Family Plot
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Ernest Lehman
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Fran: You better give me a quick synopsis. I’m confused.
Arthur Adamson: Simple. A cab driver is shacked up with a sex-starved medium named Blanche Tyler. Don’t ask me why, but apparently they’re on the trail of some spook named Eddie Shoebridge.
Alfred Hitchcock certainly did not go out with a bang with this screwball thriller.
The story takes place in some unnamed location in contemporary California. Â Fake psychic Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) lures in marks to exploit with the assistance of her taxi driver con-man boyfriend George Lumley (Bruce Dern), who does the research to add authenticity to the project. Â Blanche has landed a big fish in the form of aged millionaire Julia Rainbird (Catherine Nesbitt). Â Julia has long felt guilty for forcing her sister to give up her illegitimate son for adoption. Â She wants to locate the son and make him her heir. Â For this she will give Blanche $10,000.
George traces the heir to the Shoebridge family. Â It seems that the adoptive parents and the heir, Edward Shoebridge (William De Vane) were killed in a fire. Â But something about the gravestone seems suspicious to George and he investigates further.
Spoilers
Concurrently the heir has assumed the name Arthur Adamson and is working as a jeweler. He and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) have a sideline as serial kidnappers who demand valuable diamonds as ransom.
When George tracks Arthur down he and Blanche are in terrible danger.
Alfred Hitchcock once said of this movie: It’s “a melodrama treated with a bit of levity and sophistication. I want the feeling of the famous director Ernst Lubitsch making a mystery thriller.” Â The problem is that Hitchcock definitely did not have the Lubitsch touch and particularly not this late in his career. Â Most of the humor consists of sex jokes that I didn’t find all that funny. There is one death by rigged auto scene but nothing raising to the level of a Hitchcockian set piece. Â As for suspense, I also found the movie lacking. Â It’s watchable enough but I don’t know that anyone would recognize it as Hitchcock without knowing it’s lineage.
