Dead of Winter

Now here's a picture! Arthur Penn directed, and this one will absolutely send shivers up and down your spine. Mone goosebumps per minute than any picture I can remember. Of course, all the comparisons to Hitchcock have been made, and I'm a little weak on the master, but I'm sure that this picture is worthy of the comparison, and certainly the genre fits. Mary Steenburgen plays a triple role here, mainly as a young actress lured to a remote mansion for purposes that are less than charitable, and each role rings true. Roddy McDowell is appropriately unctuous and insipid-and vaguely threatening (not to mention creepy)--as the assistant to the head bad guy. The whole thing builds up bit by bit--it really sneaks up on you--as any good thriller should do, and winds up with a truly wingding climax which will rwally have you on the edge of your seat. Every element seems finely tuned, from the music to the lighting, and I loved every minute. Scary movies usually are not my thing, but this one was worth making an exception for.

F/X

Apparently script shorthand for special effects, and maybe this was Hollywood shorthand for a movie. Well, that's not really fair; they did try. Actually started out well, but then (in one of the Times' favorite phrases) good idea hops the track. It just seems that a special effects man's revenge could have been much more ingenius than they make it out to be, but then maybe there is only so much you can do without the aid of matte work and editing. If they'd stuck to the original moody tone they would have done better, rather than having the hero guffawing over a pile of loot at the end, having completely forgotten about the murdered girlfriend, not to mention all the other friends he left behind. Also, the killers are rather boring, typecast CIA -gone-bad types. We've seen that before.