had some serious things going on. First off, Bill Cosby was actually interesting for a change (although he was great in I SPY - TV and HICKEY AND BOGGS with R. Cup) and was not selling stupidity or jello. Harvey Keitel as the naive good new guy was as compelling as ever, Raquel Welch was THE BABE (she was good in KANSAS CITY BOMBER), and Allen Garfield as owner of the quirky ambulance outfit is always perfectly cast.

A 5 out of 10. Bruce Davison (who started his career as a lead actor) is believably human and there is a rhythm to this flick that defies genre-casting (dramady)? Anyway, not worth buying, but check it out on cable and you'll catch some subliminal surprises of the most normal kind!

This is a highly underrated piece of Cosby's work. Although, now, the concept of a private ambulance service that is primarily interested in money seems rather, quaint, it was almost the norm in the mid-seventies when this movie was made. Although most people don't realize it, the largest ambulance provider in the US is still privately operated, for profit, so, maybe not all that has changed.

Cosby is brilliant as "Mother", a sort of archetype character that melds together all the clichés of what "ambulance drivers" were in an era when many ambulance services were still run by funeral homes - I recall pushing a 1970 "Miller Meteor" Cadillace ambulance, which was basically, a converted hearse, up and down hills at 35 MPH, it's 500 cubic inch engine floored, straining and just barely able to make it up the hill. This is not "EMS," it is "you call, we haul." Cosby brings out the nitty gritty of a profession that was mostly populated by caring people who ran up against the ethos of profit in medicine and owners who were just out to make a buck. You start out really caring, but run head on into the reality that aiding the sick and injured is not the end, just the means to the end. You learn this working very long hours, under horrible conditions, for very little money.

Rachel Welch portrayed the emerging role of women in emergency services very well. The hoops she had to jump through just to get on a rig were exaggerations of what really was happening in the industry at the time. Similarly, Welch's reaction when faced with the reality of emergency medicine is right on point. There is a great deal of difference between what you learn in textbooks and real life. And real life isn't always that pleasant. But, as Mother says, Jugs has the "dedication of a jungle missionary." She would have to, just to get where she was and stay there.

Harvey Kietel was just starting out when he played "Speed" and his performance in the role foreshadowed the brilliant career that followed. I thought the "Speed" reference was a little cryptic. I thought, for a long time, it referred his desire to drive fast. However, the "Speed" character gives a different point of view - that of an outsider - to the hijinks of the staff of F&B Ambulance Service. He shows us how absurd some of things that happen are.

The rest of the characters seemed to all be lifted directly from the real world. Harry and Naomi Fishbine seemed to be modeled after a husband and wife team that ran a not too different private ambulance company that I worked for on the west coast in the seventies - right down to the lecture about how much each patient was worth. Larry Hagman's character portrayed a type of worker in the industry that was always on the margins - you weren't sure why he is doing what he was doing, but you couldn't see him doing anything else.

The events portrayed in the movie where very similar to the "urban legends" about what supposedly happened at private ambulance companies in the sixties and seventies. As most legends are, some of them are based on loose interpretations of fact. I have, in fact, had difficulty taking very obese patients down flights of stairs. Some of the places we went to on calls had rodents large enough to cause grave concern. There were always rumors of people who smoked pot or drank on the job. During my entire career, whenever there were two private ambulance companies in competition "jumping calls" and competing for patients did happen - sometimes on a daily basis. The owners of one of the ambulances services I worked for in the eighties ordered their employees to attend city government meetings when the company was being discussed, (this was long after the everyone who worked in the industry had becomes "professionals). And, yes, I have been the victim of layoffs from private ambulance companies when they lost their government contracts. I have, also, been held up at gunpoint for drugs, stabbed and shot at. The reality of the movie made it all that much funny and more real.

Mother, Jugs and Speed is an interesting and amusing look back at a time when EMS was just starting to become a reality. The acting was top notch. The events portrayed were close enough to real, (or to urban legends), as to make them seem likely. The writing could have been better - some of the dialog was very marginal. Overall, as a lay person and a retired EMS professional who worked in the ambulance industry at the time this film was made, I found the movie to be very enjoyable and suggest others watch it - with tongue firmly in cheek, of course.