Half a century after releasing his first film (The Pleasure Garden), Alfred Hitchcock here releases his last (Family Plot). An intricately plotted thriller taken from a novel entitled "The Rainbird Pattern" by Victor Canning, this film reunites Hitchcock with his North By Northwest script writer Ernest Lehman. While the magic of that earlier masterpiece may be missing, Family Plot remains an enjoyable and intelligently crafted film. It has its share of flaws, but a flawed Hitchcock is still preferable to most directors working at the top of their game.
Fake medium Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) makes a living by pretending to help people speak to their deceased relatives. Secretly, she assigns her boyfriend and chauffeur George (Bruce Dern) to carry out background investigations upon her clients, thereby gathering enough details about them and their beloved dead to make her act seem convincing. The plot thickens when Blanche starts performing clairvoyance for a woman named Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt). Julia has been suffering from nightmares, having long ago given away her sister Harriet's illegitimate baby son. In a fit of guilt, Julia now wants to track down the long-lost nephew and shower him with the family wealth by way of apology. The plot thickens even further when a pair of kidnappers enter the frame. Jeweller Arthur Adamson (William Devane) and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) have become masters at abducting wealthy folk and demanding a ransom in priceless diamonds for their safe return. Arthur and Fran learn of the Rainbird fortune, and plot to target Julia and her missing nephew as their next victims. After a series of complicated events, the two kidnappers (Arthur and Fran) learn that they have opposition in the shape of Blanche and George, and plan to bump them off. But the battle of wits between the two parties is never as straightforward as it seems .
Hitchcock encourages wonderful performances from his stars. Dern gives possibly his career-best performance as the oddball anti-hero, while Harris is thoroughly entertaining as the fake medium and Devane silkily sinister as the villain. The film is somewhat overlong, and the plot threatens to topple into incoherency at some points, but just as things are in danger of coming apart Hitchcock manages to rein them back into a cohesive whole. John Williams provides a classy music score and the photography by Leonard J. South is excellent. It is sad that Hitchcock was unable to make any more films after this one. Coupled with his penultimate film Frenzy (1972), there were promising signs here that he was on his way back to form, following a couple of back-to-back '60s disappointments (Torn Curtain and Topaz). While Family Plot might not be absolute vintage Hitchcock, it still emerges a polished, smooth and playfully suspenseful thriller.
Fake medium Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) makes a living by pretending to help people speak to their deceased relatives. Secretly, she assigns her boyfriend and chauffeur George (Bruce Dern) to carry out background investigations upon her clients, thereby gathering enough details about them and their beloved dead to make her act seem convincing. The plot thickens when Blanche starts performing clairvoyance for a woman named Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt). Julia has been suffering from nightmares, having long ago given away her sister Harriet's illegitimate baby son. In a fit of guilt, Julia now wants to track down the long-lost nephew and shower him with the family wealth by way of apology. The plot thickens even further when a pair of kidnappers enter the frame. Jeweller Arthur Adamson (William Devane) and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) have become masters at abducting wealthy folk and demanding a ransom in priceless diamonds for their safe return. Arthur and Fran learn of the Rainbird fortune, and plot to target Julia and her missing nephew as their next victims. After a series of complicated events, the two kidnappers (Arthur and Fran) learn that they have opposition in the shape of Blanche and George, and plan to bump them off. But the battle of wits between the two parties is never as straightforward as it seems .
Hitchcock encourages wonderful performances from his stars. Dern gives possibly his career-best performance as the oddball anti-hero, while Harris is thoroughly entertaining as the fake medium and Devane silkily sinister as the villain. The film is somewhat overlong, and the plot threatens to topple into incoherency at some points, but just as things are in danger of coming apart Hitchcock manages to rein them back into a cohesive whole. John Williams provides a classy music score and the photography by Leonard J. South is excellent. It is sad that Hitchcock was unable to make any more films after this one. Coupled with his penultimate film Frenzy (1972), there were promising signs here that he was on his way back to form, following a couple of back-to-back '60s disappointments (Torn Curtain and Topaz). While Family Plot might not be absolute vintage Hitchcock, it still emerges a polished, smooth and playfully suspenseful thriller.