Family Plot

Plot synopsis:
A fake psychic, Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris), and her boyfriend, George Lumley (Bruce Dern), attempt to locate the nephew of a wealthy and guilt-ridden elderly woman, Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt). Julia's recently deceased sister gave the baby boy up for adoption, but Julia now wants to make him her heir, and will pay Blanche $10,000 if the man, Edward Shoebridge, can be found. During his investigation, George Lumley discovers that Shoebridge is thought to be dead, but he tracks down another criminal, Joseph Maloney (Ed Lauter), who paid for the tombstone over an empty grave.
Meanwhile, it is revealed to the viewers that Shoebridge murdered his adoptive parents, faked his own death and is now a successful jeweler in San Francisco known as Arthur Adamson (William Devane). He and his live-in girlfriend, Fran (Karen Black), kidnap millionaires and dignitaries, returning them in exchange for ransoms in the form of valuable gemstones. The duo conceal an enormous diamond in plain sight in a crystal chandelier.
When Adamson learns that George is investigating him, he enlists Maloney (the two had murdered Adamson's adoptive parents long ago), to kill Blanche and George. Maloney initially refuses to help, but then contacts Blanche and George, telling them to meet him at a café on a mountain road. He cuts the brake line of Blanche's car while the couple are in the café, but they manage to survive their dangerous high-speed descent. Maloney tries to run them over, but dies in a fiery explosion when he swerves to avoid an oncoming car and tumbles down the cliff.
At Maloney's funeral, his wife (Katherine Helmond) tearfully confesses to George that Shoebridge's name is now Arthur Adamson. George has to go to work driving his taxi for an evening shift, so Blanche tracks down various A. Adamsons in San Francisco, eventually reaching the jewelry store as it closes for the day. Arthur's assistant Mrs. Clay (Edith Atwater) offers to let Blanche leave a note. Blanche lies that she is a friend of Arthur and convinces Mrs. Clay to give her his address, instead.
Arthur and Fran are bundling a kidnapped Bishop Wood (William Prince) into their car when Blanche rings their doorbell. They attempt to drive out of their garage, but Blanche's car is blocking their way. She tells Arthur that his aunt wants to make him her heir. Blanche sees the unconscious bishop, and swears she will not tell, but Arthur drugs her, leaving her in the cellar while they drop the bishop off for ransom.
Searching for Blanche, George finds her car outside Arthur and Fran's house, but no-one answers the door. He breaks in and searches for her. Arthur and Fran return home; George hides upstairs. He overhears Arthur's decision to kill Blanche and frame her death as a suicide. George manages to talk to Blanche, who is faking unconsciousness in the open cellar. Arthur and Fran enter to carry Blanche out to the car, but she darts out and George locks the kidnappers in.
Blanche then goes into a "trance", climbs the stairs into the house and halfway up the next stairs, where she points at the huge diamond hidden in the chandelier. Blanche then "wakes" and asks George what she is doing there. He excitedly tells her that she is indeed a real psychic. He calls the police to collect the reward for capturing the kidnappers and finding the jewels. A smiling Blanche looks at the camera and winks.

Tags: paranormal, suspenseful, murder

Review:
That he was still directing films at all in the 1960s and 1970s is quite remarkable for a man whose film work began in the silent era."Family Plot" is a fun, neat little comedy-thriller much akin to the NBC Mystery Movies of that era...
Blanche is a phony psychic who, along with her reluctant boyfriend Frank, played hilariously by the underrated Bruce Dern, run afoul of big time crooks Karen Black and William Devane.The plot does get a bit convoluted, but Hitchcock was smart enough to lay off the heavy-handed dictatorial directorship that categorized his earlier work and let the actors and their characters move the plot along.
The first pair is Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris who are a pair of small time grifters and we meet them in the process of fleecing a rich old spinster Cathleen Nesbitt with a phony psychic act.The second pair are William Devane and Karen Black who have a lovely line in ransom kidnappings.
Although true Hitchcock buffs may not rank "FP" alongside the "classics" like "Psycho" and "NxNW," "FP" is an evenly-paced film with strong central characters, an interesting supporting cast, good acting, humor, innuendo, mystery and, of course, suspense.
It won't leave your palms sweating and your blood running cold, and there are a couple of flaws that a younger Hitch might have caught (I, for one, wonder how Blanche's car got fixed so quickly -- hard to believe it wasn't totaled in the first place).Nonetheless, Family Plot will hold your attention and keep you guessing until the very end.
Though Hitchcock applied the magic directorial touch to many of the sequences, I can't help but feel it is a small team of performers who make this a fun film to watch over and over again: William Devane, Barbara Harris, Karen Black, throw in Ed Lauter too--and most of all, of course, the marvellous Bruce Dern.
