An absolute waste of money

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The one thing that struck me while watching this was; what in Gods name is going on?Eric Roberts spots this random woman on the street that he's seen a few times and he suddenly decides to pluck up enough courage to approach her and dazzle her with his non existent charm. When that fails he then tries to buy her affection with a cheap bracelet and a bright yellow Walkman from a street vendor. When that fails she inexplicably collapses on the street. All this is being watched by some guy in a car who makes a phone call resulting in an ambulance from the 1960s coming from nowhere and taking her away. Eric Roberts only manages to catch the woman's first name and the hospital she's being taken to, however when he goes to pay her a visit, no one's ever heard of her and no one matches her description. It's the same story from all the nearby hospitals. He then decides to go to the police. As Eric works as an artist for Marvel Comics he decides to take his own sketch of the woman to the police in the hope of identifying her. James Earl Jones plays a police lieutenant who is more than a little disinterested in wanting to know anything about it and generally seems angry about everything. When he decides to draw the outdated ambulance that took her, lieutenant Jones is even less impressed and orders him out. It turns out that the woman who collapsed is a diabetic. Her room mate who briefly teams up with Eric Roberts trying to track her down is also a diabetic. She tries to call home to see if her room mate has turned up and gets a recorded message to come alone to a city horse stable for the Hansom cabs. She then gets captured and taken away in the same ambulance. For some reason there appears to be some kind of illegal experimentation going on involving diabetics and some radical new treatment for the disease which even if it's somehow successful, will still result in the imprisoned patient being sold and killed and while watching this I couldn't work out why or what the ultimate goal was in all these captured diabetics. After some bumbling vaudeville like police work, the ambulance is tracked down to an invitation only nightclub where a rather pathetic shoot-out occurs. It would seem that with 20 or so cops all shooting at an ambulance, not one of them bothers to aim at the tyres. The captured patients are located in a mock hospital on the floors above the nightclub. And even though he's not a police officer, and was actually even considered a suspect, Eric Roberts tags along and finds his missing love interest who reveals to him that she has a boyfriend. If only she said that in the first place, but for me it opened up a big plot hole; why wasn't this alleged boyfriend ever looking for her? Where's he been in all this and why isn't he a suspect?So despite all Eric's been through he doesn't get the girl. He immediately turns his attention to the female constable who's been assisting with the investigation and who was the obvious backup or optional love interest. After a last ditch run in with the crazed head doctor who got away in the ambulance because movie police can't shoot straight, it ends up as a fireball at the bottom of a building site, Eric and his new lover find themselves together in the back of an actual ambulance and the rest of their lives writes itself. I just never got this movie at all. Nothing in this made any real sense to me and while some reviews are commending the black comedy, I simply didn't see it. This was far too stupid to be funny in any sense and what story there was seemed all over the place. The whole business of capturing diabetics for radical experiments was never fully explored. The idea of using an ambulance that went out of service 30 or 40 years ago and unbelievably going unnoticed by everybody is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever put to film. It's tantamount to using a steam locomotive for the same thing, eventually people are going to notice and begin to ask questions. For me, the best thing in this was Stan Lee, co-creator of some of the best Marvel comic heroes of all time, and even he was visibly unimpressed with the lameness of Eric Roberts. So if you love watching movies with no sense of purpose then I guess you'll go orgasmic over The Ambulance.

The Ambulance is a pretty unusual film and as far as B-Movie's go it's slightly above average and is quite an enjoyable watch as a one-off but I don't feel there is any repeat-viewing value.The story itself is naff - an unscrupulous doctor and a load of henchmen kidnap diabetic people in order to sell them on for some kind of medical experiments. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and there are plot holes but I didn't really care about any of that because once I started watching I continued doing so not for the story but for Eric Roberts's performance, the randomness of the whole film and just to see where it would end up going.Eric Roberts plays a Marvel comic book artist who tries picking up a girl in the street. She collapses and is taken away in an old-style ambulance. There's something obviously dodgy about the ambulance and the paramedics and when Roberts goes to visit the woman at the hospital only to find she was never admitted, he begins his journey to find her.I did not realise the film was supposed to have a comedy element when I first started watching so Eic Robert's hair and performance was a little jarring at first but once I got into the swing of things his performance was the best thing about this film. Other performances were a bit random. Some were comical, some were straight, some were just weird (James Earl Jones). Overall it gave a weird effect to the film.The pace was good and I didn't get bored at any point. As mentioned, it was an enjoyable one-off watch but don't think it's a film worth re-visiting.

