Winter Kills is an enormously intriguing film, whose entertainment quotient depends largely upon how early on the viewer catches on that this is an extremely black comedy about politics, paranoia, and the sacred cow Kennedy family. This is what you would get if Irwin Allen produced a really wry comic version of The Parallax View -- no longer a hackneyed political thriller like its source material, William Richert has transformed it into social satire with an all-star cast. His touch was so gentle with regard to the satirical elements, that few critics recognized the film as any kind of comedy upon its initial theatrical release. Winter Kills is not a cinema classic -- ie, its not The Manchurian Candidate -- but it is an engaging, ahead-of-its-time film featuring an unforgettable performance by John Huston as the Joe Kennedy type. (The most unforgettable part -- or is it the bit hardest to get out of one's mind? -- is the sight of Mr. Huston in red jockey shorts!) Highly recommended to all fans of 1970s cinema, and especially political paranoia movies like The Parallax View, The Conversation and Capricorn One. Next time you're thinking about popping some drivel like Enemy Of The State in the old VCR, I beg you, reconsider and treat yourself to a little festival of this film and Parallax View or even Three Days Of The Condor.
Add a Review
-
aribass4 January 2001
-
Hey_Sweden16 February 2015A rather unique conspiracy thriller / dark comedy, "Winter Kills" is based on a novel by Richard Condon of "The Manchurian Candidate" fame. It may not be nearly as well known, but it merits a look. Jeff Bridges stars as Nick Kegan, the younger half brother of an assassinated U.S. President. 19 years after the killing, Nick comes across a man who makes a dying confession that he was one of the gunmen. Nick then becomes determined to solve this old mystery, soldiering on even as his extremely rich and influential businessman father (John Huston) tries to manipulate the course of events. As Nick pursues leads, he realizes that the people he encounters cannot be taken at face value, and that not all of these leads are going to be particularly helpful.
A sincere and likable performance by Bridges helps to anchor the tale, and there's a nonstop parade of famous faces in supporting roles and cameos: Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Dorothy Malone, Tomas Milian, Ralph Meeker, Toshiro Mifune, Richard Boone, and an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor. But despite all of these heavy hitters gracing the film with their presence, it's Huston that commands a great deal of attention. He does seem to be quite enjoying himself playing this overbearing and grandiose character. The beautiful Belinda Bauer is appealing as the love of Nicks' life.
William Richert scripted, and directs the film as a commentary on the nature of politics, the real-life assassination of JFK, and the power wielded by the affluent 1% represented by Hustons' Pa Kegan. It's a rather intricate mystery, and the best part of it is that you can't be sure where it's going, and aren't two steps ahead of Nick the whole time. One particularly silly scene has an unlikely character attempting to dispose of Nick, only for the sequence to include a rather hilarious, gratuitous dose of T & A.
Absorbing entertainment, with real-life production stories that are stranger than anything in the film.
Seven out of 10. -
utgard1413 November 2020What a mess. It starts out interesting enough but the longer it goes on the more annoying the whole thing gets. It's basically the same joke over and over. The movie sets up situations to pull you in and you take it serious for a minute only to have the rug pulled out from under you with the cinematic equivalent of the "pull my finger" gag. It gets old. John Huston is having fun and that makes all his scenes at least watchable. I was begging for it to be over before the halfway mark. I'm reviewing the directors cut by the way, in case that matters. I'm not remotely interested now in learning anything about this film's backstory.
-
KatMiss18 May 2001William Richert's "Winter Kills" is a strange, offbeat film, to say the least. It begins seriously, but then changes tones and becomes a searing black comedy. I felt a little guilty about enjoying the film so much, considering that it's about a political assassination cover-up.
But, then I changed my mind. After all, this, "Prizzi's Honor" and the great "The Manchurian Candidate" were all based on novels written by the same author, Richard Condon. The one thing these films all have in common are that they are savage comedies about serious subjects. So perhaps that was the tone Condon was going for. The humor will escape some, but those who can appreciate dark humor will love it.
The film also contains a gallery of great performances by top talent. The cast includes Jeff Bridges, John Huston (a great actor as well as a great writer and great director), Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone, Eli Wallach and in a cameo, Elizabeth Taylor. They make the most of this material and play it very straight. This is the key to the film's success. If they had played it slyly, it may not have worked as well.
