Doctors' Wives

Here's one I know only by reputation.  And boy, is it a bad reputation!  A sleazy potboiler adapted from Frank G Slaughter's potboiler of a novel, Doctors' Wives represents another attempt by old Hollywood to answer the threat posed by television.  Throughout the fifties and sixties Hollywood had focused on a mixture of spectacle and gimmicks, such as 3-D, to try and lure audiences away from their TVs by giving them stuff the box just couldn't give them.  But it was all to no avail and cinema audiences continued to decline.  By the early seventies Hollywood was running out of novelties to tempt TV audiences with.  The trouble was that TV could also offer stuff viewers couldn't get anywhere else: quiz shows, variety programmes, sitcoms and, most significantly, soap operas.  These continuing dramas kept audiences glued to their sets, day in, day out. 

So Hollywood produced their own soap operas - bigger, glossier and more sensational than those on TV, often based on novels by the likes of Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann.  Obviously, one off films couldn't replicate the serial nature of TV soaps, but they could give audiences something seventies TV couldn't: sex.  Lots and lots of sex.  The raunchier, the better.  Doctors' Wives is an excellent example of the genre, making its intent clear from the off, with Dyan Cannon announcing that she 'feels horny'.  Also, not satisfied with sexing up soap operas, Doctors' Wives crosses genres to do the same thing to that other seventies TV staple: the medical drama.  Trust me, Dr Kildare was never like this.  Most reviewers are utterly dismissive of Doctors' Wives, condemning it for being trashy and inconsequential.  Which, I feel, is to miss the point completely.  It is surely meant to be all of those things - giving seventies TV audiences a slice of escapist sleaze they couldn't get at home.  As far as I'm aware, there's no DVD release of this one, so you'll just have to be satisfied with this suitably trashy trailer.