Robin Cook Movies
- 2003
This cable TV special spotlights people who aren't doctors, but who play doctors on TV. Actors from General Hospital, Scrubs, and the various incarnations of Star Trek discuss their experiences as fictional members of the medical profession, noting the intense research necessary for such roles, and also confessing the sheer joy of making "life and death" situations while the cameras are rolling. Hollywood Hospital was the pilot for a proposed series on the Discovery Health Channel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Picardo, John Billingsley, (more)
William A. Graham directs the medical thriller Acceptable Risk, a made-for-cable adaptation of a story from Coma writer Robin Cook. A scientist (Chad Lowe) discovers a mold in the spooky old house he lives in with his wife (Kelly Rutherford). In order to test his theory that the discovery could help fight many different brain disorders, the scientist injects himself with the mold. The man undergoes some strange changes, which may or may not have something to do with the house's previous owner, a woman who was hung under suspicion of being a witch. Sean Patrick Flanery, Patty McCormack, and Danielle von Zerneck round out the cast of this film that premiered October 21, 2001, on WTBS. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
This made-for-TV thriller was based on Robin Cook's bestseller Outbreak, but had to be retitled to avoid conflict with a similarly plotted theatrical feature of the same name (which in fact had been conceived long after Cook's novel hit the stands in 1987). Somewhere, somehow, someone has released a rare and deadly African ebola virus into the United States, apparently for the purpose of devastating major cities with death and disease. In her efforts to track down the root cause of this virus, fearless female medical researcher Marissa Blumenthal (Nicollette Sheridan) uncovers a sinister conspiracy that may involve her own colleagues--and in so doing, all but signs her own death warrant. First aired by NBC on May 8, 1995, Robin Cook's Virus has since been rebroadcast on cable TV under the title Robin Cook's Formula for Death, thereby distancing itself even farther from Outbreak (but not from another Cook novel called Coma, vestiges of which can be discerned in the plotline of this film!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicollette Sheridan, William Devane, (more)
- 1981
- PG
After a string of hits that included Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Papillon (1973), and The Boys from Brazil (1978), director Franklin J. Schaffner stumbled badly with this expensive wannabe cousin to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Based on a novel by author Robin Cook, this romance-adventure stars Lesley-Anne Down as Erica Baron, a female archaeologist who is searching for a lost Egyptian tomb, hoping that she will be responsible for the next discovery along the lines of King Tut's Tomb. Erica witnesses the murder of a native, Abdu Hamdi (John Gielgud doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation) and when she attempts to solve the crime, she becomes the target of a campaign to kill her using a variety of creative methods, including bats and entombment. In the course of her adventures, Erica also falls in love with a handsome Egyptologist, Ahmed Khazzan (Frank Langella). Sphinx (1981) was a box office disaster from which Schaffner never recovered, directing only three more pictures. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lesley-Anne Down, Frank Langella, (more)
A feisty, feminist intern uncovers a medical conspiracy in this icy thriller about mysterious goings-on at Boston Memorial Hospital. When her best friend and aerobics partner, Nancy Greenly (Lois Chiles), emerges in a vegetative state from a routine abortion, Dr. Susan Wheeler (Genevieve Bujold) does some digging and discovers an overabundance of anesthesia-induced comas among otherwise healthy young patients. The male authority figures who challenge Susan's technically illegal tampering with medical records include her boss, Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark); the chief anesthesiologist, Dr. George (Rip Torn); and even her boyfriend, Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas), who doesn't want Susan's shenanigans to get in the way of his shot at chief resident. As Susan continues her crusade, the paper trail leads to the Jefferson Institute, a mysterious, experimental facility in which vegetative patients are stored en masse, suspended from the ceiling by wires threaded through their long bones, in order to reduce the cost of long-term care. A shadowy assailant begins to stalk Susan just as she uncovers the link between the Jefferson Institute and the comas at Boston Memorial, setting the stage for climactic suspense scenes involving morgues, malpractice and endless institutional corridors. Writer/director Michael Crichton adapted his second feature film from Robin Cook's bestseller of the same name. Tom Selleck, who would star in Crichton's Runaway several years later, appears briefly in Coma as another victim of lethal anesthesia. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Geneviève Bujold, Michael Douglas, (more)