But it's not fair to praise the cast only. William Richert also deserves praise for maintaining such uneven shifts between tones and for telling such a potentially confusing storyline with style and grace. It's such a solid script and such strong direction that he should have received Oscar nods for his work.
"Winter Kills" exists in two versions. In 1980, Magnetic Video briefly released the theatrical cut, which was edited to deemphasize the comedy and rush-released by Avco Embassy. However, in 1983, Richert was given the green light to re-edit his film. This version, with the original ending restored and many of the comic moments restored, was released by Embassy Home Entertainment in 1984.
My rating applies to the 1983 re-edit, although I would really like to see the original 1979 edit. If anyone out there has a copy of the 1980 Magnetic Video release, e-mail me.
**** out of 4 stars (1983 re-edit) -
Nick Kegan is the son of a wealthy patriarch and the brother of an assassinated former president. When he hears a deathbed confession that blows the lid on the accepted facts of his brother's death, Nick is forced into a dizzying maelstrom of counter-confessions and threats regarding what actually happened. Can he uncover the real truth ?
Forget bigshot conspiracy flicks like All The President's Men and JFK, this brilliant but obscure movie (along with Blow Out) is for my money the best American political thriller ever made. It's both merciless and hilarious. It blows apart the JFK assassination into ten different crazy subplots and ties them into spaghetti, until our poor hero is so bewildered he doesn't know what's true, what's half-true, and what's total illusion. It's also an incisive stab at how corporate power really works; in one astonishing scene Bridges walks into a hospital full of people lying in dirty corridors and beyond them into a palatial private room where his father explains how owning hospitals is one of the most profitable assets a capable businessman can have in his portfolio ("No customer credit - pay in advance or get out. Unique product: pain. Laundry alone throws off enough to pay the orderlies and the lab."). This is the real America, rarely glimpsed in Hollywood movies, which are mostly made by subsidiaries of very large and anonymous corporations - Winter Kills was shot independently and distributed by Avco Embassy, a small company which made some great movies in its day (The Onion Field, The Fog, Scanners, several others), although the movie's troubled production and poor release is itself a spiral of conspiracy and criminal manipulation. The large cast of familiar faces are all wonderfully nutty in their roles, but Huston and Perkins - as thinly-veiled parodies of Joseph Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover respectively - steal the show. Perkins' jaw-dropping speech where he turns the whole plot upside-down is both incredible and revolting; political filicide - "Your father spent eleven million dollars to raise your brother up from a skirt-chasing college-boy to President of the United States. For twenty years he told him what to do and how and why he was gonna do it and what would happen when it was done. Your father put Tim in the White House - why ? Because that's where you can generate the most cash; a cold-ass business proposition, like everything else in this society. But your brother decided to stir up the population. Began to think we were all living in a democracy, he started believing it. Lunch with the De Gaulles, dinner with Khrushchev, the whole razzle-dazzle went to his head. Yet in spite of the fact that everybody out there in this country lives in the same dog-eat-dog way, grabbing any angle to make a buck, if you were to inform them that your father had Tim killed, they'd wanna tear the old man apart, limb from limb.". Watch out for too for spaghetti-western icon Milian as the con in the prison van, Kurosawa legend Mifune as the butler and Elizabeth Taylor in a wild wordless cameo as a society madame. The tragedy of Winter Kills is that its director, the very promising Richert, was effectively sidelined. Concurrent to this he made a great comedy - The American Success Company, written by Larry Cohen and also starring Bridges and Bauer - and later an offbeat teen-drama with River Phoenix, A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon, but he become a marginal director, like Richard Rush or Michael Reeves. Don't let this distract you though; Winter Kills is the best political conspiracy movie the Mysterious They don't want you to see, which is the most important reason in the world for trying to track it down. Featuring excellent photography by Vilmos Zsigmond and John Bailey, and based on a book by Richard Condon (a terrific author, who also penned The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor). Fabulous. -
A shame the score is so low on this one. Have just caught it on a late night showing and was thoroughly taken with the obviously intended side-swipes at all the conspiracies surrounding JFK's demise.