Amazing!I watched in the "Making of" this picture someone saying that, at that time, people knew this would be the last Hitchcock movie it would have been received way better by the audience.
Family Plot is Alfred Hitchcock's last film, and what a way to end an extremely successful career.
Frenzy was a legitimate thriller but its darkly comedic undertones worked as the perfect transition to a more relaxed and upbeat "Family Plot", definitely a comedy, with a good balance of thrills and suspense.The film starts in a wealthy elderly woman's house, Blanche Tyler, a psychic in trance, tries to communicate with the woman's sister, using different voices, howling, screaming, giving such an over-the-top performance we suspect she belongs to the fraudulent side of the business, but it takes some great acting to perform the bad one, and Barbara Harris, whenever she's in that state, is a delight to watch, she'd be even funnier in a similar scene later with her boyfriend.
The comedy is integral to the film's appeal because the opening is extremely talkative and provides a vital flow of information and Harris' lively and funny performance catches our eyes, and inevitably our ears and our mind.So, it all comes down to the woman asking Blanche to find her sister's illegitimate son given for adoption, so she can clear her conscience and allow him to inherit her fortune; in exchange, Blanche will receive ten thousand dollars (and I just love Harris' cute response when she tries to pretend that money doesn't matter).
The first transition from Blanche and George to Arthur and Fran is abrupt and disconcerting (although creatively done) but once we get it that the film centers on the two couples, the pros and the small-time crooks, we know where the story is going, two plots coming across each other, in other words: a confrontation.The thrill in "Family Plot" is to see these couples getting closer to each other, and even play a sprinkled-sprinkler game when George's lousy attempt to pass a lawyer raises the suspicion of Adamson's former accomplice (he's obviously the lost heir, the only way the two plots would converge).
Which would lead to the first life-threatening sequence with a high-speed descent in a mountain road, and as much I enjoyed it, I can't get over the hilariously distorted face of George, crushed under Blanche's shoe, while she tries to climb her way out of the vehicle.Just like the plot swings back and forth between two couples that couldn't have been more different, it does the same thing with thrills and comedy and the result is savorous and entertaining.
Alfred Hitchcock's final film , it was his fifty-third when made this lighthearted suspense story about a phony psychic/con artist named Blanche (Liza Minnelli, Beverly Sills, and Goldie Hawn were all considered for the role , Barbara Harris eventually was cast in the role ; apparently, Alfred Hitchcock was happy with the casting of Harris as he had apparently tried to hire her before)and her taxi driver/private investigator boyfriend (Bruce Dern who had previously worked with Alfred on episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents as well as having had a small role in Marnie) who encounter a pair of serial kidnappers called Arthur (William Devane , though Roy Scheider and Burt Reynolds were considered for the part) and Fran (Karen Black) while trailing a missing heir in California .
Meanwhile, an extremely clever couple, an astute jeweler (Roy Thinnes was originally hired to play Arthur Adamson, but Hitchcock's first choice William Devane became available so Hitchcock fired Thinnes without a reason and hired Devane) and his enticing girlfriend are behind a series of kidnappings of various VIPs in the San Francisco area .Entertaining mystery movie packs thrills , humor , suspense and ordinary Hitch touches .
The final shot in the movie, a wink by the Barbara Harris character was a jokey reference that was not planned but Alfred Hitchcock decided to leave in , this was arguably a fitting coda to his career exemplifying the black humor that was prevalent in his movies .
Alfred Hitchcock once said of this film: ¨It's a melodrama treated with a bit of levity and sophistication , I wanted the feeling of the famous director Ernst Lubitsch making a mystery thriller." .The motion picture was well directed by Alfred Hitchcock , he was famous for making his actors follow the script to the word, but in this movie he let the characters improvise and use their own dialogue .
The Mustang is already eleven years old for this film--a sign of how far into our current era Hitchcock has come, and perhaps a reminder that his style of making movies is starting to look like just that, a style, something artificial and quaint when hard edged, elegant realism has stormed back into Hollywood (from Chinatown to the Godfather to, in 1976, uh, Rocky).
When George concludes that Arthur Adamson might be the heir of Julia Rainbird, the reckless Blanche gets in trouble with the kidnappers."Family Plot" is the swan song of the genius Alfred Hitchcock.
These two high priced grifters who make a great living kidnapping wealthy people and holding them for ransom in their secret basement fortress indicates that they are shrewd and tactful in planning their kidnappings and reaping the rewards for diamonds as their preferred ransom payment.William Devane and Karen Black play polar opposite to the other two low class grifters played by Barbara Harris as Blanche Tyler who eeks out a living as a spiritualist bringing back the voices of the dead for living family members who get suckered in to this old con game.
