Louise Fletcher

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Fantasy Films 1975.

Before watching the movie:

December is Oscar Bait season and on Yesterday’s Movies, this December is for those canonized movies that have become unquestionable in film culture.

I have seen mainly seen two opinions about this movie: glowing praise for Louise Fletcher, and faint repudiation of the depiction of mental health therapy techniques, particularly electroconvulsive therapy. I have this impression of a bleak slide into despair under the oppression of a corrupt and abusive mental health system. I also think this is one of the movies that made Jack Nicholson famous (or at least one of his earliest roles anybody talks about), so I’m curious to see if he’s got his recognizable style or if he’s more of a blank slate.

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The Cheap Detective

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The Cheap Detective. Columbia Pictures 1978.

Before watching the movie:

It’s amazing how for a while after the debut of Columbo, pretty much every noir detective character type seems to have gravitationally attracted Peter Falk. Not that there were all that many such roles to go around. It turns out this is parodying Humphrey Bogart specifically, but basically all Bogart films, compared to Murder By Death, which is specifically a Sam Spade parody.

It’s probably not a good sign that this movie is so jam-packed with big name actors and I’ve only heard of it by cruising the back catalogs of streaming platforms, but on the other hand, anything from before 1998 that isn’t an 80s or 90s cult classic is getting hard to find online. Which is a shame because there are a lot of great movies over 40 years old.

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