Family Plot

Josh Lewis3.0

alfred hitchcock ending his career with a literal wink into the camera feels appropriate.

theriverjordan3.5

Alfred Hitchcock goes out with the last laugh - to a joke that, more or less, only he would find funny. Perhaps, himself — and his wife, Alma. “Family Plot,” about a fake psychic that crosses paths with real serial killers, is an old man’s afternoon daydream of parlor grotesquery. The film is just perverse enough to cause an eyebrow raise. But, not enough to get grandpa’s Viagra prescription reduced. The movie dialogues best in Hitchcock’s filmography with “The Trouble with Henry.” Where “Henry” was quaint and comfortably claustrophobic in its rural idyll, “Plot” is aggressively odd in the hijinks that unfold within its Californian limbo. The film is almost too courteous to be camp. Compared with its immediate forerunner, “Frenzy,” the moments of violence feel positively demure.Perhaps, then, “Plot” is best categorized as a pastiche. Hitchcock; lovingly parodying his own earlier work, through a merely endearing level of excess. There are elements of the director’s iconic heist capers, his manhunt murders, and his later melodramatic domestic dramas. All of them; played to a level of absurdity that still promise a congenial degree of distance. To watch “Plot” is to sit on the sofa with Hitchcock and Alma; flipping through old family photo books of assassinations past. The odd, iconic couple - laughing all the way to the morgue. All 52 Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked

manny3.0

Hitchcock would've loved to go out with a bang, but all of his comeback movies have been mediocre or good at best in drama or suspense, unfortunately. It's a good enough thriller to keep you guessing, and Arthur Adamson showed moments of great brilliance in his dialogue across different scenes. I couldn't understand Barbara's acting, was she deliberately acting like an old hag? The stairs shot was a treat. The comedy is meant to be satirical, but I wasn't too crazy about it.