I think I always had a crush on Mary Steenburgen and I’ve always really liked Roddy McDowall, too. First time watch thanks to Scream Factory. It is flawed though. Well worth a read.…, A very subjective concept--gothic horror, gothic melodrama, gothic art films, gothic everything. Dame Mary Louise Webster,, known professionally as May Whitty and later, for her charity work, Dame May Whitty, was an English stage and film actress. She was one of the first two women entertainers to become a … The acting from all of our leads is phenomenal. It suits the a narrative but it's a weak excuse. Anderson: Death Race 2000 (1975) dir. Dead of Winter (1987) dir. A bit of a slow burn from Arthur Penn has a good premise, with Mary Steenburgen as an actress who auditions for a movie role, and is invited by Roddy McDowall to go upstate to an estate during a snowstorm for a screen test. Julia Ross forcibly becomes Marian Hughes, and no matter how hard Julia tries, she just makes herself look crazier to the maid and visitors, ensuring her captors have a perfect public display of mental degeneration before she’s pushed over the edge for their financial benefit. But this is just a marginally-classier step up from Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator. Mobile site. Genre: Mystery / Thriller . I hadn't seen this since the early 90s and hardly remembered it, so it was a fun revisit. Among Arrow’s latest offerings is director Joseph H. Lewis’s MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS, a lulu of a thriller that served as the basis of the almost equally obscure 1987 mystery DEAD OF WINTER. Just plot devices that a giallo author might appreciate for oddity and absurdity. Perhaps greenlit after the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s gothic creepy Rebecca (1940) and his malevolent husbandry shocker Suspicion (1941), Columbia’s B-thriller is actually based on Anthony Gilbert’s novel “The Woman in Red,” which was remade (of sorts) decades later as Dead of Winter (1987). So after 27 years I finally watched…. The 1987 … The four participants in the Marian Hughes charade (crazy son, the mastermind mum, the phony employment agent, and ersatz butler) were compressed into two characters (crippled psychiatrist and loyal butler / former mental patient). Parading half a dozen stylistic influences, Dead of Winter’s component parts don’t quite match-up harmoniously – a sign of the numerous directors who worked on the film – yet this hammy thriller boasts a distinct charm that’s most obviously witnessed in the game performances of Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowall. Just plot devices that a giallo author might appreciate for oddity and absurdity. Michael Winner Based on the novel by Brian … Slasher films need no introduction, let's cut to the chase; you wanna see kills, thrills n' spills, right? There are components there for what could’ve been a better film, but they don’t come together the way they should. IMDb Steenburgen plays a New York actress who takes a gig somewhere way upstate, in that isolated house I mentioned, inhabited by… Review by Adam Cook ★★ 2. Dead of Winter was getting some decent reviews back then and that for some reason disturbed me. Site designed for 1024 x 768 resolution, using 16M colours, and optimized for MS Explorer 6.0. DVD Transfer: n/a. Reproduction of any Original KQEK Content Requires Written Permission from Copyright Holder and/or Author. A woman applying for a secretarial job is forced by her new employers to live another woman's life - until she's no longer needed. Mary Steenburgen stars as a young actress who is called to a remote home for a screen test. Dead of Winter is a blackmail … A solid atmospheric thriller with some very ridiculous writing that is played completely straight. Horror thriller about blackmail plot gone wrong. The acting is solid all round, though the butler does get a little over the top near the end. Arthur Penn: My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) dir. Lewis got his start making downmarket programmers and his quick and dirty, no-nonsense approach to the filmmaking process are what makes the breakneck, bigger budgeted Columbia picture MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS such a thrill. Documentaries (and batteries) not included. This is definitely more suspense thriller than horror, but close enough! They set up something that felt like it was going to have a little bit of Straw Dogs viciousness (not in THAT way), but it ended up backing out for something more tame. Sorry, but they're almost always like an introvert's nighmare of self consciousness where I feel I'm expected to be kooky cat loving storybook spinster and talk in a much higher decibal voice than I actually possess right before they say something like 'what's wrong with that lady's face?' The reveal is brilliant and how it all plays out is super effective. It's very competently made and silly fun. My Name Is Julia Ross is a 1945 film noir, ... (1987), directed by Arthur Penn. ETA: This list is getting long so I moved sections…, mattyfastwheelz 1,344 films 3,763 111 Edit, Fight Professor 1,052 films 2,512 12 Edit, The film noir genre generally refers to mystery and crime dramas produced from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.…, Rocky LaForge 18,788 films 2,339 59 Edit, João Monteiro 1,333 films 1,411 59 Edit, Movies about/starring women and girls of all ages. Even the best thrillers require a suspension of disbelief as the plot twists and turns in increasingly convoluted knots or characters act in unbelievable ways. For the 1987 remake, the screenwriters took the basic story elements – a young woman with a wobbly romantic situation accepts a long-term job – and transposed the locations to New York City and ‘somewhere in snowy Canada’ and changed her profession from secretary to hungry actress. There are a multitude of escape opportunities and so many instances where it frustrated me that she wasn't doing more to defend herself. "Well played." Can't vouch for their quality or just how…. 1987 Replicated film poster designs. Nelson's From The Hip opened the same weekend as Dead of Winter. It’s funny because I couldn’t remember if it was a thriller or a horror film, just the wintry setting in the isolated house and those two actors. The joy of loving cinema – and I’m not talking about devouring whatever the latest juggernaut product is being fed to us every Friday night at the multiplex or cheapie lazily streaming on Netflx – is that no matter how much we know or see, there are ALWAYS hundreds upon hundreds of pictures hiding, waiting to be discovered. Though she manages to communicate her plight to her husband allowing him to track her down, interestingly it's her decisive actions that ultimately extricate her from the increasingly deadly predicament. And if you’re a fan of the unofficial subgenre French film critics dubbed “film noir”, there are so many of them out there, from poverty-row potboilers, to major studio “B” movies. Additional Review Content by Contributors 2001-Present used by Permission of Authors. When they get there, a wheelchair-confined old man gives her the screen test, while a series of mysterious circumstances lets Steenburgen know that traveling to this mansion alone may not have been the best idea. Seeing an ad in the paper, she makes haste and manages to snag the secretarial position, aided by her unique personal situation of having no friends, no family, and no beau – ideal for the conspiring family who plan to whisk her away to a country estate in Cornwall, where she’s dropped into the role of a rich but mentally unstable wife to a short-tempered mama’s boy who likes to play with sharp knives. Soon she finds herself a captive enmeshed in a complex plot. Couldn't recommend this enough. Roddy McDowal plays the Drs assistant, he's brilliantly creepy. For the 1987 remake, the screenwriters took the basic story elements – a young woman with a wobbly romantic situation accepts a long-term job – and transposed the locations to New York City and ‘somewhere in snowy Canada’ and changed her profession from secretary to hungry actress. More details at It builds tension nicely and things always seem somewhat believable. The plot involves an actress going to an old mansion to audition for a role, but she soon finds out she’s being held prisoner in an elaborate blackmail scam. Strong performances make up for the fast-tracked finale (which literally feels like whole scenes were junked during a compressed editing schedule), and while a forgotten thriller, it’s a fine little B-movie with a wonderful puzzle plot (and visual proof Macready was once, indeed, young… but always creepy without saying a bloody word).