*SPOILS* (The second gunman, the window in the corner building, the 'Warren Commission' style report, Jack Ruby slaying the patsy, Cuba, Castro, the mafia, the CIA, the NRA, big business, the Kennedys - heck, everything but the magic bullet and the Zapruder film!) *SPOILS*
The fact that at no point do you find yourself openly saying 'that's just taken from the Kennedy...' etc proves the writing and acting pull you in so tightly. The just-below-the-surface absurdity of it all keeps you grounded and you come away knowing no more than you ever did, but mightily entertained. (In my book, not an easy task with this subject matter.)
*SPOILS* Highlights for me include the Jeff Bridges in a car filled with bodies, utterly terrified and, I think, screaming for his 'ma', and Anthony Perkins as the certifiably mad personification of the entire intelligence community. *SPOILS*
Bridges & Perkins great, Huston - Genius. 7/10 -
sol-kay16 February 2008****MAJOR SPOILERS**** Obviously about the JFK assassination "Winter Kills" has all the major characters of that tragic event as well as the city that the assassination happened in, Dallas Texas, moved to Philadelphia Pa.
On the afternoon of February 22, 1960 president Tim Kegan, played by Virginia Senator John Warner, was brutally gunned down outside of the Philadelphia City Hall by a lone assassin a drifter named Willie Arnold. Arnold never lived to go to trial when he himself was shot and killed by nightclub owner, and Mafia connected, Joe Diamond, Eli Wallach. With the Pickering Commission determining that Arnold was the lone assassin and Diamond was just a patriotic American who took the law into his own hands, in gunning down Arnold, all the answers to Presdent Kegan's murder was finally put to rest. That's until Arthur Fletcher, Joe Spinell, pops up out of nowhere some 19 years later.
Falling or being pushed from a oil rig Fletcher knowing that he doesn't have long to live wants to come clean in his involvement in the President Kegan assassination. Flown to a freighter when the late President Kegan's brother Nick, Jeff Bridges,the boats skipper is on Fletcher tells the startled young man that he was the one who pulled the trigger that killed his brother some 20 years ago. To prove that he's telling the truth Fletcher also gives Nick information where the murder weapon, a telescopic snipers rife, with his fingerprints on it can be found! Hidden in a steam pipe on the third floor, the snipers nest, at the Philadelphia Engerson Building!
Rushing over to the city of "Brotherly Love" Nick together with his late brother's top political adviser Miles Garner, David Spielberg, and Philly police Captain Hiller, Brad Dexter, find the murder weapon with a note written by Fletcher attached to it just were, the by now late, Fletcher said it would be. Within minutes of finding the snipers rife both Garner & Capt. Hiller are gunned down with Nick running for his life and the killers gun, in all the confusion, disappearing!
On a crusade to find his brothers killer, or killers, Nick gets involved with a slew of sleazy and unsavory characters from Mafia Kingpin Frank Mayo, Tomas Milian, to the notorious D.C Madam Lola Comante, Elizabeth Taylor. Nick also gets in contact with this mysterious weirdo John Cerreui, Anthony Perkins, an employee of his dad Pa Kegan, John Huston, electronic snooping or spying empire. Cerreui an eavesdropping expert in the end clues Nick in, after he broke both his arms, who was really behind his brothers assassination! Someone very very close to him.
Overly complicated but extremely entertaining movie that covers all the bases in who was responsible in Presiden Kegan's murder. Nick is lead on a number of wild goose chases by those whom he trusts who in the end were murdered themselves, because they knew too much, in who President Tim Kegan's killer or the man who had him killed was.
It turns out that Tim's rise to power in becoming President of the United States was financed by both mob and big business money. With him in office Tim was then ordered, by those who put him there, to "take out" Cuban President and Dictator Fidel Castro but refused to go through with it. Castro having thrown the Mob and it's business partners out of the country had cost them tens of million of dollars and now, in retaliation, they want him "hit". The problem is that President Kegan in not wanting to start a world war, with Castro's ally the USSR coming to his defense, wouldn't give orders to the CIA to "hit" him! So in response to President Kegan's double-cross, of the mob and its fellow or business travelers, he was "hit" instead! The big question in Nick's mind is who was the person who order or set up the "hit"!
