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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - B 3 Mins Read

    Brewster McCloud (1970)

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    The Houston Astrodome is a great place to shoot a movie. It’s big, it’s round, and the translucent roof lets in plenty of light. As a set, it cries out to the filmmaker, “use me”.

    In 1970, Robert Altman (who directed M*A*S*H) wasted the Astrodome, lots of money, and 90 minutes of the viewing audience’s time.

    Owlish Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) is a long-haired homicidal psychopath who lives illegally in the fallout shelter beneath the Houston Astrodome and spends his days studying avian physiology while building a pair of mechanical wings. He is obsessed with birds and determined to fly.

    Hope (Jennifer Salt) is a groupie who visits Brewster’s lair and climaxes while watching him exercise. Suzanne (Shelley Duvall, in her first movie) is a spaced-out Astrodome tour guide who becomes Brewster’s accomplice and lover. A blind girl called Louise (Sally Kellerman) – who may be a hallucination or an angel or his fairy godmother – helps him kill people.

    Other significant characters include wheelchair-bound Abraham Wright (Stacy Keach), who makes his money charging merciless rents to seniors at rest homes and Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy), a cop investigating a series of murders that may or may not have been committed by Brewster and/or Louise. (Each of the victims is marked by bird defecation on the face.)

    Rene Auberjonois has a recurring part as “The Lecturer” – a weird professor who speaks directly to the audience about bird behaviour while slowly transforming into a bird.

    The film is edited briskly so it moves along at a good pace: Cops chase Brewster around Houston. Girls chase Brewster around Houston. He makes his solo flight. He flies. He falls and dies.

    There are a couple of nice bits in the movie, both in the last five minutes. The first nice bit is Brewster’s flying sequence, which is beautiful with heart-stopping shots of Brewster soaring gracefully around the roof of the Astrodome.

    The second nice bit is in the end credit sequence, which comes right after Brewster falls to his death. It’s done as a Fellini circus and the entire cast gathers in circus garb to take their final bows.

    Each of the actors, in turn, steps out of character and takes a curtain call, but when it’s Brewster’s turn the camera cuts to a close-up of him lying on the ground, broken and dead. I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean, either.

    Brewster McCloud
    Bud Cort
    Louise
    Sally Kellerman
    Frank Shaft
    Michael Murphy
    Sheriff Haskel Weeks
    William Windom
    Suzanne Davis
    Shelley Duvall
    Lecturer
    René Auberjonois
    Abraham Wright
    Stacy Keach
    Police Lieutenant Alvin Johnson
    John Schuck
    Daphne Heap
    Margaret Hamilton
    Hope
    Jennifer Salt
    Police Lieutenant Hines
    Corey Fischer
    Police Captain Crandall
    G. Wood
    Policeman Douglas Breen
    Bert Remsen
    Mrs Breen
    Angelin Johnson
    Eugene Ledbetter
    Dean Goss
    Bernard
    Bill Baldwin
    Professor Aggnout
    Keith V. Erickson
    Wendell
    Ronnie Cammack

    Director
    Robert Altman

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