Winter Kill

I just saw this wednesday and I thought it was great! It's alway's nice to see Andy Griffith in a movie were he's a good person and a sheriff to boot. I agree with the commentor about the scenery, simply breathe taking and the ending is great and suspenceful. Any Andy Griffith fan will love this film...the best and a must see!!!

Clearly done on a rather low budget, the TV movie Winter Kill is not a great piece of film making by any stretch, but it might be worth a view.

The plot revolves around the search for a serial killer in a small ski resort town. So ok, some of the supporting actors are not very good, and the first part of the movie is meandering and slow enough to test the patience of a few viewers. However, when the movie got into gear in the second part, it managed to be entertaining and well-thought, if not rightdown tense, and the resolution left me pretty satisfied.

Andy Griffith is convincing as the Sheriff. Between the supporting cast, a young Nick Nolte in one of his first screen appearances.

After Mayberry, producers plugged Andy Griffith back into a sheriff's role & transplanted him to the high country of N. California. The town (Eagle Lake) is a ski resort, where Nick Nolte, a year or so shy of his big break in "Rich Man, Poor Man," is an instructor. A sudden string of homicides has the town fathers eager for a resolution before the tourist season begins (a theme used a year later in the theatrical "Jaws").

TV movies were becoming the forum for the changing morality & formerly taboo topics (the sheriff has a live-in girl friend; the plot revolves around the locals that aided in a young woman's abortion), even moreso than theatrical flicks, & "Winter Kill" is a fine crucible of the kinds of things the networks were peddling in prime time back then. There @Eagle Lake, the adulterers probably outnumber the tourists.

Movie features a slew of familiar TV faces of the time: John Larch, Eugene Roche, Charles Tyner. Occasionally rebroadcast on TNT, altho it might be more @home on Lifetime. Some good suspense; definitely not for children.

Anything Andy Griffith plays in as a sheriff is usually good. This movie keeps the viewer in suspense until (almost) the end, when it becomes apparent who the villain is. Interesting, and nice scenery.

This is a great film with 60's and 70's character actors, and roles at a 70's pace. A murder mystery but still has lovable characters that work well together. During these years much of what we were given in murder mysteries gave you the culprit right up front. No guess work with Columbo, Murder She wrote, Quincy, Barnaby Jones, later Diagnosis Murder with Dick Van Dyke. Worth watching.