One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) - Forman's 1970s gold-rimmed classic

♥♥♥♥

Star Jack Nicholson looks askew with a broad smile up at the barbed wire fence on this classic poster for Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

McMurphy is convicted of assaults and statutory rape of a 15 year-old but is not insane, as he is nevertheless placed under observation at a closed mental institution, where the charismatic new resident really turns things upside down.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is written by Bo Goldman (Shoot the Moon (1982)) and Lawrence Hauben (The Outsider (1969, TV-series), actor), based on the same-titled 1962 novel by Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)) and the play adaptation by Dale Wasserman (How I Saved the Whole Damn World (2001)), and directed by Czech master filmmaker Milos Forman (Black Peter/Cerný Petr (1964)).
The film is a 1970s classic. Ironically, because Forman said that the villainous nurse Ratched represented the Communist Party of his own Soviet-plagued country for him, the film often comes off as radically liberal; as the loud, pushy new guy (McMurphy) instills the loonies with the creed that they belong out in the real world and should rebel against the repressive system. This is obviously debatable.
The film opens theatrically and with some typey presentations of the characters, who later however gain breadth, and the highly sympathetic nature of the story has led many to pronounce One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a masterpiece.
It is a gripping drama with some stimulating performances: Jack Nicholson (Broadcast News (1987)) as McMurphy and Louise Fletcher (Johnny 316 (1998)) as the iconic, ultra-conservative villainess Ratched, of course, but most memorable is Brad Dourif (Blood Shot (2013)) as Billy Bibbit, the young patient with the mother trauma. Jack Nietzsche's (Cannery Row (1982)) nerve-exposed score is tremendous, - and the film's ending is unpredictable.

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Amadeus (1984) or, The Fool Genius and his Teacher

Watch an original trailer for the film here

Cost: 4.4 mil. $
Box office: 163.25 mil. $
= Blockbuster (returned 37.1 times its cost)
[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was released 19 November (USA) and runs 133 minutes. Kirk Douglas had bought the rights and attempted to find funding for a film after playing McMurphy in the 1963-64 Broadway stage version but failed at it. His son Michael Douglas later bought the rights, found the money, hired Forman and waited 6 months for Nicholson to be available. The actors followed patients at the Oregon State Hospital's daily routines and group therapy for a week prior to filming, and Nicholson and Fletcher even witnessed electroconvulsive therapy being administered. Shooting took place in the active Oregon State Hospital, where the hospital director helped actors find patients to 'shadow' and also encouraged incorporating patients into crew functions; only later did Douglas find out that several of these were criminally insane. Shooting took place from January - March 1975 in Oregon and California. Some actors slept in the ward at night. Fletcher was paid 10k $ (before tax) for 11 weeks of work, while Nicholson received 1 mil. $ and 15 % of the gross. The shoot changed cinematographer during production due to 'artistic differences', and the budget and schedule ballooned from 2 mil. $ to 4.4 mil. $. Co-producer Saul Zaentz borrowed against his company Fantasy Records to raise the money. The film grossed 108.9 mil. (66.7 % of the total gross) in North America, becoming the 3rd highest-grossing film of 1975 and the highest-grossing film of 1976, in which it made 56.5 mil. $ of its gross. The impressive world gross made it United Artists' highest-grossing distributed title ever. The film was nominated for 9 Oscars, winning 'the big five' as the first film since It Happened One Night (1934): Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor and Actress. It lost Best Supporting Actor (Dourif) to George Burns for The Sunshine Boys, Cinematography (Haskell Wexler, Bill Butler) to John Alcott for Barry Lyndon, Editing to Jaws and Score to John Williams for Jaws. The film also won 6 Golden Globes, 6/10 BAFTA nominations, was nominated for a César award, won 2 David di Donatello awards, was nominated for a Grammy, won 2 National Board of Review awards and many other honors. IMDb's users have voted the film in at #18 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between Goodfellas (1990) and Seven Samurai (1954). Forman returned with Hair (1979)). Nicholson returned in The Missouri Breaks (1976); Fletcher in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is certified fresh at 93 % with a 9.05/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) - Boorman stuns with truly abysmal sequel

ZERO

Linda Blair is trapped in a pitch black abyss on the poster and in the reality that was John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic

Regan, the girl who was the victim of a demonic possession by the devil in the original The Exorcist (1973), has in the 4 years since become a well-functioning teenage girl, who now meets a reckless experimental psychologist in a futuristic clinic full of children with Down Syndrome. Meanwhile Father Lamont is sent to her to investigate Father Merrin's exorcism of her in the past. - Was the esteemed Merrin in fact a satanist?

