Birch, Carradine in "Winter of Frozen Dreams"

I'm not going to lie, I intended to have this post be all about how far Thora Birch has fallen since "American Beauty", and rest assured I was going to mention the "Terror Train" remake ("Train") that hasn't seen the light of day yet. But then I watched this trailer, and god dammit I kind of liked it. I know, I was just as shocked as you are.

Based on a book of the same name which is supposedly based on a true story, "Winter of Frozen Dreams" stars Keither Carradine and Thora Birch, the (voluminous) story goes like this:

Sex, Passion, Betrayal, Murder A true story of an unlikely serial killer. A brilliant biochemistry student who is also a prostitute. A brutally bludgeoned body buried naked in the snow. Thus begins Winter of Frozen Dreams, a sordid love story and a macabre web of blackmail, lust, and deceit. The Hoffman case was the first televised murder trial in US history. The true-life story of Barbara Hoffman, is complex and contradictory in every sense as she was both a brilliant biochemistry student at the University of Wisconsin and Madison’s most notorious prostitute.

On a frigid, twenty-two below zero Christmas morning, Barbara Hoffman’s (Thora Birch) distraught young fiancé, Jerry Davies (Brendan Sexton III) leads police investigators to a corpse, which only hours before, he had buried in a snow bank. Lead by Detective Lulling (Academy Award winner Keith Carradine), the police investigators uncover the naked and brutally bludgeoned body of Harry Berge. Davies desperately insists that he is not a murderer and that he and Hoffman are guilty only of burying the corpse of a stranger. Shades of film noir blend with true crime, as Barbara Hoffman lives out her days in prison, refusing to give interviews or even go before the parole board

Despite the trailer looking pretty solid, and the fact that it was shot near my home town (in the last place on earth you'd expect a movie to be shot), my expectations are nil because the reviews on IMDB are not looking good at all. But hey, even if it doesn't work out so well, at least you can marvel at Keith Carradine's mustache for 90 minutes. It's marvelous.

Eric N

Co-Founder / Editor-in-Chief / Podcast Host

Eric is the mad scientist behind the BGH podcast. He enjoys retro games, tiny dogs, eating fiber and anything whimsical.