Synopsis
Spiritualist Blanche Tyler and her cab-driving boyfriend encounter a pair of serial kidnappers while trailing a missing heir in California.
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Cast
- Barbara HarrisBlanche Tyler
- Bruce DernGeorge Lumley
- Karen BlackFran
- William DevaneArthur Adamson
- Ed LauterJoseph Maloney
- Cathleen NesbittJulia Rainbird
- Katherine HelmondMrs. Maloney
- Warren J. KemmerlingHank Granderson
- Edith AtwaterMrs. Clay
- William PrinceBishop Wood
Recommendations
- 100
TV Guide Magazine
The performances are first-rate (finally free of the casting constraints, Hitchcock displayed--in 1972's Frenzy as well--a deliciously offbeat taste in performers) and the screenplay by Ernest Lehman (North By Northwest) is a witty model of construction. The humor is more obvious and subversive than any of Hitchcock's films since The Trouble With Harry. - 100
Time Out
Beneath all the fun, there's a vision of humans as essentially greedy and dishonest, presented with a gorgeously amoral wink from Hitchcock, and performed to perfection by an excellent cast. - 90
Village Voice
Its visual wit and spiritual resonance are truly inimitable even in this age of merchandised mimicry. [19 Apr 1976, p.64] - 90
Variety
Family Plot is a dazzling achievement for Alfred Hitchcock masterfully controlling shifts from comedy to drama thoughout a highly complex plot. Witty screenplay, transplanting Victor Canning's British novel, The Rainbird Pattern, to a California setting, is a model of construction, and the cast is uniformly superb. - 80
Newsweek
Because there is no point in worrying over hapless victims, the audience can devote its energies to trying to guess how the master will stage his next sneak attack. It's futile. At 76, Hitchcock is still one jump ahead. [05 Apr 1976, p.85] - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
Everything's laid out for us and made clear, we understand the situation we can see where events are leading... and then, in the last 30 minutes, he springs one concealed trap after another, allowing his story to fold in upon itself, to twist and turn, and scare and amuse us with its clockwork irony. - 70
The New York Times
A witty, relaxed lark. It's a movie to raise your spirits even as it dabbles in phony ones. - 58
IndieWire
It’s enjoyable enough, and the acting is comparatively looser than most of what comes before it thanks to the allowed improvisations on set, a first for the director