And although it may be no match to any of the above mentioned films, it nonetheless works as what it is in the first place; a dark comedy.Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot tells the story of two couples; one consists of a fake psychic & a cab driver who together make up as petty con artists while the other couple kidnap rich people for ransoms.
The plot concerns the search of a missing heir that brings the petty criminals in conflict with the smooth professionals leading to some unexpected consequences.Finely directed by Hitchcock, the film suffers when compared to previous classics in the director's impressive filmography but it is clever & strong enough to stand on its own.
Otherwise, the film has lost none of its punch.Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman rework their scene down the California mountain highway from "North By Northwest," making it into a screamingly hysterical runaway automobile sequence with Blanche (Barbara Harris) nearly choking her paramour George (Bruce Dern) to death with his own necktie (with shades of Hitchcock's two necktie murder films, "Young and Innocent" and "Frenzy").A weakness in Hitchcock's final outing is the music of John Williams.
Besides this nitpicking, "Family Plot" is not a bad way to end a distinguished career as a master director of suspense and disseminator of creative movie making..
Family Plot, Hitchcock's last film, is a good movie.
William Devane does well also, but he looks like a 1970s porno version of Rod Serling, and Karen Black's character is just merely there, leaving little impact considering she is a main character.Hitchcock adapted well to the 1970s, he appears to be moving forward, rather than just go for nostalgia, and the film is all the more better for that, rather than resorting to more chases on Mount Rushmore.
While Family Plot is not as great as some of Hitch's films (North by Northwest, Psycho, etc.), it was surprisingly entertaining and had very many funny parts to it.
And I apologize if I am offending anyone here but I don't find Bruce Dern or William Devane to be very good actors on the whole, and none of the other actors/actresses seem to bring too much to the project either.Hitchcock even was very disappointed in this film the way it turned out, and I can see why.
Generally talented actors with a pretty good script were nearly done in by very lax directing on this terribly disappointing movie.Blanche, played by Barbara Harris, was a charming and attractive pseudo-psychic, but when the car was brake-less and heading rapidly down the mountain, her performance was like something out of a very bad Ritz Brothers film.It was so ridiculous, nothing could bring the experience back up to the levels we are supposed to be able to expect from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.Then, her wink at the camera in the last shot just ruined the whole thing.How silly it all seemed.
While it's a pleasant little mystery, Bruce Dern, William Devane, Barbara Harris and Karen Black seem to lack the class and quality of old-time Hitchcock actors such as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Donat, Joan Fontaine, etc.
Two grifters inadvertently come into contact with each other when one pair (BARBARA HARRIS, BRUCE DERN) is on assignment to find a missing heir and their detective work leads them to two other more deadly serious grifters (WILLIAM DEVANE, KAREN BLACK) who are jewel thieves and kidnappers.That's about the basic plot premise of this Alfred Hitchcock comedy-thriller which never quite gels.
Hitch ran up an impressive string of 15 straight hits over nearly a quarter of a century before his death, shortly after his last film, FAMILY PLOT in 1976.Although far from being his best film, FAMILY PLOT is still a Hitchcock Classic, employing many of the devices of telling a suspenseful story in a way only Sir Alfred could do it.The story involves Blanche Tyler, played by Hitchcock's latest blond, Barbara Harris.
"Family Plot" is most notable as the final film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
The DVD sleeve synopsis gives away the connection between the two seemingly unrelated couples in the film; recommended reading, as the revelation, when it happens, has little dramatic impact anyway.***** Family Plot (4/9/76) Alfred Hitchcock ~ Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane, Karen Black.
Like Balzac,like Dickens,like Clouzot,like the other great artistic benefactors of the humanity,Alfred Hitchcock presented us with a new manner of watching and of analyzing.Released 20 years ago,Family Plot (1976) has some noticeable features:(1)he used only antipathetic, churlish, base-hearted, vulgar,dishonest-looking (but also very talented) male leads,faces denoting Baselessness,anti-stars,as this kind of actors was called in the '60s;he wanted them to look like two bums,two fiends,two repulsive louses,miscreants, wicked quacks, cheerful curs;later,these guy made great careers as villains;as for the actresses,in vain one would try to make Mrs. Barbara Harris or even Mrs. Karen Black be an equivalent for Grace Kelly,Ingrid Bergman,etc.,or suggest that Hitchcock thought them to be so;very far,indeed,from his almost Stendhalian feminine beauty fetishism,his exultation before women's beauty;who could say that H.
took Barbara Harris and Karen Black for a new Grace Kelly,when only a Miss Kelly was good enough for him and for his best movies?;(2)Hitchcock made a commercial and conventional movie,that is lacking any ambitions and technical inventiveness,if compared with his movies like Rope (1948),Rear Window (1954),Vertigo (1958),Psycho (1960);(3)as such,Family Plot (1976) is above the average production of the '70s.Family Plot (1976) has in abundance Alfred Hitchcock 's qualities:sarcasm,caustic irony,sardonic comic.I see no sign of a talent's decline in this film,only different purposes.His talent's elasticity and malleability were amazing.
