The JFK assassination is parodied in 1979 black comedy “Winter Kills,” which has landed a remastered re-release presented by auteur Quentin Tarantino. IndieWire exclusively shares the trailer for the Rialo Pictures reissue here.
“Winter Kills” is a thinly veiled and hyper-paranoiac take on the JFK assassination starring Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, scion of a fabulously wealthy and powerful family headed by patriarch John Huston, as a character based on Joe Kennedy. Nick (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.
Anthony Perkins, Dorothy Malone, Toshiro Mifune, and Elli Wallach also star, as well as an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor who plays a character inspired by JFK’s rumored-to-be mobbed-up mistress Judith Exner. “Winter Kills” is the feature debut of model and Australian actress Belinda Bauer.
A new re-issued release of “Winter Kills” by Rialto Pictures with 35mm prints will be unveiled at New York’s Film Forum on August 11 and L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema, which is owned by Tarantino, on August 25. The New Beverly will also host a Rialto Pictures retrospective in August.
The film’s history is also rife with the stuff of cinematic intrigue: Two of the film’s principal producers went bankrupt, with one being later sent to a federal prison for drug trafficking and the other murdered by a creditor. Production was suspended for two years while writer/director William Richert raised the money to complete the film.
“Winter Kills” is adapted from the novel by Richard Condon, who also penned “The Manchurian Candidate.” The film is directed by Richert, with Maurice Jarre (“Lawrence of Arabia”) behind the score, Hitchcock collaborator Robert Boyle as the production designer, and Vilmos Zsigmond (“The Deer Hunter”) as the cinematographer. Writer/director Richert made his directorial debut with “Winter Kills” while continuing his acting career. Richert died in 2022.
John Bailey, who serves as director of photography on “The Big Chill” and “Groundhog Day,” supervised the new 35mm prints. Colorist Don Capoferri and lab expediter Steven Mitchell from FotoKem collaborated with Bailey to breathe new life into “Winter Kills.”
“When I saw it back in 1979, I was somewhat flummoxed,” Bailey said in a press statement about the film’s legacy, “but today I see it as not only very relevant but eerily prescient. Huston’s sick, purely transactional personality too closely predicts not only the mores of society today but that of a recent tenant of the White House.”
The new trailer was edited by William Hohauser and produced by Rialto Pictures founder Bruce Goldstein to commemorate the re-release.
“Winter Kills” opens at New York’s Film Forum on August 11 and at L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema on August 25 from Rialto Pictures. Check out the new trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