Heart dropping final at the now defunct Pan Am Building in Midtown Manhattan with Nick coming face to face with the person who set his brother Tim up for the kill. Holding on for dear life, on a balcony high atop the Pan Am Building, the "Big Cheese" behind President Kegan's assassination lets it all out about some crazy scheme of his, in transferring his millions to Brazil, as he slowly slips to his death and into oblivion! Right through the middle of a giant American flag attached to the building! -
huntergerald-3477122 March 2018I must admit, I don't know how this film has received such a high rating on this site. A good cast? Yes, but a wasted cast. This is basically the Kennedy assassination on Quaaludes. It's a film that simply doesn't hold up well through the years. Stiff direction and substandard cinematography reduce the look to that of a "B" movie. While it's always fun to watch John Huston, he cannot carry this movie alone. Bridges, who has consistently been one of my favorite actors, is wooden here, certainly nowhere near the caliber of his performance in "Rancho Deluxe", made a few years earlier. In short, it tries to be a comedy, drama and a parody all at the same time, and fails on all fronts. Want to watch good political filmmaking? Opt for 3 Days of the Condor for drama, Dr. Strangelove for satire/parody, and Being There for comedy.
-
Condon wrote a magazine article about this movie production around 1980 that makes it ten times as strange as the story itself. Among other details:
The movie was financed with money from cocaine dealers.
When the production went over budget, the executive producer brought in additional "financiers", then was able to keep the crews working for two weeks - in New York - with no pay. Jeff Bridges and Tony Perkins both offered their salaries as collateral.
After the film was finished, the studio was purchased by a bigger studio which then ultimately declined to release it. At one point, at a test preview at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, passers by were being offered $1 to watch the movie.
A few months later, the executive producer was found in a New York hotel room, handcuffed to a bed, with two bullets in his head. -
jake_fantom29 November 2019This is a relatively lousy film that makes very little sense, but is worth watching anyway for the weird performances of some classic Hollywood 30's, 40's and 50's actors at the ends of their long careers - including John Huston, Sterling Hayden, Ralph Meeker, Richard Boone, Eli Wallach and - honest - Toshiro Mifune. For the most part, they seem to understand that they are participating in a major turkey, but they gamely act their way through a nonsensical script, spouting lines that seem to have been written by a blacklisted writer on a four-week bender. Cinematography and editing are on par with the script.
-
barnabyrudge3 January 2006Winter Kills is a terrible, incoherent and very disappointing conspiracy comedy-thriller from little-known director William Richert. While watching the film, I honestly felt as if I was the emperor in the classic fable The Emperor's New Clothes. The film made me feel like a fool because I couldn't make head nor tail of the serpentine plot and the nonsensical characters. But I felt kind of embarrassed to admit to myself that the film was tying my brain up in knots. So I stuck with it to the end, hoping that the whole tangled mess would untangle itself. Then I realised.... the film is SUPPOSED to be serpentine, nonsensical and illogical, because that's the whole point. This is a satirical look at conspiracy theories and theorists, with the knotting-up of the plot used as a metaphor for the knotting-up of truths, half-truths and lies that define any conspiracy. Even when I got that the joke was on me, I still felt Winter Kills to be a pretty awful movie.
Young Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the younger brother of a former United States President who was assassinated in Philadelphia. Nick is present when a dying man claims that he shot the President and gives detailed information about where he hid the gun. Nick follows the clues, but every step of the way the people helping him seem to die in mysterious circumstances. Also, his father Pa Kegan (John Huston), a vulgar and disgustingly wealthy businessman, keeps interfering with Nick's investigation. The deeper he delves into the assassination, the more Nick realises that he is descending into a web of complex lies and red herrings, where nothing is as it seems and no-one can be trusted.
The film is an utter nightmare to follow, and in many ways is not worth trying to follow for the afore-mentioned reason that it deliberately tangles itself up. The cast is packed with extraordinary talent but most of them are wasted. Toshiro Mifune has one of the briefest and most pointless cameo roles in cinematic history; Elizabeth Taylor appears uncredited and has not a single line of dialogue; Richard Boone is given what seems to be an interesting role but his character goes nowhere. John Huston has the best role as the powerful patriarch and provides us with the film's few enjoyable moments with his acerbic delivery. Anthony Perkins also gets a creepy role and handles it well, though his screen time is far too short to do complete justice to the character. Some nudity and sex scenes are tossed in for no real reason and, while they're quite graphic and might appeal to voyeurs, they really belong in another film. The film's semi-comic climax is farcical and disappointing, yet paradoxically memorable in its weird little way. There's obviously a cult audience out there somewhere for Winter Kills.... but I won't be counting myself among its number. -
MovieAddict201629 June 2005"Winter Kills" is based on a novel by Richard Condon ("The Manchurian Candidate") about a man who confesses to having killed the President on his death bed. The President's brother (Jeff Bridges) witnesses the confession and stumbles upon a conspiracy plot involving more murder and silencing.
