DR. COOK'S GARDEN (1971)

For Ira Levin, 1967 meant a hit pop novel in ROSEMARY’S BABY and a one week run of DR. COOK’S GARDEN on B’way with Burl Ives & Keir Dullea.  (see poster)  The novel famously filmed in ’68; the play, significantly improved, made into this unjustly forgotten TV Movie-of-the-Week.  Bing Crosby, in his last acting role, has an alarming change of pace as the ‘good’ doctor of a small New England town where bad folk & hopeless cases tend to quickly/quietly die after a house call or two.  In spite of his skills . . . or because of them?  Enter Frank Converse, a young doctor Cook helped put thru med school, now called back to town, possibly to take over the practice from his aging, overworked mentor.  Blythe Danner’s there, too, in an early role as a local nurse whose father has recently, and unexpectedly, died.  A suspicious death to Converse who quickly and uncomfortably starts seeing Dr. Cook’s hand in a lot of convenient deaths.  You’ll guess the rest, and even if you don’t, the revelations & plot are largely telegraphed.  Yet this turns out not to matter, since the real conflict isn’t in discovery, but in philosophy & intent, with a doctor who believes he’s doing good with this human ‘culling,’ tending his town as if it were his garden.  And there’s something deeply upsetting seeing Der Bingle going in for this Dr. Kervorkian routine. (It's really worse, euthanasia on steroids, since it’s Doc who's making life-or-death decisions for his patients.)  And once Converse lets him know it’s got to stop, the ‘good’ doctor sees only one way out.  Neatly handled to fit an hour-and-a-half time slot, director Mike Post brings exceptional control to almost everything he touches.  (Though he's unable to do much with the generic music score or Bing’s unfortunate toupée.*)  Ending with a devious antithetical twist from Levin nearly as jarring as Rosemary 'accepting' her devil baby.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Post spent much of his career in series tv, but also had a couple of Clint Eastwood features and his remarkably fine early Vietnam War drama, GO TELL THE SPARTANS/’78 with Burt Lancaster, to his credit.