This is, of course, Hitchcock's last film, and I have to say it's a lot better than Torn Curtain. It reminds me a lot of an episode of the Rockford Files (70s, fairly jokey and low-stakes, set in and in the mountains outside of, Los Angeles) crossed with the 70s version of Freaky Friday, because of Barbara Harris, prepared, in both, to do plenty of physical comedy. Harris plays Blanche Tyler, who is a phony psychic, in a relationship with aspiring actor but current cab driver George Lumley (an uncharacteristically gentle and likeable Bruce Dern). That's one of the two couples in the film: the other is the quintessential 70s pairing of Karen Black
(seriously, check out how her career nosedives after the 70s) and William Devane (if you don't recognize the name, you'd recognize the face), who play a couple whose occupation is kidnapping, for which they demand incredible gems as payment. The first couple starts us off: Blanche persuades a rich old lady, "Julia Rainbird," that she is in contact with her sister Harriet on the other side, and Mrs. Rainbird vows to set right a 40-year-old wrong: giving up her sister's illegitimate child for adoption. She asks Blanche to use her psychic abilities to find this child so that he can be sole inheritor of the Rainbird fortune, for which Blanche will be paid $10,000. Blanche spills this info to George as he drives her back from the Rainbird mansion, insisting that her insight that Mrs. Rainbird's sleep was troubled (by nightmares of Harriet) to her contact "on the other side," "Henry," which disgusts George, who insists it was because of him grilling the local chemist and finding out Mrs. Rainbird kept badgering her for prescription sleep-aids. George, it turns out, has good investigating abilities, which is just as well, otherwise we wouldn't have much of a film. Anyway, as they bicker and exchange rather crude sexual innuendo (I think Hitch was trying to "get with the times" - this is a little cringeworthy, as is the casual use of "bitch" by both our male partners), a blonde woman crosses the road in front of the taxi, and buzzes to get into a building. This turns out to be a disguised Karen Black, silently coming to collect a gem and a helicopter to take a cop to pick up the sedated industrialist they have kidnapped. This goes off without a hitch and when they return to their little house (with its disguised soundproofed room, for the keeping of kidnappees), they hide the gem in their chandelier.
Now, what do these two couples have to do with each other? Well, it's not too much of a spoiler to reveal that William Devane's Arthur Adamson is, in fact, the missing child. (I must admit, I was a little surprised that Blanche and George actually tried to find the real one instead of George simply pretending to be him, so they could get the $10K and the Rainbird fortune, but apart from dubious psychic nonsense, they're actually decent folk.) The child was taken by a (now long dead) chauffeur and given to a childless couple who died, along with "their" child, in a house fire in 1950. However, George is suspicious because the stone for the parents is much older than that for "Eddie Shoebridge" their child.
He suspects that Eddie faked his death, and in fact, Eddie/Arthur actually trapped his parents, and (with the help of thuggish friend Joe Maloney (played by Ed Lauter,
who joins Arthur's jewelry store assistant Edith Atwater, as actors we have seen in actual Rockford Files episodes), who owns a gas station near the titular Family Plot) burned them to death! He's a real stinker (although his kidnapping methods are strangely humane - the victim gets knocked out with ketamine injections before and after their time in the secret room, but are fed homecooked meals complete with bottles of wine, and returned unhurt). The thuggish Maloney looks up Arthur in the city (not an uncommon occurrence, it seems, as Maloney likes to hit him up for cash occasionally, given what he knows about him) and alerts him to George's investigations, and then, oddly enough, George and the kidnapping couple cross paths, as George is coming to see a bishop who might know where the boy ended up, at the same time as the couple kidnaps him! This coincidence unsettles Arthur enough that he sets Maloney to bump off George and Blanche, which cues a brakeless descent of (presumably) a High Sierra or other, complete with the Barbara Harris physical comedy previously alluded to.
Anyway things come to a head just as George has to do some cabbing, lest he get fired, and Barbara tracks down Arthur (whose name has been revealed by Maloney's (spoiler) widow), just as they're about to exchange the bishop for another gem. Blanche ends up in the secret room, but fortunately she left a message for George saying where she was going. Arthur intends to fake Blanche's suicide, meanwhile Karen Black is getting cold feet...
All in all, a very pleasant diversion, leisurely paced (Hitch's last 5 or so films were all over two hours long) but never boring diversion. According to Bruce Dern, Al Pacino (who would have been totally unsuitable) was offered his role, but asked for a million, and Hitchcock (who pronounced Pacino as "Packinow") said "Hitch doesn't pay a million dollars." Certainly paying anyone a million for this light soufflé would have been over the top, even though everyone in it is very good. Oh, and Blanche finally convinces skeptic George of her "true" psychic abilities...
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