This movie somehow slipped under the radar years ago. Whereas "Manchurian Candidate" got the attention it rightfully deserved, "Winter Kills" was killed by its controversy and production faults.
It was allegedly filmed in 1975 and only released in 1979, although I can't find any evidence to back this up. What I do know is that it was given an X rating in the UK, and when a movie in the UK gets an X rating, you know something's wrong.
I'm not sure why it received such a harsh rating but evidently that had something to do with its box office failure. I suppose its themes (clear allusion to the JFK assassination) were too heavy - not to mention the violence was rather explicit.
Seen today, this movie is an underrated gem. John Huston delivers a great performance as Bridges' father, while Bridges is equally great. The music in the film is eerie and tense - without it, I doubt the film would be quite as good as it is.
It was directed by William Richert (who played the gay Bob Pigeon in "My Own Private Idaho") and he does a fine job. The movie builds its suspense well; the only segment I didn't like too much was when Bridges goes to visit his father for the first time. I felt it went on too long and was out of place.
Other than that, this is a very good film and a sadly underrated conspiracy theory movie that never got its chance to make a mark. -
whpratt113 October 2007This is a very interesting film about a president that was assassinated and nineteen years later the killer admits to this killing in front of his brother Nick Kegan,(Jeff Bridges). Nick also learns where the weapon that killed his brother was hidden and goes to Philadelphia, Pa to locate this rifle. Nick then proceeds to tell his father, Pa Kegan,(John Huston) about his findings, and he then instructs his son to investigate this new evidence and seek out different people to learn more about who planned this plot against his son Timothy Kegan. It seems that Nick gets the run-around wherever he goes and runs into all kinds of people, namely: Richard Boone, Sterling Hayden and Anthony Perkins who all give outstanding supporting roles. If you look real close, you will even see Elizabeth Taylor as a cameo. There is plenty of nudity and foul language and some torrid sex scenes. It was also a big surprise to see Dorothy Malone playing the role of Jeff Bridges mother, who was out of her mind in this film.
-
From 1976-78, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was the second government inquest into the death of President John F. Kennedy. The committee concluded the JFK was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy. But Robert Blakey, the Chief Counsel for the committee, subsequently began to float the unsubstantiated theory that organized crime was behind the death of President Kennedy. The 1979 film "Winter Kills" basically builds on that premise.
The film is a stylistic mess with some nearly farcical moments and scenes. For example, Sterling Hayden's character is a virtual reprise of his famous general of "Doctor Strangelove," a character loosely based on Curtis LeMay.
But "Winter Kills" is nonetheless presented to the viewer as a political and allegorical thriller with the premise of Jeff Bridges character seeking to discover the truth about the death of his older brother, the president modeled on JFK. The plot is enormously contrived with a series of meetings of Bridges with mafia dons, plus a Mati Hari like femme fatale, who may herself have been involved in the president's death.
The most ludicrous character portrayal is that of the family patriarch played by John Huston. SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS: The film absurdly suggests that Huston's father was involved in a kind of Oedipal struggle with his son and that he participated in the killing his son.
In the final analysis, "Winter Kills" sheds no light on the JFK assassination, and the film plays more like a made-for-television movie, as opposed to a thoughtful feature film. -
Winter Kills once was available on videotape; no longer. That's a pity because it's a stylish, fun-packed phantasmagoria about American power as expressed through American politics. (Since the source material was written by Richard Condon -- of Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor fame -- the points are not subtle; merely irresistible.) Based loosely on the Kennedy saga (as what isn't these days: look at Dominick Dunne's oeuvre), the film casts Jeff Bridges, at his most young and vital, as the baby brother of a slain president. Trying to track down clues to the assassination, he embarks on one of those labyrinthine quests undertaken by the likes of the poisoned protagonist in D.O.A. or Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly. Of course, the clues boomerang back, leading him into the viperish nest of his own family, especially his father, a randy old psycho played to the hilt by John Huston. But even this filthy rich patriarch doesn't work the strings anymore; they've gone corporate, become systemic, and are pulled by a bland bureaucrat played by Anthony Perkins. This movie is a mad midway ride, overflowing with cameos that pop up like death's-heads in the funhouse. Watch for Liz Taylor, as a fabled madame, silently mouthing a profanity.
