Hurry Tomorrow is a compelling look at life inside the locked ward at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California. Granted unprecedented access to the ward, filmmaker Richard Cohen provides a glimpse at mental hospitals in 1974, just before the civil rights movement began to deinstitutionalize these bastions of social control. Cohen skillfully weaves a narrative out of the footage which suggests that the psychiatrist, his staff, and the orderlies are more in need of therapy than their hapless patients, most of whom seem to have broken social rules but pose little danger to themselves or others. The psychiatrist, Dr. Ellerbroek, has both the air of an over-the-hill hippie and a Machiavellian charlatan. His patients languish as they remain in the institution; they are given daily doses of Thorazine or a mix of psychopharmacueticals to keep them quiet; they are tied to their beds to keep them obedient. Dr. Ellerbroek, with obvious relish, plays god with the lives of his inmates, most of whom have a criminal background, keeping them in the hospital long after their initial “voluntary” commitments. He gives them the ultimate catch-22. If his patients want to leave the hospital, in his opinion they are clearly ill; if they want to remain in the hospital, then they can be released. Ellerbroek seems to take a malicious pleasure in his patient’s anguish upon hearing that they cannot go home.