Foul Play (1978) on Netflix
PG19781h 56mComedyMysteryThriller
San Francisco librarian Gloria Mundy, recently divorced, picks up a stranded motorist, Bob "Scotty" Scott, who leaves her his cigarette pack. Wounded, he tells her a murder is planned and dies.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/1019,786 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
Since her divorce, San Francisco librarian Gloria Mundy has kept to herself, and her friends press her to date again. Driving home from a party, she offers a lift to a stranded motorist, Bob "Scotty" Scott, who asks her to hold onto his cigarette pack. At the movies that evening he is wounded, warns her of a coming murder and tells her to watch out for a dwarf, then dies. When she goes for the manager, the body vanishes. The next day an albino man attacks her in the library, and a scarred stranger later corners her at home over the cigarette pack; when the police arrive, nothing is left of the attack. Detective Tony Carlson and his partner Fergie find no trace of any of it, but Tony, drawn to Gloria, appoints himself her protector.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Foul Play (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Foul Play is an homage to Alfred Hitchcock: the premise of an innocent person entangled in intrigue echoes The 39 Steps, Saboteur and North by Northwest, the scarf strangling nods to Dial M for Murder, and screenwriter-director Colin Higgins also winks at Notorious, Vertigo and Psycho.
- The plot turns on a MacGuffin, the roll of film concealed in the pack of cigarettes, which ends up thrown into a fire in a fireplace and is forgotten and unexplained by the end. Hitchcock popularized the term and used the technique in many of his films.
- The script was originally written under the name Killing Lydia with Goldie Hawn in mind for the lead; Higgins had met Hawn through their mutual friend Hal Ashby. The project did not take off, and Higgins rewrote the script after Silver Streak came out.
- Paramount hoped to star Farrah Fawcett, but she was in the middle of a legal battle with the producers of Charlie's Angels, so it was decided to go with Goldie Hawn instead.
- Higgins wrote the role of Stanley Tibbets for Tim Conway, but when the actor turned it down he offered it to Dudley Moore. It was Moore's American film debut and led to his being cast in 10 by Blake Edwards the following year.
- Higgins's first choice for the male lead was Harrison Ford, who had been Higgins' carpenter and turned the part down. Steve Martin was offered the role but did not end up playing it either.
- Goldie Hawn's character name, Gloria Mundy, refers to Sic transit gloria mundi, Latin for thus passes the glory of the world; the phrase was part of the rite of papal coronation until 1963.
