Powerful

good back-story, and good acting

The acting in this movie is really good.

Blistering performances.

It's obvious that director Robert Altman was out to make something different, but the mystery of the bird poop killer is an odd experience. Bud Cort, of "Harold and Maude" fame, plays an eccentric young man desperate to grow wings like a bird, being stalked by the sultry Sally Kellerman (barely saying a word) and all of a sudden involved with the zany Shelley Duvall as evil people all over Houston are mysteriously killed after getting a faceful of bird doo doo. There's stupid cops, car chases and an assortment of weird characters including Rene Auberjonois as a creepy bird expert. Don't expect a knee slapper here. The comic moments are more ironic than funny. John Schuck, preparing to play Rock Hudson's sidekick on "McMillan and Wife", puts on his cops uniform for the first time, and veteran character actress Margaret Hamilton sings a delightfully off-key rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" with a particularly amusing wardrobe reference to a famous prop from her most famous movie. In fact, this film has several references to that classic, references that may be funny to some but forced to others. I did get a few laughs out of this, but overall, it's way too forced to completely work, even as a black comedy.

The recently released remastered DVD edition looks good but strangely does not have captioning - perhaps not that strange because Altman's layered dialog is a nightmare to caption but much is missed by the absence of captioning.This has been on my list of top ten films since I first saw it 40+ years ago. It withholds at lot from the initial viewing and you discover something new each time you watch it."The film has references to other films, Altman's own work, and other places. Altman refers to Bullitt (1969) by including a character named Frank Shaft, who is a detective from San Francisco." The name may have inspired the name of Richard Roundtree's "John Shaft" character, in a more subtle parody from 1971 ("he just took my man Leroy and threw him out the God damn window")."Homages to The Wizard of Oz (1939) have been noted in the film, as Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, is the music conductor seen during the opening credits. She is seen wearing ruby slippers in the film. Hope (Jennifer Salt) who supplies Brewster with health food, resembles Dorothy, as she wears a distinctive gingham dress, has pigtails and carries a basket. At the end of the film, she is shown in the cast as Dorothy carrying Toto." Shelley Duvall plays a Raggedy Ann airhead character (without Luna Lovegood's redeeming qualities) and actually appears as a Raggedy Ann clown in the final scene."Brewster McCloud" is a film that presents society as circus performers and life as a circus, if you haven't figured that out by the end Altman hits you over the head with it as he goes out with perhaps the best black comedy ending of all time. Throughout the story a bird-like narrator, sometimes on camera and sometimes in a voice-over commentary, discusses the traits of various birds; traits that are shared by the human characters in the story, although that leap is left to each viewer. Allusions to birds are found throughout the story, from the orange Plymouth Roadrunner to the names of several assisted living facilities.The title character (played by Bud Cort) is much the same naive Private Boone character Cort portrayed for Altman in "MASH". The difference is that Brewster is on an ambitious quest to literally fly. Which involves intensive physical training when he is not busy designing and building a set of Wright Brothers inspired wings.During the course of his project Brewster has to be rescued several times and stay focused on his goal of flying. In this he is assisted by personifications of Faith (Sally Kellerman) and Hope (Jennifer Salt). Kellerman's character is actually named Louise and functions as his guardian angel, although if Hope is Oz's Dorothy then Louise is Oz's Glinda. "Hope" is conceptually what self-pleasuring is all about and she demonstrates this when thinking about Brewster. Freud's dream of flying as symbolic of the sexual urge is explained to Brewster by Louise and at first glance Brewster's loss of virginity and its attendant loss of idealism is what dooms him. But I see it being more the loss of his humility. And it is his new found arrogance that drives away his Faith. She exits by the Astrodome's huge commercial gate which slowly closes after her exit, trapping Brewster inside the structure. He can utilize his wings in what is essentially a large bird cage but he cannot escape. The dome representing the constraints and limitations of society and outside the dome representing freedom. One assumes that had he not driven her away that Louise would have assisted him in leaving the dome. There is a bit of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" in this idea of needing to become infinitesimal in order to merge with the infinite.Given that most of the cast were Altman regulars, it is remarkable how successful he was with his physical casting. Duvall, for example, has not just the physical rag doll look (note the Raggedy Ann wallpaper in her apartment and the emphasis given to her huge eyes) but her most striking feature is her thinness - a physical manifestation of her character's most striking feature - shallowness.It is a nicely layered film that works well simply as a social satire of American values and conventions. Many of these details will escape the notice of the first time viewer, such as in the scene of Patrolman Johnson's family at dinner. He has three sets of twin sons gathered around the dinner table in their Little League uniforms, the smallest two playing for a team named "WASPS".In the end the circus audience watches in satisfied fascination as yet another high flier overreaches and falls back to earth. The "Greatest Show On Earth" presided over by controlling ringmaster Haskell Weeks (William Windom), perhaps a nod to cinematographer Haskell Wexler with whom Altman hoped to one day collaborate.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. Comment

