{"id":18575,"date":"2026-04-27T21:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T01:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18575"},"modified":"2026-04-25T21:52:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T01:52:31","slug":"the-ambulance-1990-larry-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18575","title":{"rendered":"The Ambulance (1990, Larry Cohen)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having a difficult movie month here.  Seijun Suzuki and <em>The Cannibals<\/em> were the best movies I&#8217;ve watched lately, but this one was the smartest decision.  How do you follow up those, plus some major docs, a Jerry Lewis, the Arbuckles, the end of the Szulkin apocalypse series, and my big Cinema Scope roundup?  With some brilliant late Cohen nonsense, of course.<\/p>\n<p><em>Gang:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/ambulance3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Janine Turner (<em>Northern Exposure<\/em>, <em>Cliffhanger<\/em>) collapses while large-faced Eric Roberts is harassing her.  But Eric is no casual harasser, he&#8217;s a true stalker, devoted to figuring out why this girl (whose last name he doesn&#8217;t know) seems to have disappeared from the medical system after being taken away in a weird ambulance.  He goes to a real hospital where he enlists his reporter roommate Red Buttons, and involves police officers James Earl Jones and Megan Gallagher, before uncovering a clonus-horror conspiracy of secret medical experiments and pilfered body parts.<\/p>\n<p><em>Eric and Red:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/ambulance1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Vint:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/ambulance4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Coincidence? Cop Richard Bright was in <em>Panic at Needle Park<\/em> with Alan Vint, and in this movie they go searching for the ambulance drivers with only a uniform that says VINT as a clue. The story is nonsense and Roberts is a nut, but it plays well. Terribly choreographed fight scene between the ambulance drivers and a street gang. Eric was some years after <em>Star 80<\/em> and <em>Runaway Train<\/em>, not long before he started appearing in 10+ movies per year.  Eric plays a Marvel Comics artist under Stan Lee, in Stan&#8217;s first non-doc appearance &#8211; his second being <em>Mallrats<\/em>.  Megan was in a Costas Mandylor movie, oh no. The evil doctor who ends up kidnapping Red Buttons as well as Janine had previously brought on the AI-pocalypse in <em>Colossus: The Forbin Project<\/em>.  Most important is the incredible James Earl Jones performance, hammy but dignified, a must-see.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dignity, even in death:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/ambulance2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Uh-oh, ambulance:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/ambulance5.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having a difficult movie month here. Seijun Suzuki and The Cannibals were the best movies I&#8217;ve watched lately, but this one was the smartest decision. How do you follow up those, plus some major docs, a Jerry Lewis, the Arbuckles, the end of the Szulkin apocalypse series, and my big Cinema Scope roundup? With some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[451,3422,354,2978,878,61],"class_list":["post-18575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1990s","tag-ambulance","tag-conspiracy","tag-hospital","tag-james-earl-jones","tag-larry-cohen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18597,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18575\/revisions\/18597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}