These grotesqueries are merely the start of the astonishingly wretched Exorcist II: The Heretic. William Friedkin, who directed the original horror masterpiece The Exorcist, has called watching The Heretic as bad as seeing a traffic accident in the street, and indeed watching it does feel like witnessing some sort of disaster play out in slow motion. It is probably the worst sequel to a monumental masterpiece ever made; I certainly cannot remember any more abrupt free-fall in quality than this, from the very peak of splendor to the absolute depths of shlock.
Exorcist II: The Heretic awakens feelings of rage, because it isn't just poorly thought up, incomprehensible and shabbily made; it also stomps around on the brilliant Exorcist. It is written by William Goodhart (Generation (1969)) and directed by great English filmmaker John Boorman (Point Blank (1967)). - It is almost unbelievable that the central man behind it, Boorman, made the great thriller classic Deliverance (1972) just years before this. Exorcist II: The Heretic marks an abomination of a movie that he, rightly, could never wipe off his career afterwards.
Many involved should have known better than to work in this mess. Linda Blair (All Is Normal (2008)) may inspire pity, because she was still just a teenager, when she was trapped in this fecal tumbler.
The Heretic is insufferably boring and immerses itself with no limitations in grasshoppers and African mumbo-jumbo that leads nowhere. Louise Fletcher's (A Perfect Man (2013)) descent from her Oscar-winning turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) to this is spectacularly steep, but no-one is good in The Heretic; Ennio Morricone's (The Repenter/Il Pentito (1985)) score is not even good, and the effects just stink.
The biggest reason that this religious horror fails so epically may be that Boorman here actually tried to make a film about goodness.

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The Exorcist franchise: Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) or, The Exorcist: Back to Africa!
The Exorcist (1973) - Friedkin and Blatty's masterpiece, one of the scariest pictures of all time

Listen to some of Morricone's score to the film here

Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 30.7 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty - flop status without foreign receipts known, - in reality likely broke even or was a box office success on the whole
[Exorcist II: The Heretic was released 17 June (North America) and runs 117 minutes (North America) and 102 minutes (European cut). Neither Friedkin or William Peter Blatty, who were behind The Exorcist, could come up with a feasible sequel and opposed The Heretic, which Boorman helmed, after he had refused directing Exorcist, finding it 'repulsive'. Ellen Burstyn, who was Regan's mother in the first film, refused to participate. The film became Warner Bros.' most expensive production in its day, partly because the production was barred from shooting at several key locations, which were then recreated at the studio. Shooting took place in Arizona, Utah, New York, Washington, D.C. and in California from May 1976 - ?. The production was fraught with problems: Boorman was sick for a month with a respiratory infection, in which production seized. Kitty Winn and Fletcher contracted gall bladder infections. Rewrites continued throughout production, and the film's editor quit. Richard Burton, who plays Father Lamont, took the job for its paycheck and the studio's promise that he could afterwards do Equus, and was reportedly frequently drunk on-set. Blair was developing a drug habit and also carried this with her on-set. Stories of the film's premieres are notorious: Studio execs attended an early screening at the Chicago Film Critics Festival and had to flee angry audience members chasing them in the street for the lousy film after it playing just 10 minutes. Other premieres caused laughter and fury with audiences throwing stuff at the screens in detriment. - Still, many simply had to see what the ruckus was all about. Boorman recut the film again and again, - with no better results. It opened #2 to a 6.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America. The franchise continued with The Exorcist III by Blatty and released for the first time in 1990. Boorman returned with Excalibur (1981). Exorcist II: The Heretic is rotten at 19 % with a 3.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Exorcist II: The Heretic?