Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot: Made For 70s' Television?

Am I being a bit harsh in my title’s question? You be the judge. I usually am mesmerized by Hitchcock movies and find no visible flaws in them while they engage my heart and my brain pleasurably, but it seems that a lot can happen to the best of directors over a period of twelve years. I say twelve because his thrilling 1964 movie, Marnie, was chronologically the last of his movies I had watched before his last one, Family Plot, where he suffered a heart attack and received a pacemaker while shooting it in 1975, released in 1976. Family Plot was more silly, made-for-television-like entertainment, in my opinion.

Silly, of course, is fine to a certain point, such as Hitchcock’s brilliant dark comedy, The Trouble With Harry. Not only did that (thirties’?) movie boast real film stars like Edmund Gwenn (your favorite Santa Claus), John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine, but it was old-fashioned storytelling in its prime that you easily soaked up like a thirsty sponge. You cared about the charming characters whose integrity and wit shone from their very eyes and bones. They didn’t need to try to win you over; they just did naturally and the laughs, too, came unforced out of a suspenseful tale that gripped you from the beginning and spiraled out of control as the characters reacted with growing panic.

The first thing I noticed, and the one thing my bored sweetie commented on, was that quite a few swear words are used like b*tch, sh*t, and Holy Christ, and many casual references are made to sexual attractiveness and enjoyment of lovemaking. One male character even complained that he ‘was too pooped to pop’ and refused to stay the night with his beautiful, sex-crazed girlfriend. She then refused his kiss later on when he decided to keep his job rather than help her again with their investigation.

Seemed rather seventiesh with the message of empowered women who don’t mind being b*tches as long as they get what they want. Who needs men, except for sex?


The Story


Family Plot, based on Victor Canning’s novel The Rainbird Pattern, follows two separate storylines that merge, supposedly because of the extra sensory perception of the spiritualist Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris, A Thousand Clowns) working with her wealthy, troubled client, Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt, 1961's Parent Trap).

Julia, afraid of dying with no heir, asks Madame Blanche to help her find out what happened to her dead sister’s illegitimate son who she forced her sister to give up for adoption forty years earlier. She’ll give her ten thousand dollars for finding the man without a name, location or anything except what her dead sister Harriet can provide the psychic with.

Naturally Blanche pulls her amorous, but sometimes “too pooped to pop” cabbie sweetie, George (Bruce Dern, After Dark My Sweet) into investigating the clues that Julia remembers as inspired by the séances. It leads them further into intrigue when the murderer of that heir, now a jeweler/jewel thief, assumes they are after him and his female accomplice/girlfriend for the reward. Arthur and Fran, played uncompellingly by William Devane (best known for TV’s primetime soap opera Knots’ Landing) and Karen Black (Myrtle in The Great Gatsby), wonder if Blanche is a real psychic when she and George turn up at the most inconvenient times.

With a horrendously wild car ride down a steep, narrow, mountain road without brakes and a stuck accelerator, then our unlikely heroes being run down by a very poor driver, you are reminded of Hitchcock’s North By Northwest,, also written by Family Plot’s Ernest Lehman. With the storyline of the successful jewel thieves, you recall To Catch A Thief. And with the secret room behind a fake brick wall they use for those they ransom, one could think of Psycho easily.

All much, much better movies! Will headstrong Blanche get herself into serious trouble and George bravely come to her rescue? Is she really psychic and will she and George make any money in the end for all their troubles?

Watch and see!


Final Comments


By now you are probably dismissing this two-hour, PG-rated movie as 70s’ TV schlock. I agree it lacks the usual Hitchcock glamour I’m used to. The first time I tried watching it was with my sweetie who couldn’t have been less interested in it and I didn’t pay much attention to it or finish it either. The next day I almost fell asleep as I hoped to capture the cameo by Hitch. I did finish it, but needed a third time to catch the cameo about forty minutes into the movie with his shadow on the Birth and Registrars door.

Surprisingly I liked it a little better the third time, but still recognized its weaknesses of a convenient and silly plot, datedness and not quite engaging characters. Barbara Harris amused me sometimes with her phony psychic spiel and Bruce Dern came off believably for the most part, but he seemed awfully forgiving of whatever grief she gave him.

I don’t know why, but William Devane reminds me of a mouse. His big smile looks so forced and arrogant, his dark eyes so lifeless, his calculating voice so quiet. Ick! Great villain, you say? I’d rather have at least one redeeming quality to my villains to make them interesting and less cliché. And Karen Black looked pretty cute in her blonde wig, black hat and the rest of her get-up when she collected the ransom.

John Williams scored Family Plot beautifully with foreshadowing of his Star Wars theme the next year. Cinematography, especially during the eye-opening mountain scene, was not done by an amateur by a long shot, hehe, and I also liked the scene after a funeral where two people separately wind through paths to finally converge.

To sum up, the movie isn’t a complete waste of time, but it could’ve been written a little better and not so seventiesh. I’ve never grown tired of watching Hitchcock’s other timeless classics, but this, his swan song, appeals more to people who don’t mind silly, 70s’ movies. I recommend over Family Plot any of his other movies I’ve mentioned, plus others you’ve probably heard of at least like Vertigo, Rear Window, Rebecca and so many others, but I do recommend it as a flawed, but rather entertaining 70s’ (television?) movie.

Thanks for reading!