Brewster McCloud

When Shelley Duvall died the other day, I think I might have mentioned I didn't think she was in anything upcoming on TCM. I was wrong, as one of the movies in TCM's Friday night series looking at films of the 1970s was the one in which she got an "Introducing" credit, Brewster McCloud. Thanks to an internet outage I didn't get to record it, but fortunately it's on Watch TCM through the beginning of August so I was able to watch it.

The movie starts off with a rather obsessive ornithology lecturer (only named as "Lecturer" and played by Rene Auberjonois) giving a lecture about birds; several times during the movie the scene cuts back to him and each time he seems more and more birdlike as well as more and more unhinged. Meanwhile, the action shifts to the old Houston Astrodome, where an old woman named Daphne (Margaret Hamilton is practicing the national anthem with a marching band.

Also in the Astrodome is the titular Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort). He's a strange bird, pun intended, as he lives in the fallout shelter underneath the stadium and somehow nobody has discovered that he lives there. Well, that's not quite true as he's got a couple of women in his life, but nobody who really matters knows that he lives there. Brewster works a chauffeur to an extremely old man, at least until the old guy dies in a freak wheelchair accident.

Meanwhile, around Houston, people are dying an a bizarre series of murders in which all of the victims are found with strategically-placed bird droppings. The Houston police have no idea who could be doing this, so they call for help from a San Francisco police detective, Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy).

Brewster also has an interest in birds, being one of those nutjobs with an obsession about human-powered flight. Indeed, part of the reason he lives under the Astrodome is so that he can work on building a set of wings for himself without being bothered by anybody. The only people who bother him, as I alluded to above, are one groupie, as well as a guardian angel type named Louise (Sally Kellerman) who may have had wings herself at one time, as she's got scars where wings would be if one had had wings removed at some point.

Brewster meets a third woman, Suzanne (that's Shelley Duvall, unmistakable with that expressive face of hers), who works as a tour guide at the Astrodome. Brewster tries to steal her car, and when she sees him, she seems OK with it, getting into the car with him and eventually becoming his girlfriend. However, she has an old boyfriend who works for a political bigwig, and that connection might be able to help her break the case of all the murders, as the multiple plot streams eventually come together for a climax.

I'm sorry to say that I really didn't care for Brewster McCloud, as the various plot streams aren't all that well handled. I also didn't have any real sympathy for any of the characters, who to me were mostly written as almost obnoxiously unrealistic, playing into gross stereotypes, such as the gross incompetence of the authorities. Then again, it was directed by Robert Altman, and having seen several of his films I haven't been the biggest fan of them for the most part.

If you are a fan of Altman and you haven't seen Brewster McCloud before, however, you might well like it more than I did.