STITCHES

US, 9185, 89 minutes, Colour.
Parker Stevenson, Eddie Albert, Geoffrey Lewis.
Directed by Alan Smithee (Rod Holcomb).

Stitches is a raucous comedy set in a hospital. While it has all, the ingredients of the television soap opera, it opts for the Police Academy method and style. Needless to say. the emphasis for humour is on sex jokes. The central characters are smug and less than sympathetic. Parker Stevenson (who has appeared in better films and television series), seems at home in the central role of the hero.

There is a range of medical students, all involved in hoaxes, and pranks (beginning with posing as cadavers in the autopsy room and racing naked down corridors ... And the humour continues in that vein). At times there is the human touch as the questions of their relationship to the girls is given a slightly more serious tone. There is a sub-plot about grants for universities, the comeuppance of smug authorities. There is also, of course the glamorous student who compromises the hero in the eyes of the heroine and there is a Chinese, exchange student who gets into all kinds of nonsensical mix-ups. It in something of a surprise to see Eddie Albert as the money-hungry Dean of the university hospital.

The director is Alan Smithee, the pseudonym given, for films where there has been troubles with the actual director who withdrew his name from the completed film.

Another example of the spate of teenage, sex comedies that abounded in the early '80s.