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Family Plot

Catalog Number
VHS66054
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Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Release Year
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VHS | N/A | Slipcase
121 mins (NTSC)
N/A | N/A | N/A
N/A | N/A
Family Plot (1976)

Additional Information

Additional Information
You must see it twice!

From the devious mind of Alfred Hitchcock, a diabolically entertaining motion picture.

There's no body in the family plot.


Alfred Hitchcock's final film was adapted from Victor Canning's novel The Rainbird Pattern by Ernest Lehman, who previously wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Barbara Harris plays Blanche, a phony psychic, hired by wealthy Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) to trace the whereabouts of her nephew, who'd been given up for adoption years earlier and who is now heir to a fortune. Blanche's cohort is "investigator" Lumley (Bruce Dern), who is fully prepared to milk the last dollar out of Julia before locating the long-lost nephew. Meanwhile, we are introduced to elegant kidnappers Adamson and Fran (William Devane and Karen Black). The fates of the two couples are inextricably intertwined by the search for the missing heir. ~


The film was adapted for the screen by Ernest Lehman, based on Victor Canning's novel The Rainbird Pattern (1972). Lehman wanted the film to be sweeping, dark, and dramatic but Hitchcock kept pushing him toward lightness and comedy. Lehman's screenplay earned him a 1977 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
The novel on which the film is based had earlier been rejected by Lehman, to whom it had been submitted as a potential project for him to either produce or direct, or both. Hitchcock's other collaboration with the screenwriter, North by Northwest (1959), was followed by several aborted projects. Lehman had incurred the director's anger by declining an offer to write the screenplay for No Bail for the Judge, a London set thriller intended to star Audrey Hepburn, Laurence Harvey and actor John Williams. Although Hitchcock eventually had a fine screenplay and pre-production (location scouting and costumes) was at an advanced stage, the film was never made; Hepburn became pregnant and Hitchcock turned to another project, Psycho (1960), instead.


Hitchcock at work on location in San Francisco for Family Plot
Hitchcock, who often liked to specify the locales of his films by using on-screen titles or by using recognizable landmarks, deliberately left the story's location unspecific, using sites in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. The chase scene in the movie, which writer Donald Spoto called a spoof on car chases prevalent in films at the time, was filmed on the extensive Universal backlot. The restaurant used in the film was also built on the backlot and was shown on studio tours in 1975.
Hitchcock's signature cameo in Family Plot can be seen 40 minutes into the film. He appears in silhouette through the glass door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths.
Following Family Plot, Hitchcock worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night. His declining health prevented the filming of the screenplay, which was published in a book on Hitchcock's last years. Universal chose not to film the script with another director, although it did authorize sequels to Hitchcock's Psycho.
An advertisement for this film can be seen in the 1993 comedy film, Dazed and Confused, when characters pass a drive-in movie theater.


Release Date: April 9, 1976


Distrib: Universal

Boxoffice: $13,788,865 2013: $53,855,767

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