While in the "cuckoo's nest," he meets a plethora of interesting people on the ward, including Harding (William Redfield), Taber (Christopher Lloyd), Martini (Danny DeVito), Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), Fredrickson (Vincent Schiavelli) and Chief Bromden (Will Sampson). Harding deems himself the leader of the pack, that is, until McMurphy steps in with his wild ways and obvious bravado. Martini and Taber are all too happy to follow McMurphy, and Billy, who has a terrible stutter and seems afraid of his shadow, ends up being taken under the wing of McMurphy as he tries to toughen the young man up. The Chief, who pretends to be deaf and mute, ends up being McMurphy's close friend when McMurphy figures out his secret and the two dream of escape and plot to make it happen. When a simple thing like watching the World Series is denied by Nurse Ratched, McMurphy determines to break her spirit no matter what, not realizing he is stuck at the facility and is only making things worse for himself. He engineers an escape for the gang and takes them on a deep sea fishing trip and with the help of a night aid, Turkle (Scatman Crothers), even orchestrates a Christmas party complete with copious amounts of booze and some loose women, happy to have some fun with the awkward men. Unfortunately, this exciting party turns into tragedy when it doesn't end exactly as planned and Nurse Ratched discovers what has happened, forcing McMurphy to pay the ultimate price for his rebellion.
This film is absolutely brilliant and, in my opinion, has and always will be Nicholson's finest role. While he was the big name star at the time (1975), the cast is an absolute Petri dish of fantastic acting talent and contains such newcomers at the time as Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Vincent Schiavelli (the scary train guy in Ghost) and Brad Dourif. Everyone is simply amazing, not the least of which is Louise Fletcher who will forever go down in Hollywood history as a classic villain, one often spoofed and imitated. This is simply a movie not to be missed and to see it in Blu-ray in the latest release, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: 35th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition, is perfection. The transfer is amazingly clean and the surround sound fantastic; the improvement is clearly obvious when you view the deleted scenes, which weren't remastered. Aside from being cleaned up and remastered, this release also includes a bevy of special features and goodies, included the aforementioned deleted scenes, the original trailer, as well as an interview with Michael Douglas, and a really deep featurette called Completely Cuckoo which covers every aspect of the book's migration to film, complete with all of its ups and downs, and contains interviews with the author Ken Kesey, Michael Douglas, director Milos Forman, and a number of the actors and folks associated with the film, plus a number of people in the mental health industry. Finally, there is also full-length commentary by director Milos Forman and producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz. Goodies included with the Ultimate Collector's Edition included a deck of playing cards with actors faces on the face cards, a 52-page book discussing various aspects of the book and movie, miniature movie posters, character cards and more, all wrapped up in a large, hard-sided collector's sleeve.
If you have not yet added this superb film to your collection, this is the version to get, period. Not only will you be seeing and hearing the film in its finest medium to date, but you'll learn more than you could ever dream of about the book, the movie and everything in between. Highly recommended.
