‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend endured eight days in a coma during Covid pandemic.

The famed comedian experienced a “potentially fatal” heart failure that led to him being placed in an medically induced coma in 2021, according to a new film about the entertainment icon.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars twice, was hospitalized for five full weeks in the medical facility.

“He wasn't right, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he got cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Doctors then placed him into a coma for more than a week, before advising his child, his daughter: “He may not recover. We don’t know how cognizant he’ll be. Get ready for the worst.”

“After regaining consciousness, all he could do was use his voice,” she added. “He has basically come back from the dead.”

The actor personally has said that he has suffered memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

Chase said he was “disappointed” by his omission from the 50th anniversary special of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett and Laraine Newman took the stage, I was puzzled as to why I wasn't. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which triggered a period of clinical depression.