Screen/Society--"Winter Kills" (William Richert, 1979, 35mm)

Film screening:

WINTER KILLS
(William Richert, 1979, 97 min, USA, 35mm)

New 35mm Restoration!

This thinly veiled and hyper-paranoiac take on the JFK assassination stars Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, scion of a fabulously wealthy and powerful family headed by patriarch John Huston ("the real delight of the film" - Vincent Canby, The New York Times), as a character based on Joe Kennedy. Bridges soon finds himself going down multiple rabbit holes while trying to unravel the conspiracy behind the murder of a U.S. president, his older brother.

"A madcap riff... part black comedy, part paranoid thriller, part carnival hall of mirrors." - J. Hoberman, The New York Times

"Hectic, giddy, absurd - but, in its evocation of a conspiracy so logical that it is beyond belief, the film dramatizes the power of such an idea to attract true believers." - Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"[It] can't decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a nightmare, so it splits the difference. Even by 1979 standards, it's a seriously warped film. Writer-director William Richert once called it 'cinematic cocaine: relentless, just getting higher and stranger, shooting through contemporary paranoia.'" - David Fear, Rolling Stone