Family Plot (1976) on Netflix
Blanche Tyler, a fake psychic, and her boyfriend George Lumley are offered $10,000 by Julia Rainbird to trace the illegitimate nephew her late sister gave up for adoption. Their leads are scant.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.8/1027,141 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Julia Rainbird is wealthy and elderly, and she wants to leave her fortune to her sister's illegitimate son, given up for adoption as a baby and now hard for Julia to trace. She hires her psychic, Blanche Tyler, instead of a private investigator, offering $10,000 once the man is found. Blanche is a fraud, and the information she uses comes from her boyfriend, the taxi driver George Lumley. The jeweler Arthur Adamson and his girlfriend Fran kidnap wealthy people and hold them in exchange for diamonds.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Elisabeth Brooksas Woman in Cafe with Priest (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Family Plot (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before production, Hitchcock had a heart attack in September 1974 and had a pacemaker inserted under the skin of his shoulder bone; by July 1975 he was physically exhausted, halted filming after four o'clock, and simplified scenes, sacrificing clarity for speed and budget.
- A month into filming Family Plot, Hitchcock was unhappy with Roy Thinnes's performance as Adamson, fired him and replaced him with William Devane.
- Hitchcock considered Jack Nicholson for George Lumbley after seeing Easy Rider, but Nicholson was busy preparing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so Hitchcock cast Bruce Dern, who had co-starred with Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens.
- Universal Pictures suggested Liza Minnelli for Blanche Tyler, but Hitchcock was not interested and felt her salary would be too expensive, casting Barbara Harris instead after watching A Thousand Clowns.
- Cybill Shepherd wrote in her memoir that she had hoped to play Fran, the part that went to Karen Black, whom Hitchcock decided to cast immediately after meeting her in February 1975.
- John Williams wrote the score for the only Hitchcock film of his career, and Hitchcock asked for choir voices to make Madame Blanche seem psychic early on and told Williams "murder can be fun" when suggesting he conduct a dark scene lightly.
- Family Plot's complete soundtrack was not released with the film, spawning bootleg copies of the scoring sessions online, until Varèse Sarabande issued a limited edition in 2010, 34 years after the film's release.
- Hitchcock assigned Anthony Shaffer to adapt The Rainbird Pattern, then phoned him saying Shaffer's agent had demanded a percentage of the box office gross; Shaffer fervently denied it, and Hitchcock canceled their collaboration and moved on to Ernest Lehman.
