PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

grizzledgeezer Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the greatest director of the sound era (D W Griffith holding the comparable honor for silent films). It's unlikely this will ever change.Hitchcock famously said "The director's job is to manipulate the audience." This is critical in a thriller or suspense film, but Arthur Penn fails to do it consistently. The story unfolds at a too-leisurely pace, without the fluctuating tension that would keep the audience on the edge of its seat. The audience has to be thoroughly confused as to the motivations of the doctor and his assistant, but not enough is revealed (or even suggested) to create viewer tension that parallels the heroine's.The director isn't obliged to interpret a script literally, but too much of Penn's direction is annoyingly literal. Hitchcock's success in repeatedly confusing the audience throughout "Psycho" owes a much to his working closely with Joseph Stefano to create exactly the right situations and dialog to produce the desired effects."Dead of Winter" isn't a terrible film -- just a disappointing one.

JohnHowardReid Film Noir is still a stable but popular item, not only with connoisseurs but also with the general public and especially with the younger generation of moviegoers. As if to prove that not all the most intriguing of Hollywood's flirtations with noir and mystery lie in the past, "Dead of Winter" (1987) presents a most convincing Mary Steenburgen in three brilliantly contrasted roles, plus Roddy McDowall in his most involving part since "Kidnapped" (made way back in 1948). A truly frightening film, "Dead of Winter" revolves around an ingenious script that the pacey and forceful direction by Arthur Penn endows with a mind-numbing reality. The M-G-M DVD rates 10/10.

romanorum1 On New Years Eve, a woman (we later learn that she is Julie Rose) drives in the snow to an almost deserted bus terminal where she removes a cash-filled briefcase from a locker. After she returns to her car in an empty parking lot, she is strangled by a lone assailant. Then the scene shifts to an apartment of an out-of-work actress Katie McGovern (Mary Steenburgen) and her husband.Katie answers an ad for an actress and eventually passes the audition held by creepy-looking Mr. Murray (Roddy McDowall). Murray drives Katie in a snowstorm to an isolated country mansion in northern New York state for a screen test. At the mansion she meets a polite old gentleman, Dr. Joseph Lewis (Jan Rubes) in a wheelchair. He tells her that she is needed as a double in a new movie for an actress who was replaced because of job stress. So Katie studies the pictures of the woman and also alters her appearance until a video is made of her. But we find out before the 45-minute mark that something sinister is afloat. The feeling of tension is increasingly felt when Katie gradually discovers that all is not as it seems. She discovers pictures of a dead woman that looks like her. Then Katie finds her own identification documents, like her driver's license, being burned in a fireplace. Supposedly the snowstorm has knocked out the telephone lines; later she finds the inside line cut. But the telephone in the attic works well, but why is there even a phone in the attic? Why doesn't the car start when it is needed? What's with the two-way mirrors? Incidentally, why can't the two investigating cops possess at least one brain between them?PLOT EXPLANATION: The two men only hired Katie because she happens to be an exact double of the dead woman in the first scene. There is a blackmail plot that involves two sisters, one of whom (Julie Rose) married and murdered for money. By coincidence she later became a patient of Dr. Lewis. The other sister, Evelyn, later had Julie murdered in that parking lot, and had her left ring finger removed. Lewis and Murray want to convince Evelyn that Julie Rose is still alive. They will only release her (Katie) over to Evelyn if they get the stashed money. And when Katie's usefulness dissolves, it's probably the end of her life. The ending will not be disclosed here.The movie does have several surprising and tense moments, such as when Katie discovers a body on more than one occasion. Another tense scene has Katie clawing her way up an icy hillside in a blizzard. There is tension when Evelyn arrives. In addition to all of this, there is one rather shocking moment when Katie awakens to find blood on her sheets. But why does Katie act so stupidly at times, especially when a disabled and unsteady man chases her up the stairs? Before that, our protagonist never even noticed the city name on the sleeve patches of the cops.Mary Steenburgen plays all three female roles: Julie Rose, Evelyn, and Katie. Roddy McDowall and Jan Rubes are sufficiently menacing and evil; McDowall is especially obsequious. Despite its flaws, this is a suspenseful and well-crafted thriller.

finch6789@aol.com This movie did not scare me. It made me guffaw with the absurdity of it. Maybe this movie would have scared someone in the 1950's, but for the hard-core horror fans, this attempt is laughable. When Mary Steenbergen's character unwrapped her hand to find a perfectly healed stump, I laughed at the look on her face. How long was she asleep anyway? Just a lot of stupid things like that, and Roddy McDowall ws so NOT intimidating or frightening. This character was just SUCH a pushover - she didn't even try really hard to escape her situation. This was just bad, bad, bad, very cheesy.