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.
I always thought of this as color version of one of the
Think of this as an extended episode of his TV show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Sadly the man was way past his prime. A same fate for John Ford “Seven Women” and Howard Hawk’s “Rio Lobo.” They out lived their audience.
Ford and Hawks I’m still pondering. But if Hitch had pulled out a movie even as good as “The Birds”, he certainly still would have found an audience for it. He was just running out of steam.
Not a terrible movie but a disappointment after FRENZY.
If he had quit with Frenzy, he could have left on a higher note. Evidently he had another project in the works at the time of his death. Agree it’s not terrible, but for Hitch he was clearly phoning it in.