Family Plot (1976)

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.  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.  Blanche has landed a big fish in the form of aged millionaire Julia Rainbird (Catherine Nesbitt).  Julia has long felt guilty for forcing her sister to give up her illegitimate son for adoption.  She wants to locate the son and make him her heir.  For this she will give Blanche $10,000.

George traces the heir to the Shoebridge family.  It seems that the adoptive parents and the heir, Edward Shoebridge (William De Vane) were killed in a fire.  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.”  The problem is that Hitchcock definitely did not have the Lubitsch touch and particularly not this late in his career.  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.  As for suspense, I also found the movie lacking.  It’s watchable enough but I don’t know that anyone would recognize it as Hitchcock without knowing it’s lineage.