The Mean Season

A Miami reporter hooks onto the story of his career when a mysterious man agrees to give him the grisly details of a series of murders he has committed. Based on the novel ‘In the Heat of the Summer’ by John Katzenbach., Nothing in The Mean Season is quite as powerful as its opening: a languid shot of a young girl, wandering with a seeming carefree air down the beach, suddenly turning to stare in tearful terror at the man she knows is about to kill her. The plot concerns the search for the serial murderer who was “introduced” in the opening. Miami journalist Malcolm Anderson (Kurt Russell) writes a newspaper series on the killings and as a result is the recipient of phone calls from the killer Alan Delour (Richard Jordan). Delour likes Anderson’s work and promises to call in with exclusive accounts of his upcoming murders — though he doesn’t go so far as to tell Anderson where he’ll strike next. The story becomes bigger than both Anderson and Delour, with the latter growing jealous of Anderson’s sudden celebrity and with both men using one another to advance themselves. The inevitable showdown takes place during a convincingly staged hurricane, with Anderson’s lady friend (Mariel Hemingway) an unwilling pawn between the two ego-driven men. The Mean Season was adapted by Leon Piedmont from John Katzenbach’s novel In the Heat of the Summer., Reporter Malcolm Anderson takes a job on a small town paper hoping to take life in the slow lane for a time. But a murderer he’s recently been reporting on liked the article and now calls Malcolm to tell him that he’s going to kill again., A small-town reporter gets mixed up with a serial killer, who admires the writer’s account of one of his murders., An intriguing thriller based on a novel by Leon Piedmont which explores the themes of news creation and news manipulation. Malcolm Anderson is a Miami journalist who strikes up an uneasy ‘partnership’ with a serial killer, who calls him after each murder he commits. But as Anderson’s involvement with the overall story increases, so does the danger to himself and his live-in girlfriend., A Miami newspaper reporter becomes the sole contact for a maniacal killer, but as the headlines (and murders) continue, it becomes a question of who is “using” whom. Based on the novel “In the Heat of Summer” by John Katzenbach.