Ripping from the pages of what seems like a Crichton-esquire medical drama, Cohen pulls the myths of diabetes into the world of comic book artists and paranoid cops. Confused? Not to worry, it doesn't get any better than this. Using Eric Roberts in a horrid accent, unknown decisions, and over-sized 80s suits, Cohen attempts to create a fear for an inanimate object that is typically used to save lives – in this film it becomes the source for chaos and death. Couple with the fact that Red Buttons gives us jokes that were made during the early part of creation, James Earl Jones in an unfunny gum chewing scene, and Janine Turner proving there is something she cannot do (i.e. act), Cohen butchers a film that wasn't strong enough in the first place by placing Landis-like jokes in a hodgepodge film. To begin, Roberts is horrible. He reads his lines from the cards behind the camera, half the time doesn't remember what he is to say (winging it is not one of his stronger suits), and builds absolutely no chemistry with anyone else on set. His initial lust for a random woman is … well … random. There is no reason to his sanity and his motive for the remainder of the film is never quite established. Is he a hopeless romantic, or just trying for anything? The fact that he is a comic artist is thrown into the story haphazardly, especially in the beginning where he tries to give out pictures he has drawn of her, only to find her cardboard roommate, following the same steps with the style of acting, drinks a Pina Colata, while muttering "I don't know why I am drinking this, I am a diabetic as well". DUM DUH DAH. These poorly placed moments of either comedy or honest drama are miscalculated from the beginning, forcing us to question what Cohen wanted to do.The words above don't even scratch the surface for what atrocities the acting was in this film. It was worse than a High School drama, nobody cared, and it was apparent from the first time that Roberts opened his mouth. There were no characters. Nobody in this film did something that one could consider saying, "that was fully in his characters realm". Vague was the underlining factor and acting style between these actors. I would have expected this from some, but not from James Earl Jones who proves that you don't have to pass acting 101 to get work in Hollywood. Perhaps I am confused, was Cohen trying to pay homage to another style of film-making or genre? It wasn't apparent in this film, as much as I would like to forget it, the story matched the characters. Diabetes was the joke of the film. While it should have been something that scared us, every time it was mentioned a laugh erupted. What made me happy was to see that at least Ecto-1 was getting work post "Ghostbusters", but even he fell into the Roberts trap. While I believe he was the only one to do his own stunts and physically remember his lines, by the end of the film the ambulance was never quite as frightening as one would hope. The doctor who was committing these crimes was never explained, never questioned, never judged, just evil without motive. Where was the motive in this film? As this review is typed, questions over-inflate my mind. These aren't intelligent questions, but instead, ones that need to be asked to get out of the sinking plot holes in the script. Why would any cop shoot a gun into the air in a dance club? What is the deal with the other death in Central Park? Why was Red Buttons given Bob Hope-styled jokes? Why did Stan Lee approve this film? Questions. Questions. Questions. I need answers, answers, answers."The Ambulance" was a pathetic excuse for a film. There is a reason why it hasn't made it to the honorable level of DVD, and hopefully it never will. Perhaps it has an underground cult following, or Ecto-1 has more fans that I knew, but this was painful to view. James Earl Jones, chewing gum, ranks among one of the worst jokes/images I have ever had to experience in my days of cinema watching. I kept waiting for something, anything to pull this film out of the gutter, but the level of disappointment continue to grew with each unbelievable scene. Nothing made me laugh, nothing frightened me, nothing upset me more than the complacent disrespect for a dangerous and serious disease. If Cohen had done some homework, pushed the level of insanity with the doctor, created a more menacing vehicle, I think we would have had a mediocre little thriller on our hands, but with the choices made, it just turned into depressing garbage. I think Cohen has made his mark, but "The Ambulance" probably set him back for years. From the beginning to the end, there was no potential. This film needed a reset button, from Roberts' amateur accent to the robotic characters that Jones and Gallagher (the tough-as-nails femme cop with a heart of gold), and the jokes of Red Buttons which would make your ears bleed. "The Ambulance" is a hidden film, and with what I just witnessed hopefully will never make it to the surface again.Grade: ½ out of ***** (only due to my respect for Ecto-1)

More and more I love the work of writer/director Larry Cohen and I can only encourage people to check out his versatile imagination. "The Ambulance" is less ambitious, comical and outrageous than some of Cohen's more famous achievements (like "God Told me To", "It's Alive" or "Q – the Winged Serpent") but it definitely is a well-elaborated and entertaining B-movie. Once again, Cohen succeeds in turning a familiar and every-day topic into an exciting and rather suspenseful thriller. Inconspicuously and well organized, a group of fake nurses and doctors drive around New York in an old-type of ambulance, picking up diabetics that suffer from a 'sudden attack'. After they're brought into the cool conveyance, they disappear and no one ever hears from them again. The womanizing comic-book artist Josh Baker coincidentally stumbles upon this suspicious organization when a broad he's been stalking for a long time is taken away in front of him. His search for the girl results in a tense and involving movie, filled with ingenious plot-twists and adorably eccentric New York-characters. The screenplay is very clever, the dialogues are well written and there isn't a dull moment in the entire movie. 'The Ambulance' isn't a horror film so the deaths aren't as sadistic as in other Cohen films and there's also the lack of pungent social criticism. Still, this is a truly cool movie that deserves a wider audience. Judging by his performance here, I'd say it's unjust that Eric Roberts' career went to waste so badly. He looks a little goofy but his lines are exhilarating and his bad-boy charisma definitely works for the character he plays. Even more amusing are the supporting roles like, for example, James Earl Jones as the weird and over-stressed copper and Red Buttons as the persistent journalist. Check it out!