No tension, the comedy is not funny and the serious parts are boring as hell, no suspense either. A total waste and I usually like stupid 70s films. Hitchcock must have been suffering from gallstones while filming this.
share[deleted]
Actually there is suspense and intrigue mixed in with comedy.
From the first few minutes when Bruce Dern almost hits Karen Black with his cab, it's not exactly like other Hitchcock films, it's more quirky but good.
Not as tight as his classics vertigo and psycho but still some quirky charm. Dern gave a good performance too. And I'm a Karen Black fan too so I might be more forgiving than most.
shareIMO admittedly not Hitch's best...far from it. But still entertaining and captivating...far from "God Awful". I wonder if it weren't a Hitchcock movie (with expectations of Hitchcock greatness) if you would hold the same opinion? Many times I've seen negative opinions of good movies that maybe weren't "great" movies made by the greats in the industry that just weren't quite up to their par...but were still good. Not discounting your opinion...or at least not trying to...but wonder if you're judging it as a Hitchcock movie or just a 70s movie. Even judging as a "70s" movie, IMO it was a pretty good one.
Please do not attack me for my opinions...we're all entitled to them.
I can sort of see why people are disappointed by it - especially after 'Frenzy'. But it has its own quirky charm, it isn't his best - but it has some positive points.
share[deleted]
suits my evaluation !
I couldn't wait it to end !
It is a structural remake of "Psycho":
Psycho
Investigators in one story(Sam, Lila, Arbogast) searching for a missing person(Marion Crane) bump into a much more dangerous story -- Mrs. Bates is a knife-wielding psycho, so the closer the investigators get, the more their lives are in danger.
Family Plot
Investigators in one story(Madame Blanche and Lumley) searching for a missing person(Eddie Shoebridge) bump into a much more dangerous story -- Shoebridge is Arthur Adamson, a dangerous kidnapper who is willing to kill, so the closer the investigators get, the more their lives are in danger.
There's even a "scene match-up": Arbogast going from motel to motel in search of Marion Crane becomes Madame Blanche going from person to person(including twins) to find Arthur Adamson.
If you are a Hitchocck buff, the remake is clearly there and its fun to see it all unfold...though with no real shocks.
---
A great final lesson from an old man in failing health, with several classic scenes.
[deleted]
Played for exactly two weeks in San Francisco when it came out, and they added another film along with it after the first week, to make it last that long ! Wonder why Hitchcock even bothered making it...tough old guy, I guess.
RSGRE
Wonder why Hitchcock even bothered making it...tough old guy, I guess.
---
I've posted this elsewhere, but I personally believe that Hitchcock made Family Plot expressly so that his final film would not end up being Frenzy.
Because while Frenzy was very well reviewed(Top Ten Lists of 1972, many times) and made some good money...it was easily the most grim and sexually graphic and mean movie Hitchcock ever made(and his only truly "R"-rated one; Psycho was given an odd "retroactive" R years after it was allowed general release.)
"Family Plot" came from a book in which the kidnappers killed Madame Blanche, and were then killed by "secret police," with Bruce Dern's character marked for death by a surviving son to the kidnappers(not in the movie.)
Hitchcock removed all those deaths, added only the accidental one with Maloney, and kept Family Plot as light and upbeat as he could.
The film famously ends with a "happy ending" and with Barbara Harris winking at us...winking FOR Hitchcock.
I think he wanted to be remembered that way...not with Frenzy. But because he was four years older and four years sicker than when he made Frenzy, Family Plot simply wasn't as well made.
No, he was already planning another more serious spy-based film. The script is readily available online. Your suppositions are merely that, and somewhat uneducated in regards to Hitchcock. Just read an easily available biography of the man.
shareI think you've picked the wrong guy. I've read all the main Hitchocck biographies and consider myself pretty well versed on his career. I attended the premiere of Family Plot at the 1976 FILMEX(Los Angeles Film Exposition.) Hitchcock was there.
Your avatar shows an interest in Psycho; I use that film to post in general on Hitchcock and film.
None of which makes me right in my suppositions, to be sure.
Hitchcock indeed was working on one more film -- "The Short Night" in the years before he died in 1980, and he looked at some other material for film as well -- principally an Elmore Leonard book called "Unknown Man 89" as a vehicle for Steve McQueen or Burt Reynolds(much as Hitchocck switched up his game by doing a horror movie with Psycho, he wanted to get in on the "tough guy action thrillers" of the 70's.)
One more thing about "The Short Night." He announced THAT film as to be his next after Topaz...but with Torn Curtain and Topaz viewed as failures, it didn't look good for another Cold War Hitchcock film, so he switched to a psycho film with Frenzy.
And I think that is important with regard to my "suppositions" that Hitchcock -- in his heart -- knew that he only had one film left in him after Frenzy, and elected to do the light Family Plot as a swan song.
Sure, Hitchcock told the press he was GOING to make another movie after Family Plot. That way, Universal would keep paying for an office and staff. And sure, Hitchcock undertook the work to have a film scripted -- the script is the most important part of any movie, but it doesn't cost much to write one. But that, too, was perhaps part of a charade on Hitchocck's part: "I'm still working, don't fire me, don't close my office -- look, I've got a writer working on The Short Night."
Anyone who saw Hitchcock's "out of it" physical and mental appearance at the American Film Institute event honoring him in March of 1979 saw the writing on the wall: that man was physically incapable of MAKING another movie.
The biographies show that in the years between the release of Family Plot in April of 1976 and Hitchcock's death in April of 1980 -- four years -- a whole lot of his time was spent at home resting and "reading scripts", or in hospitals, or just watching movies at his office screening room("for research"). Dragging "The Short Night" out of his trunk and meeting with writers on it(Ernest Lehman and David Freeman, in sequence) was probably just Hitchcock's way of staying in the game.
And we loved him for it. We were ALWAYS waiting for another Hitchcock movie, and we thought it would be "The Short Night"...
...right up until the day that it was announced that Alfred Hitchcock had died.
What are you ranting about? Yes, we all read the same biographies. I knew this stuff. You made ridiculous emotional comments about Hitchcock's condition.
shareThank you. Totally agree, this was horrible.
"Worthington, we're being attacked by giant bats!"