Letters from a Killer

Race Darnell has spent years on death row in Utah, sentenced for a murder he did not commit. To endure the wait, he writes to four women, each unaware of the others, and each convinced she has a future with him. When an appeal finally wins him his freedom, the deception unravels, and someone begins killing the women, arranging the crimes to point back at him. Hunted by the police and cut off from the life he expected, Race has to work out who is behind the killings before he is blamed for them.

The film was directed by David Carson, whose previous feature was Star Trek: Generations and whose later television and film work includes Carrie and Unstoppable. Patrick Swayze plays Race, with Gia Carides, Roger E. Mosley, Kim Myers, Olivia Birkelund and Tina Lifford among the cast. Shelley Miller and Nicholas Hicks-Beach wrote the screenplay, and Bertil Ohlsson and Peter Snell produced.

It was released in August 1998 and runs 100 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.4 from around 2,600 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 5.4, from a much smaller sample of 79 votes. A critics' score of 3.6 from 18 reviews places the film below even those modest audience numbers, and the two are broadly consistent in suggesting a lukewarm response.