-
Richard Condon's novel takes all the conflicting theories about who murdered John Kennedy - the Cubans, the Mob, a lone assassin - and ties them together with a satirical vision of the real motives for that epochal killing. The book is a black vision of American society's values and energies in the '60s and a stimulating read for anyone who remembers the craziness of those years. The film, released in 1979, is necessarily compressed, and so the various threads pursued by Jeff Bridges, playing the half-brother of the dead President Keegan, are less clear and allusive as echoes of what might have happened to Kennedy, and so less interesting. If this story were made as a multi-hour miniseries, with all the (as it turns out, misleading) visions of what really happened given the detail that Condon created for the novel, then both the book and its cinematic adaptation would be better-known. In spite of skilled and nuanced performances by all the cast members, especially Bridges and John Huston, the real horror of the assassination and its aftermath aren't given sufficient satirical power in the film. Still, it's worth watching. Then, you must read the novel.
-
philip_vanderveken8 June 2005Perhaps it is because I didn't see "The Manchurian Candidate", based on a novel by the same author, before watching this movie. Some say that this one is more or less a sequel to that movie. Fact is that I didn't like it all that much and that has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't like the humor in it (some even call this a comedy). In a way this movie has been based on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Even though you'll not find any connections to that incident, it is all too clear who the murdered President Timothy Keegan stands for.
Nineteen years after the president was shot, his brother finds a dying man claiming to have been the gunman. While he has to try to avoid his rich and powerful father's attempts to control his actions, he follows the clues that have been handed to him. But as his investigation continues, it gets harder and harder to separate the real trails from the dead ends. And those aren't the only difficulties he has to deal with: several unknown, but dangerous parties try to stop him from uncovering the truth, at any cost...
I admit that the idea behind the story is nice. Conspiracy theories around the assassination of a president can always be interesting to watch and certainly when they have been (loosely) based on some actual events. But the main problems which this movie has to deal with are believability and historical correctness. Several options are given, going from a mafia connection, to the Cuba crisis, over some police connections, leaving you with a plot that probably no-one can unravel and making it almost impossible to like it. And that these 'connections' are only theories and that they have never been proved right, doesn't really help either. But that never seemed to bother the makers of this movie. All they thought of was the spectacle.
Still, not everything in this movie was bad. The acting for instance, and especially John Huston's performance, are worth watching. In my opinion this saves the movie from a complete disaster and that's also the reason why I give this movie a 5.5/10. -
christopher-underwood25 December 2020Many years ago I happened to catch a part of this on TV. It seemed intriguing so I began to watch but then fell asleep vowing to catch up with it again some day. A sparkling Blu-ray print from Indicator was that opportunity. It begins well with some fantastic shots and then a strange sequence in the medical room on board ship and the subsequent talk of a presidential assassination some years before with the involvement of more and more. Somewhere along the line it is apparent, though complicated and serious there is also a level of humour. Having to follow the increasingly silly plot and failing to be able to find the humour humours, I feel my eyelids becoming heavy. I made it through and I would not say the film was terrible even if I would not care to give it another go. Jeff Bridges is fine but has to carry most of the film, at least that part that John Huston is not overacting his way through. Various stars come and go but I only really noticed a decent rant from Anthony Perkins and a most effective but silent moment from Elizabeth Taylor.
-
Harrison414 March 2018I liked the cast and was recommended. Mostly a waste of time. The humor promised was off the mark.
-
pfgpowell-19 July 2013Nineteen years after JFK was killed (by whom?) and five years after Watergate, this one puts the whole conspiracy theory industry in its place. One of the funniest films I have seen for a very long time - anyone who still thinks that Americans don't do irony (always a stupid claim but one which is made time and again) should see this. But it's bone-dry and very subtle, and I can understand how many people were puzzled and bemused by this when it was first released and that it did not do well commercially.
