BY LEE PFEIFFER
In browsing through the seemingly endless selection of retro movie choices available on Amazon Prime, I was rather surprised to come across the 1972 Peter Sellers comedy "Where Does It Hurt?", as- to my knowledge- the movie has never been released in any video format in the USA. I had seen the film when it played in theaters and I recalled enjoying it. Thus, I thought that after almost a half-century later, it would be time to revisit the title. At the time, Sellers was working steadily, but from an artistic standpoint, his career was in the doldrums. For the last few years, Sellers was seeming to accept any script that came with a fat paycheck attached. Even the more high profile and promising productions disappointed: Sellers was fired from the mega-budget, all-star 1967 spoof version of "Casino Royale" before he had finished filming some key scenes. His reunion with Blake Edwards for "The Party" proved to be a ten-minute gag painfully stretched to feature film length. Until he and Edwards would stop their on-going feud and revive "The Pink Panther Franchise" in 1975, Sellers had been on a downward spiral.
"Where Does It Hurt?" casts Sellers as Dr. Albert T. Hopfnagel, the scheming administrator of an independent hospital in Los Angeles. Hopfnagel has turned the place into his own fiefdom, hiring equally corrupt people to serve in key positions. They coerce patients into staying in the hospital longer than necessary by forging their medical records and billing insurance companies to cover their treatments and room costs. If a patient finally gets wise and causes a fuss, Hopfnagel will let them in on the scheme and bribe them with booze and women to get them to cooperate. Indeed, the place is a virtual bordello with the "nurses" freely dispensing sexual favors along with the aspirin and most of them have been hired because of their bust lines, not brains. Hopfnagel is not above indulging, too. Despite the jealous nature of his on-premises girlfriend Alice (Jo Ann Pflug), who helps fleece the patients, Hopfnagel is addicted to having quickie sexual encounters with female staffers in private nooks. His office even has a secret built in escape route that is hidden by a hallway Pepsi machine. It's the kind of scenario that would have been a perfect fit for Groucho Marx and Sellers milks whatever laughs the film possesses out of his attempts to fool around while assuring Alice he's remaining true. If only the rest of the film were as amusing. In fact, "Where Does It Hurt?" runs out of steam shortly after the maddeningly addictive title song. Director/screenwriter Rod Amateau had some legitimate credentials in the television industry, but his feature films were mostly low-grade, despite the presence of impressive cast members. (His previous film was the notorious "The Statue" with the estimable presence of David Niven, Virna Lisi and Robert Vaughn.) Amateau's screenplay, based on the novel "The Operator", is one long dirty joke. I suppose I can excuse my 15 year-old self for finding the smutty situations amusing back in 1972, but much of it is painful to endure today. Sellers acquits himself well enough but the role is sketchily written and not up to his potential, though he once again displays his ability to project a perfect American accent. Pat Morita has a supporting role that is cringe-inducing due to the idiotic Asian stereotype he plays, but Harold Gould scores some laughs as a hopelessly inept surgeon who gets all the major surgeries precisely because he can be counted on to botch them and worsen the patient's condition.
The film's premise had some nuggets of legitimate social commentary. America has always been the only Western democracy to privatize citizen's health care in a for-profit scenario. Consequently, despite having top rate doctors and research, the financial aspects of the system have been prioritized to the point where you can be charged $10 for a single aspirin and go bankrupt if you become seriously ill and lack adequate coverage. Unfortunately for Amateau, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky beat him to the punch with his scathing, Oscar-winning script for "The Hospital", which was released a year earlier. That film dissected the U.S. health care system and predicted it was on a collision course with destiny. Compared to the earlier film, "Where Does It Hurt" is a fairly anemic medical comedy.
The print shown by Amazon leaves a lot to be desired but then again, so does the film. For Sellers' fanatics only.