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BREWSTER MCCLOUD (1970) (***1/2)

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The idea of the film grabbed me from the first moment I read about it and the film grabbed me from the first moment I started watching it. Directed by Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER) and starring Bud Cort (HAROLD AND MAUDE), the film follows Brewster McCloud (Cort), who lives in a bomb shelter in the Houston Astrodome as he sets out to create a pair of wings so that he can fly. For Altman, this film was his follow-up to M*A*S*H, which was a huge success. This film is the kind of pet project that a filmmaker gets to make only because he’s the hot guy on the block.

Helping out Brewster is his de-winged guardian angel Louise (Sally Kellerman, M*A*S*H). In the process of getting material and information for building the wings, Brewster and Louise get caught up in a string of murders. One of the deaths is Abraham Wright (Stacy Keach, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER), Brewster’s former employer, a vile landlord who makes the landlord in Chaplin's silent classic THE KID seem understanding. Wright was also a brother of two other brothers who may be of interest to someone who wants to build a pair of wings. The victims are always found with bird crap on them. The evidence against Brewster seems undeniable. But like everything in this film, nothing is as it seems.

The Houston mayor’s office calls in top San Francisco cop Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy, SILVER CITY), who happens to be white despite the name. Uncertainty arises after Brewster, who is warned by Louise to never have sex, meets attractive, Astrodome tour guide Suzanne (Shelley Duvall, THE SHINING). Also thrown into the mix is overbearing band leader Daphne Heap (played by the Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton), racist corrupt narcotics cop Douglas Breen (Bert Remsen, NASHVILLE), Breen’s long-suffering wife (Angelin Johnson, only film performance), the dimwitted traffic cop Johnson (John Schuck, DEMON KNIGHT) and name-dropping, no-action politician Weeks (William Windom, SHE’S HAVING A BABY). Bridging the scenes in the film and discussing facts about bird behavior is a Lecturer (Rene Auberjonois, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE), whose statements often comment on the action of the other characters as he turns into a bird himself.

The film's humor is broad, almost to the degree of an AIRPLANE type film. Altman still shoots it in his signature style of weaving in and out of a large cast of characters. It's an odd mix of deadpan directing and over-the-top gags. I loved the name of "American as apple pie" Johnson's kids' baseball team written on their uniforms. There's also the silliest fugitive-cop car chase this side of a CANNONBALL RUN flick.

So in the end, what’s the film about? Well, the metaphor of freedom is impossible to miss, but there are subtle statements being made about corruption and religion and what is moral in an immoral world. Altman has fun with the righteous criminal as antihero theme that was popular in the 1960s. It’s eccentric, fascinating and quite funny. I love Robert Altman’s films and this is his strangest. I mean the film ends with a random circus scene that has nothing to do with anything else in the film, or does it?

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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks