Nightmare Alley and Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976)

I've just watched Nightmare Alley(its OK, not much more) and found myself comparing it to a somewhat little known Alfred Hitchcock film, the main claim of which is that...it turned out to be Hitchcock's final film: Family Plot. Family Plot came out in 1976, and despite his attempts to get another movie going, the aging Hitchcock became too sick to make another film and died in 1980.

As a matter of tone, "Family Plot" is very different from "Nightmare Alley." "Family Plot" is very lightweight and upbeat in tone, a rare "Hitchcock comedy" before it is a thriller. As a matter of production quality and cinematography, Family Plot is WORSE than Nightmare Alley, which looks very expensive, with every image burnished to a fine, fantastical sheen. Family Plot rather looks like a "Columbo" episode, quite flat in the photography with too many poor process shots.

Still, "Family Plot" had a lot going for it in terms of the intricacy and payoff of the script and the trademark ingenuity(for one...last...time) of Hitchocck in delivering set-pieces and certain visual puns.

Differences aside, the BIG connection between Family Plot and Nightmare Alley are: their shared subject matter: a "spiritualist" ("medium") who convinces gullible and grieving individuals that they can communicate with the dead.

Once the "spiritualist" plot line in Nightmare Alley raised itself and started to take over the movie, I IMMEDIATELY flashed back to Family Plot, and it occurred to me: we really don't have a lot of movies ABOUT spiritualists and mediums, do we?

Here's why, I think: BOTH Family Plot and Nightmare Alley are about a PHONY spiritualist, a PHONY medium...the films are essentially about con artists who, nonetheless, do the hard "shoe leather and library work" of researching their marks to as to have "inside information" that they can use to proof "the dead are talking to me about you."

In both films, one ends up feeling that the "marks" are very gullible indeed. It is rather unsatisfying as the viewer feels "Just how dumb and gullible ARE these people, to believe this?" You can't quite commit to the storyline, which is why, I think, few movies are made about spiritualists, phony or otherwise.

Nightmare Alley ups the tension a bit, though. One of the "gullible" marks (Richard Jenkins) is a very rich, very suspicious man with a very big and brutal bodyguard ready to beat up spiritualist Bradley Cooper if he proves a fake. And another of the "guilible" marks(Mary Steenburgen -- what a cast!) comes to believe TOO much in the spirit of her departed child, with dangerous consequences.

I dunno. I suppose my main personal beef is that the "phony spiritualist angle" just doesn't work for me -- I can't believe the gullibility of the marks.

But...Nightmare Alley has other attributes(production design, overall creepiness, some sexuality) As does Family Plot (the spiritulists get mixed up in a whole other plot involving dangerous professional kidnappers.) Perhaps that's key: make sure that your movie is not ONLY about a fake medium.

By the way,at the end of Family Plot, it appears that fake medium Barbara Harris really IS psychic(she divines where a hidden diamond is.) But the movie ends with Harris winking at us. She's winking goodbye for Hitchcock, but its a big clue: watch the movie a second time, and you'll find out she overhead the information about the diamond's whereabouts.

PS. I've read that the greatest movie about a phony spiritualist is "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" (1964.)