Katie McGovern will do anything to become an actress. Even if it kills her. Tonight it might.


Despite its relative failure at the box office, this is a worthwhile thriller from the director of Bonnie and Clyde. Mary Steenburgen stars as an actress, Katie McGovern, lured to the upstate New York cabin of crazy Dr. Joseph Lewis (Jan Rubes), a diabolical crippled shrink playing a blackmail game with the ruthless sister of a recently murdered woman, who happened to be a dead ringer for Katie. Lewis and his creepy assistant (Roddy McDowall) keep Katie captive, videotaping her and cutting off her finger to further their sordid plot, while she tries desperately to get away. As the title implies, Arthur Penn gets a lot of atmosphere out of the remote cabin and a raging blizzard, and the cast is terrific. It all falls apart eventually, but is quite gripping until the required histrionics in the silly final reel.


Dead of Winter has an 82% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[2] In Janet Maslin's review for The New York Times, she wrote, "When a director approaches Gothic horror with this much enthusiasm, the results are bound to be as merry as they are frightening. So audiences for Arthur Penn's Dead of Winter are in for a hair-raising treat."[3] Roger Ebert concluded that, "The movie itself is finally just an exercise in silliness – great effort to little avail – but the actors have fun with it, the sets work and there are one or two moments with perfect surprises."[4]
Writing for The Washington Post, Paul Attanasio asserts that Steenburgen "manages with élan an assignment that has her playing three parts". He faulted the lengthy build up to the final confrontation, "An hour's worth of exposition is a long wait, and if the payoff isn't quite worth it, it is fun. After nine yards of soggy oatmeal, you're reintroduced to the pleasures of an old-fashioned haunted house."[5] The staff review of the film in Variety found Rubeš to be lacking as the villain, "Steenburgen and McDowall are the adversaries to follow, even though it would seem more likely that the wheel-chair bound doctor (Jan Rubes) should be the one to watch. Rubes is simply not sinister enough to be the mastermind behind this scheme.


Release Date: February 6, 1987


Distrib: MGM/UA


Boxoffice: $2,413,427 2013: $4,968,800