THE NEW INTERNS, flatulent 1964 sequel to the 1962 hit The Interns managed to prescribe a respectable 38th place at the year’s box-office, the $7,600,000 payment insured by a viable cast of new faces (with a few returnees) and that movie medics were backstopped by their popular colleagues on the boob tube. The drama is cheesy and the ‘wild’ partying makes you wince, but the actors are game. *

PSYCHIATRIST: “Without going into a lengthy diagnosis, I think it’s fair to say that Nancy is an unstable personality. She’s one of those tender people who cannot deal with stress and pressures. Oh, she does fine as long as she’s surrounded with people who love and care for her, but the minute that she’s confronted with a situation involving stress, like that incident at the party, she’s liable to go…”  TONY PARELLI: “All right, so I’ll keep her away from parties.”

Coming back for another shift at ‘New North Hospital’ are flashy stud ‘Dr. Alec Considine’ (Michael Callan), beaming ‘Nurse Gloria Worship’ (Stefanie Powers), crabby ‘Dr. Dominick Riccio’ (Telly Savalas) and mother hen ‘Nurse Didi Loomis’ (Kaye Stevens, as insufferable as she was in the first one). New recruits include Dean Jones (replacing James MacArthur as ‘Dr. Lew Worship’), George Segal as chip-bearing ‘Dr. Tony Parelli’, Barbara Eden as salt-of-the-staff ‘Nurse Laura Rogers’ and Inger Stevens as tragedy-bound ‘Nancy Terman’.

Earle Hagen’s nervy title theme tries to whip up an Elmer Bernstein flair. John Rich (Roustabout) competently directed Wilton Schiller’s mediocre screenplay. Segal, 29, was billed “introducing” even though he’d had small parts in The Young Doctors, The Longest Day and Act One. 

123 minutes, with earnest striving against placebo material from George Furth, Lee Patrick, Sue Ane Langdon (lively as a zoomed-out drug addict), Greg Morris (29, two years away from Mission: Impossible), Eddie Ryder, Adam Williams, Dawn Wells (25, about to take a “three-hour tour” that would last forever), Marianna Hill, Bob Crane (35, a year away from Hogan’s Heroes), Charles Lane and Tony Mordente.

* On TV, Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare were each on their 4th prime time season, daytime residents General Hospital and The Doctors in their 2nd.