M*A*S*H

"Suicide is painless. It brings on so many changes". So run the lyrics to the title tune, written by director Robert Altman's fourteen year-old son. Altman produced a box-office smash in 1970 with this anti-Vietnam ... er ... Korean war comedy. Inevitable comparisons with the earth-shatteringly successful T.V. series (which ran for considerably longer than the Korean War) aren't panicularly useful. The film is much cruder and blacker. Altman cuts from soldiers with their guts spilling onto Mobile Army Surgical Hospital floors to the adolescent pranks of Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould). For example, Major Margaret Houlihan's declaractions during foreplay with Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) that her lips were hot were broadcast on the p.a. But maybe if you didn't get up to this sort of thing they'd crack under the strain.

Review by Malcolm Maclaren
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94