“IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE, ALL RIGHT!”

By Raymond Benson

The tag-line on the theatrical poster for Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman’s 1970 black comedy, proclaimed, “Something Else from the Director of M*A*S*H.”

It was something else, all right.

M*A*S*H, of course, was a surprise hit earlier in the year, catapulting Altman into the A-List in Hollywood. The picture was an irreverent commentary on the Vietnam War (although the story takes place during the Korean War). It radically bucked the system in terms of the sound recording and overlapping dialogue, and it initiated the director’s penchant for using an ensemble cast and an improvisatory, free-for-all sensibility. This was a new kind of cinema, an entry in what film historians call New Hollywood.

Released for Christmas the same year, Brewster McCloud was Altman’s anticipated follow-up. Most critics and audiences felt it was very different from M*A*S*H—a zanier, loosely-plotted ramshackle of a film that was considered weird and unlike anything seen before. In retrospect, however, and especially considering Altman’s further career of making large, unconventional and improvisatory ensemble pictures, Brewster seems very much in keeping with the auteur’s stylistic and thematic traits that populated nearly all his movies.

Brewster is the story of a young man (played by Bud Cort) who lives in a secluded area of the recently-built Houston Astrodome, and he is building a wing-apparatus that will enable him to fly. He’s encouraged and protected by a beautiful guardian angel (fallen, perhaps?) named Louise (Sally Kellerman), but Brewster is infatuated with a pretty Astrodome tour guide, Suzanne (Shelley Duvall, in her debut film role). Meanwhile, there are serial killings going on around Houston being investigated by hotshot detective Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy). The common “fingerprint” in the murders is that each victim is covered in bird droppings. On top of these proceedings are classroom scenes in which a very odd “Lecturer” (Rene Auberjonois) instructs us about ornithology as he slowly becomes birdlike himself throughout the film.

That is indeed an eccentric premise for a movie, and Robert Altman excels with it. Make no mistake—this is an inventive, funny, bewildering, and fascinating picture. I consider it to be one of Altman’s best films, one that solidified not only his haphazard way of shooting a movie, but his use of a repertory company of actors (many of the cast from M*A*S*H appear here, along with newcomers who would continue to work with the director in the future, such as Duvall).

Speaking of the cast, they all play colorful characters right out of a modern urban fairytale on acid. Even Margaret Hamilton, the famed Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz shows up wearing ruby slippers. The performances are excellent, especially that of Duvall, Murphy, and good old John Schuck, who plays a traffic cop caught up in Shaft’s investigation (Schuck was the “Painless” dentist in M*A*S*H and worked with Altman several more times).

Warner Archive has upgraded their previously-released DVD version of the film to a region-free Blu-ray in 1080p High Definition with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono. There is a lot of grain present in the darker scenes, but that is to be expected with the film stock from this era. There are no supplements other than the theatrical trailer.

If you’re an Altman fan, or can appreciate wacky, trippy comedies that smoothly slip into theatre of the absurd, then Brewster McCloud is for you. Frankly, this “something else” is a gem.

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