L'ambulanza

Eric Roberts, sporting an impressive mullet, plays Marvel comic artist Josh Baker, who tries his luck with the beautiful stranger he sees every day on the way to work. Not one to take 'no' for an answer (making him a sexual predator by today's standards), he pursues the woman (Janine Turner), even buying her a Walkman from a street vendor (she throws it back at him: probably didn't have Megabass and auto-reverse). However, when the woman suddenly collapses in the street and Josh comes to her help, he learns a little more about her: she is diabetic and her name is Cheryl. An ambulance arrives and whisks her to hospital, or so it seems...

In reality, Cheryl has been kidnapped by human traffickers, who sell people with diabetes for medical experimentation. When Josh is unable to locate Cheryl at any of the local hospitals, he tries to find out what has happened to her, enlisting the help of grouchy New York detective Lt. Spencer (James Earl Jones), elderly newspaper reporter Elias Zacharai (Red Buttons), and pretty policewoman Sandra Malloy (Megan Gallagher)

Like most of director Larry Cohen's movies, The Ambulance is a quirky little B-movie, packed with offbeat performances, often bordering on the camp (Jones, gum in mouth, chews up the scenery and Roberts' mannerisms are strange, to say the least). The film's oddball approach and OTT acting help to make it an entertaining time-waster for fans of cult cinema, despite the somewhat off-putting nature of Josh's flowing locks (not surprised that Cheryl said 'no' to him; do you think Eric Roberts ever looks back at his work from this period and cringes?). Cohen keeps the action moving at a fair lick, with plenty of mystery and peril, and a particularly well-handled final act that features lots of dangerous looking stunt-work.

Of the six Cohen films I have seen so far (The Ambulance, Full Moon High, Special Effects, Q-The Winged Serpent, It's Alive, and The Stuff), this is easily my favourite. 6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for Stan Lee as Stan Lee - not much acting required, but at least it's not just a pointless blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo like in the MCU movies.

My review was written in December 1990 after watching the film at a Manhattan screening room.

"The Ambulance" is a wild thriller laced with black humor. Entertaining exercise in urban paranoia will be shown at the Avoriaz fantasy film festival in France and gives Triumph Films a genuine sleeper for 1991 domestic release.

As with his recent "Maniac Cop" pics, filmmaker Larry Cohen works with the inversion principle: taking a symbol of rescue, a vintage red ambulance, and making its appearance and siren fearful. Here he tilts the balance toward humor, though hair-raising stents and sudden moments of violence teem.

Eric Roberts introduces the film as sort of a day in the life of James Toback ("The Pick Up Artist" helmer). In telephoto shots on Manhattan streets (apparently using real-life people as extras), he tries to pick up beautiful Janine Turner.

As she valiantly gives him the brush-off, she suddenly faints, and a sinister ambulance, controlled by the film's heavy Eric Braeden, whisks the diabetic girl to a hospital. After work, Robets tries to find her and, as the film's shooting title suggested, she's vanished "Into Thin Air".

With fast repartee and a gallery of quirky characters spurring the tale along, Roberts continues his search but finds little help from the disbelieving police inspector James Earl Jones. His paranoia increases in quantum leaps as mad scientist Braeden's henchmen start eliminating people around him and give Roberts a frightening ambulance ride.

Help finally surfaces in unlikely sidekick Red Buttons, an aging New York Post reporter Roberts rooms with at the hospital. Jons' pretty assistant on the force, Megan Gallagher, is another kindred spirit leading to an exciting climax atg a downtown dance club where Braeden keeps his kidnap victims upstairs as medical experiments.

With unpredictable plot twists coming fast and furious, this fresh approach to the thriller format is especially of interest to genre fans. Real-life Marvel Comics exec Stan Lee has a nice guest role playing himself as Roberts' boss, and the comic book backdrop is used effectively as Roberts draws large panels of Turner and the ambulance to aid his investigation.

Cohen puts a sting in this tale with a delightful false ending that trumps the "Carrie" finish tacked onto nearly every horror film of recent vintage.

Reteamed here with Jones shortly after they filmed "Best of the Bet" two years ago, Roberts is perfectly cast. His familiar abrasiveness ("Star 80", "The Pope of Greenwich Village") is used to good advantage.

Jones is a hoot as the gum-chewing cop whose know-it-all attitude gets him in trouble. Buttons steals his scenes in his best film assignment since "The Poseidon Adventure".

Following up on her tv policewoman duty on the defunct series "Hill Street Blues", Gallagher is a big-screen find as the tough cop who believes in Roberts. Turner, adopting a different look with long, dark hair here, develops considerable sympathy in her brief assignment. Supporting cast is solid, including Richard Bright (of "The Godfather Part III") as a no-nonsense cop and Braeden, inverting his messianic scientist role of Dr. Forbin, memorable to genre fans in the classic: "Colossus: The Forbin Project".

