United States

Warning - At Boston Memorial Hospital you could wind up in a coma! Genevieve Bujold and Michael Douglas star in an exciting, contemporary thriller - the film version of the best-selling Robin Cook novel where every split second can mean the difference between life and the living death. Few stories have caused the sensation that Coma has, with its deep, probing questions into the medical mysteries of our time. Now the movie, directed by Michael Crichton, throws open the doors to the secret research going on inside the private labs. Brilliant co-stars Richard Widmark, Elizabeth Ashley and Rip Torn bring to the screen all the suspense of the novel. Genevieve Bujold, as Dr. Susan Wheeler, suspects that someone is purposely murdering patients at the hospital. Healthy young people, undergoing routine operations, are slipping into irreversible comas. There is no pattern to the incidents. Yet, she becomes obsessed with proving that the hospital is responsible, even when it puts her own life in danger. Michael Douglas, the talented actor and producer, plays her lover - a young doctor who is never sure whether his friend is on to something or cracking up. The tension builds throughout the film, until the final, climatic stroke of the scalpel in a pulse-popping finish.