Winter Kills

Director: William Richert
Year Released: 1979
Rating: 2.0

Baffling riff on the Kennedy assassination, with a 'dead' President's younger brother (Jeff Bridges) investigating who really committed the atrocity - there to 'aid' him is his eccentric father (John Huston), who owns everything and gets finger-fed dessert by chesty nurses. Though intended to be a black comedy, I didn't find the subject matter or the over-the-top characters (Sterling Hayden sports a goofy beard; Anthony Perkins looks more insane than Norman Bates) to be humorous in any way - and the plot is so scrambled it's hard to make sense of everything - though cultists with a taste for Seijun Suzuki's Look First and Never Ask Questions aesthetic find this more to their liking. It reminds me of the writings of Thomas Pynchon (particularly the conspiratorial Crying of Lot 49), minus Mr. Pynchon's technical brilliance.