Family Plot (1976)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane, Karen Black, Ed Lauter, Cathleen Nesbitt, Katharine Helmond, Nicholas Colasanto. [PG]

Hitchcock’s final film is anomalous—a cheerful black comedy, a mystery that doesn’t beg to be solved, and a thriller without suspense, all rolled into one. A phony psychic (Harris) and her cab-driving boyfriend (Dern) seek out a long-lost heir on the promise of a $10,000 reward, which brings them into the fold of a pair of kidnappers played by Devane and Black. The twisty plot complications can be fun, even though credulity is shattered early and often when it comes to the dubiously fortunate investigation (no one’s going to confuse those two for Holmes and Watson, after all). Yet all the painstaking construction and macabre directorial panache can’t cover up the fact that the plotting is a grift and the characters have no heft; it goes down agreeably, but there’s nothing to cling to when it’s over, and Hitch ultimately spoils the big set pieces (e.g., the severed brake line) by letting out the air right away with jokiness. Adapted by Ernest Lehman from a darker and more serious thriller, “The Rainbird Pattern,” by Victor Canning. Music by John Williams.

64/100