Performances are universally excellent, tho' Jeff Bridge as the starry-eyed son trying to discover who killed his half-brother, the US president, and John Huston as the paterfamilias and caricature mega capitalist are treat. The plot is nonsensical, but then that is the whole point of a film which sends up conspiracy films something rotten and then some. Buy the video, because this really does bear watching again and again. -
krocheav22 August 2020As soon as you see a cast of big names in a movie that runs under 100mins you can safely say you may be about to be conned. Most of the big names have roles lasting for minutes, then, seen no more! The movies original producers were drug dealers, two were murdered and another jailed for 40yrs. By the end of the film (if you last that long) the so-called 'satirical' plot leaves you feeling like you've been on a bad 'trip'.
With a script about as feasible and palatable as Rice Bubbles and Bilge water it wags doggedly on its weary trail, feeling more and more like a never ending trial. HUGE money was lost on this sleazy dud and while it looked classy it kept falling over itself, fooling some audiences (but very, very few!) Do yourself a favour and maybe watch The Parallax View instead. -
Until recently that was. If you're a Jeff Bridges fan and look over his previous body of work on IMDb or netflix, you're soon to come across what looks like a small paranoid assassination/conspiracy thriller from the late 1970s- penned by Manchurian Candidate himself Richard Condon- Winter Kills. And then you'll realize until now you've never heard of the movie, unless you were around for the two weekends it was in release in 1979 or heard the minor blurbs how the picture went through ridiculous difficulty getting made. While one shouldn't group the making of the movie too closely with the final product itself, it's almost as crazy a story as in the film itself (one involving the mob, pornographers, marijuana money, and a re-shoot budgeted by *another* movie shot by the same director in-between in Germany).
So, as a humble 'who-is-this-guy' movie-buff on this site, I humbly recommend this movie incredibly so. It's a mighty sleeper, a comedy with the intent so black that it's hard to see where the drama stops and the laughs begin. At times it's also weirdly over-the-top (an orgasm at one point is the loudest one has ever seen in a non-porn, and for no real reason except to have it in there, or as part of an "act" perhaps), and with a cast that is irreproachable. Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Toshiro Mifune, Elizabeth Taylor - and most of these actors are barely in one scene! Yet everybody leaves there mark so indelibly that one grins from ear to ear suddenly recognizing them (Hayden in particular is a hoot as he practically is like Jack D. Ripper as an old man with a huge beard and a private fleet of tanks)(Huston, too, chews up the scenes he's in without even trying).
The plot... geez, I can't really say for certain. Let's just call a spade a spade and say it's a spoof on the Kennedy conspiracy (if there was one), and the power and influence of family and politics and the mob. It's a murder mystery, but it almost becomes moot who was the real killer as by the time its uncovered it's simply more fun seeing how one gets from point A to point B. Though Condon might have had a stronger plot for 'Candidate', and first time director Bill Reichert stumbles in a couple of spots in getting the comedy and suspense mixing just right, it's still amazing entertainment more often than not, and it's one of those nifty, strange treasures to be dug out from the video store or queued on a whim on netflix. -
sibleybridges11 March 2021I decided to try another obscure political conspiracy theory movie after last night's disappointment of The Domino Principle.
Winter Kills is yet again packed with great actors (with a cameo by Toshiro Mifune and even Elizabeth Taylor shows up for no reason) and derived from a book by Richard Condon of The Manchurian Candidate fame, but is....very odd and off kilter, to say the least.
After doing some research, this film seems have been financed by cocaine drug lords trying to launder money by making movies and no studio would touch it after it was independently made. No wonder it seems to have no producers or editors making any logical story decisions. As maybe the only positive I can find, it feels like Oliver Stone maybe borrowed some style for JFK -
mrwarmth26 August 2004A wily, labyrinthine political satire that is saved from being over the top by the brilliant performances of its cast. The movie takes the paranoid storytelling style of the Cold War thriller, but applies it to American domestic politics instead. It is very much like "Three Days of the Condor" in that respect. However, "Winter Kills" has a much more sophisticated point of view on American politics than the latter film, and does a great job of showing how the interconnected corruptions of family, culture, technology and politics all intersect in the most surprising, and horrifying ways. The movie was way ahead of its time in this respect, and is just as relevant to day as it was when it was made - perhaps more so.
-
forrl-9247428 August 2020Warped sense of structure. Nothing makes sense on purpose to confuse the hero and audience. In that sense, it works. Waste of time.