Tech credits exploit the NYC terrain well, especially Spiro Razatos' unusual chases and stunt work.

The Ambulance actually turned out to be a pretty funny, yet bizarre thriller. Sarcastic extrovert, Josh Baker (Eric Roberts in a hilarious role), probably regrets the day he talked to a woman that he felt compelled to introduce himself to, having always seen her on his lunch break. The woman, a diabetic, suddenly collapses in the street, and he is there as she is carried away in a hearse-turned-ambulance with a mysterious green glowing light in the back. She gets in the ambulance, and as Josh later discovers, she never arrives at any of the local hospitals.

Josh is convinced something is awry, but doesn't pay too much attention to it at first (in fact, as bizarre as the story becomes, he's so matter-of-fact about everything. Him and everyone else). The more people he confronts about the strange ambulance that conveniently seems to arrive when he's talking to them but never seems to be around when he needs to prove it exists, the more likely those people are going to wind up dead because of the ambulance (actually, because of the people driving it, who are the goons for a strange doctor who is using his victims for a strange medical experiment).

Josh's only hope, besides himself (a guy who will soon be quite immune to pain as he gets hit by cars, jumps through barred doors, is drugged, and finally beat by a junkyard gang), is the red head cop Sandra Malloy who turns up after her boss, Spencer (James Earl Jones in an even funnier part as the disbeliever), turns up missing. And if they don't act fast, the ambulance will show up for them, and the only chance of stopping it will be lost.

All in all, the story is bizarre, but the movie is much more of a comedy than a thriller in sort of that 'After Hours' style of comedy. Josh appears to be absolutely crazy to those around him, babbling about some weird ambulance that is out to murder people. But he seems to dismiss the seriousness of it, just hoping to save the girl and get through the day, and not much else. Eric Roberts and Red Buttons, too, made a good team, albeit a brief one with Red Buttons as Elias Zacharai, the fast-talking newspaper reporter who befriends Josh and has similar convictions about the hospital staff trying to drug up patients and keep them against his will, but in that senile old man kind of way. He plays the reporter that wants the exclusive story on the ambulance.

Loosen up and give it a try. Though cheap, it's got some good action sequences, a decent plot, and is just overall, pretty funny. Except, for maybe the ending. It was just too easy.

"The Ambulance" is not really a "black comedy", although it does have moments of dark humor throughout. It really is sort of a hybrid comedy-suspense film. Eric Roberts carries things as the perplexed wannabe lover boy, while James Earl Jones comes and goes as a perplexed, somewhat irrational police detective. The movie is not overall terrific, but there are some memorable scenes, especially relating to the ambulance itself. Overall for a B movie, "The Ambulance" delivers enough entertainment value to recommend seeing it, however I doubt multiple viewings would be that rewarding. .......................... - MERK

You can always count on at least one thing going into a Larry Cohen movie - and that's a good time. Cohen had already tackled rogue police officers before it came to this film with Maniac Cop, and thus he decided to make a film about a rogue ambulance. The Ambulance may not be Cohen's finest achievement; but its great lightweight entertainment, and I'm sure very few people that watch this film will regret doing so. Naturally, there's not a great deal of point to the proceedings, and Cohen seems keen to focus as much on entertainment value as possible, which is no problem if you ask me. The plot focuses on Josh Baker; a humble cartoonist who, one day, decides to try and charm a woman on the street. Tragedy strikes when she passes out, but everyone is reassured when an ambulance turns up. However, upon going to check on her at the local hospital, Josh finds that she isn't there - and further investigation makes him realise that there has been several people going missing, and it turns out that a fake ambulance with fake doctors and nurses is abducting people!

The idea behind this movie is actually quite frightening; ambulances are a service that we rely on and so having one going rogue and abducting people is a frightening idea. Cohen doesn't capitalise on this, however, which is rather odd; and despite a few scenes with the maniacal doctor, there really isn't all that much horror on display. Others ideas that aren't capitalised on include the moral perspective of whether sacrificing a few people to cure millions is a righteous exorcise. But really, none of this is particularly important as I didn't want an Ingmar Bergman film anyway. Cohen has rounded up a good cast of cult actors to populate his film with. Eric Roberts is entertaining in the lead, and receives good feedback from the likes of James Earl Jones, Megan Gallagher, the amusingly named Red Buttons and the sadly underused Eric Braeden. The plot is a little choppy at times, but it generally flows well and I don't remember being bored at any time during the film. The ironic ending is a blast, and although I don't doubt that this film could have been better; it's still fun enough and I won't hesitate to recommend The Ambulance to anyone!