Cinema: From Failure to Cult Classic

A daft, dark masterpiece emerges after 25 years in the vaults

A pair of paranoid fantasies:

1) America's most rabid right-wing Senator is a paid Soviet agent whose stepson has been programmed by Moscow and Peking to assassinate this year's presidential candidate and thus sweep the Senator into the White House "with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy."

2) The most improbable plot threads from Hollywood's blackest comedy thriller of the Camelot era unravel in real life: deja vu of McCarthyism, prophecy of the Kennedy assassination. The film's star, a Kennedy pal, withdraws this daft, dark masterpiece from theatrical circulation, then keeps it hidden for a quarter-century.

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