Hitchcock's film-making techniques do not shine but are still evident; however, the performances of Harris, as a madcap psychic, and Dern, as her taxi-driver boyfriend, go a long way to give great viewing pleasure..
Alfred Hitchcock's final film "Family Plot" is actually somewhat confusing, as some con artists try to play tricks on each other.
Their search for the missing man leads to a pair of ruthless kidnappers (played by William Devane and Karen Black) who are none too keen to have people prying into their business.It took Alfred Hitchcock four years to follow up his excellent psycho-sexual thriller Frenzy (1972) with Family Plot, during which time the director suffered from several bouts of ill health that clearly took a toll on his creativity: Hitch's final film is an unremarkable crime caper from an ailing film-maker whose heart no longer seems to be in his work.Gone are the brilliantly orchestrated scenes of tension and suspense for which the distinguished director is renowned; instead we get something that feels like a TV movie-of-the-week, complete with corny characters, hammy performances and ill-advised humour (Blanche losing her cool in a careening car with no brakes is desperately unfunny, a real low-point in Hitch's career)..
The best part of Hitchcock's final production is probably Barbara Harris's borderline character whose seemingly fruitless endeavors get entangled with a much less believable subplot without which the story, however, wouldn't have been the least suspenseful.The direction is overall decent with certain typical Hitchcock scenes such as a car race reminiscent of those in Suspicion and North by Northwest.Enjoyable if one disregards a number of rather apparent plot holes.And as usual with respect to the Master's pictures, I stop to wonder for a while whether there's a MacGuffin present or not....
There's some good laughs to be had by way of Hitchcock's casting- Bruce Dern is always great, and Karen Black and William Devane and Barbara Harris put in their bits of effort too- and there's even a couple of near-brilliant scenes and flashes of the Master's style; the cut-away from couple 1 (Harris/Dern) in the car following the start of the movie to the "blonde" Black walking across the road is a great little narrative leap.
The performances by the likes of Bruce Dern and Karen Black never rise above simply being "OK" and the direction is Hitch's weakest - possibly ever.I didn't think the humor worked as well as usual and the entire film just failed to engage me.
She promises them a large sum believing Madam Tyler to be legitimate.Meanwhile, jeweler collector Arthur Adamson (William Devane) and girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) kidnap wealthy people to ransom for diamonds.This is Alfred Hitchcock's final film.
Barbara Harris is hilarious, showing touches of Madeleine Kahn in her role as fake psychic Blanche, Bruce Dern is endearing as her flakey sidekick Frank McBride, Karen Black brilliantly plays it straight-down-the-line (despite the silly disguises she wears) as a partner in crime to kidnapper-jeweler Arthur Adamson, played with deliciously subtle menace by William Devane.The music, provided by John Williams in a first-time collaboration with Hitchcock, works a treat, avoiding the bombastic overtones of some of his worst Hollywood-esque scores and harking back to the classic days of Bernard Herrmann.Being drawn into the web of the intricate plot that sees these four characters being drawn together, and seeing the sparks fly in the witty dialogue (penned by `North by Northwest' screenwriter Ernest Lehman) is enough  but the set pieces (a rollercoaster ride in an out-of-control car in the mountains, the kidnapping of a priest in the middle of a service, to name a few) elevate this film to a delightful popcorn experience that you will want to return to again  there are subtleties and layers in the performances that will be guaranteed to keep you coming back for more..
In a way, I consider FAMILY PLOT to be Hitchcock's most perfect work of sheer suspense - after the first 10 minutes, the audience always knows more than any of the characters, and all we can do is wait for them to come together, which makes for some very anxious moments!
I don't think Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris have done better since, William Devane is very chilling and quite brutal and Karen Black seems to be having fun despite her character not being as developed well as the rest.In conclusion, a good swan-song, and while not among the Master of Suspense's best I do think it gets a bad rap for either the viewer having too high expectations, or that it was a noble but failed attempt at doing something different or bad timing in a decade of disaster movies and with the likes of Spielberg, DeNiro and Pacino(I personally think it's a bit of all).
Suspenseful, entertaining, funny, yes!Hitchcock had a grand finale with "Family Plot", because it is an easy film to follow, uncompromising in a good way, with a well told story that only goes down a little in the end, but it doesn't matter.