Winter
Kills (1979)
Winter Kills stands out from other JFK assassination-fuelled pictures, not only due its broad satirical bent but also thanks to a beleaguered production history that could inspire its own movie. The latter involved murder, production shutdowns (no less than four), a filing for bankruptcy, a remount several years later and finally an ignominious fate when it was dumped, in butchered form, in a limited release slot. Based on Richard “The Manchurian Candidate” Condon’s novel of the same name, this fictionalised rehearsal of the different strands of JFK conspiracy theorising takes a “names have been changed” tack but the major players are clear to those with even a cursory knowledge of assassination lore.Indeed, the result may be seen as something of a dry run for the melting pot approach Oliver Stone took more than a decade later.First time feature director William Richert delivers a strange, uneven satire that bears the signs of the desperate attempts to salvage someth…
Winter Kills stands out from other JFK assassination-fuelled pictures, not only due its broad satirical bent but also thanks to a beleaguered production history that could inspire its own movie. The latter involved murder, production shutdowns (no less than four), a filing for bankruptcy, a remount several years later and finally an ignominious fate when it was dumped, in butchered form, in a limited release slot. Based on Richard “The Manchurian Candidate” Condon’s novel of the same name, this fictionalised rehearsal of the different strands of JFK conspiracy theorising takes a “names have been changed” tack but the major players are clear to those with even a cursory knowledge of assassination lore.Indeed, the result may be seen as something of a dry run for the melting pot approach Oliver Stone took more than a decade later.First time feature director William Richert delivers a strange, uneven satire that bears the signs of the desperate attempts to salvage someth…