Oh how I miss the late sixties. The world was coming undone in a frayed sort of way. Logic was becoming unwoven, opening up possibilities for magical realities and thence new narrative tricks.The ones who got there first were not as polished as those who came later, working in a society that swallowed the frays. In 1969, the notion that you could buy new faded, frayed and patched jeans at a superstore of 180,000 square feet — operated by the world's largest corporation — would have been literally unimaginable.Altman was deep in the pack of new artists willing to escape. If this merely seems incoherent now, it is because we have lost something wonderful, the ability to cheaply visit the unknown. Oh, it all seemed risky at the time, and part of the thrill in watching this was knowing the naughtiness of it all.There are spoofs in here, but that's the smallest interest. There are quirky and comic characters, but that is beside the way, as incidental conversation while climbing the mountain. You have sex approached from several different directions, but that came with the very notion of risk and always will.Here is the main story: A defrocked angel, Louise, chooses a boy (perhaps even bears him) to replace her lost dream. He can only build mechanical wings though. He trains and studies flight. Our first incidental story is of him taking a job with the lost brother of Orville and Wilbur Wright so he can steal their private notebook on flight.That employer dies, as do many others that who have pieces relevant to the puzzle, and incidentally a threatening cop. This is all done by a sort of avian magic controlled by Louise.Sex intervenes. Our hero inexplicably is not charmed by the girl from the health food store who comes to his den to masturbate. Instead he is captured by an amazingly appealing Suzanne, played by Shelly Duvall. (Altman found her behind a store counter and recruited her for this role. Presumably she was in real life what she "plays" here.) Her Suzanne is the free love icon of the time. Our hero falls in love so knows he is ready for flight.Louise drops her protection because of the loss of virginity. Our boy discovers that Suzanne has moved on to another guy. He flies and dies. That's the main thread. I mention it here because this film is hard to find, not on DVD as I write this.The form of the movie follows the gist of the story. Things are bent, threads are borrowed, conventions are broken. Altman tweaks with the beginning and end in the most intelligent ways.We have three false beginnings, one of which opens a parallel narrative of a perfesser telling us about birds in roughly the same manner we get from Greenaway's "The Falls" of a decade later. He pops up throughout. The end is from "8 1/2" the film that for all intents started the sixties revolution in cinema. (Not the French.)The setting is the astrodome, which was novel for the time. I count this as a film that stars a building. But that novelty is imperceptible today. The focus on the building helped with financing the thing too. The ending transformed the dome into a Fellini circus, in which we are introduced to the actors.You won't be as thrilled now as we all were when this was in its context. You have to imagine the risk and the sense of unsupported flight and hell's angels.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

To follow up "MASH", Robert Altman made this quirky gem about a young man (Bud Cort) living in Houston's Astrodome, who is obsessed with flying to the point that he's building a set of wings. Louise (Sally Kellerman) is the only person in the world who really understands him. Simultaneously, a string of bizarre murders is plaguing the city: the victims are always covered with bird droppings. To solve it, the city hires Bullitt-esquire detective Shaft (Michael Murphy) to investigate. Then things really get weird. Rene Auberjonois plays the narrator, who gets more and more birdlike as the movie progresses.I actually have a connection to "Brewster McCloud": when they were filming it, my mom and her sister went to audition for a part, but the line was too long, so they decided not to (the role eventually went to Shelley Duvall). But that's just a side note. It's a really neat movie.