I love this movie! I haven't seen it in a good ten years and have decided to watch it again this week. The king of anti-authority films. The bull goose loony, RP MacMurphy and his gang of lovable misfit losers vs. The Big Nurse and her crew of soulless minions, the dealers of the stacked deck, the dual voices of both reason and destruction.

My first semester in college I had a young female professor (very pretty) that was of the opinion that MacMurphy should have been chemically neutered. How can you learn from someone like that? Just to mention it, my abnormal psychology professor considered homosexuality a sexual dysfunction.

Still, if you have any thoughts on the film or book feel free to chip in. I feel like discussing before I re watch it.

What frightened me in this movie is how doctors could decide to lobotomize someone who did not need it and transmogrify him into an animated vegetable.

This won best picture the year I was born. I watched it on Netflix about a month ago and thought it was brilliant.

Another great film along the same lines is "The Ninth Configuration" which is ridiculously difficult to find, but it is another "lunatics running the asylum" type film that end with one of the best bar fights I have ever seen on film.

I did my psych training in a facility similar to the movie when I was in school. They don't lock them up for nothing. lol

I loved that movie.....and cheered on for the bunch of misfits. Hated the ending though.

Tony! That couldn't have been the first time you saw Cuckoo's nest! Tell me your kidding!

Tony! That couldn't have been the first time you saw Cuckoo's nest! Tell me your kidding!

I wish I was kidding, but I am serious. Growing up I always considered it an "old" movie. I didn't pay much attention to the fact that it existed until I saw it on Netflix, then I figured I would give it a shot. This is one of those films where I can see why people like Jack Nicholson. It was a great performance, but that ending. I mean, you knew it was going to happen, but was it necessary?

Do they still do that in psych wards?

What frightened me in this movie is how doctors could decide to lobotomize someone who did not need it and transmogrify him into an animated vegetable.

Yeah, it's scary. They snuffed out his humanity and left him a shell. It bothers me there are people walking around that have seen this film and side themselves with the nurse.

Most of the psych pts are mainstreamed. That's why there are so many fringe types on the streets. Where I did my training...Fairfield Hills Hospital...is closed now. Only the violent...a threat to themselves or others are locked up. There are psych units here where I work. I avoid them like the plague.

I don't know if they still do frontal lobotomies...hold on...I can ask.


Nope...not done anymore. They use chemical restraint....meaning really good drugs....whether the pt wants them or not.

Yeah, it's scary. They snuffed out his humanity and left him a shell. It bothers me there are people walking around that have seen this film and side themselves with the nurse.

Nurse Ratched is probably one of the most villainous characters put on film. She had no compassion for the people in her care, it was about humiliation and oppression not about rehabilitation with her. I don't see how anyone could side with that, but those were the 70's after all, things were a lot different.

Well, to my shame, I've never seen the film. But I read the book years ago and thought it was brilliant. Terribly sad but it more or less had to end that way or it would have undermined everything that had gone before.