Bloodline

It seems best to consider Richard Lester's lovely "Robin and Marian" Audrey Hepburn's swansong."Bloodline " is the most distressingly mediocre movie she ever made.

Terence Young had already directed the actress in the excellent thriller "wait until dark" ,a film which compares favorably with Hitchcock's "rear window" .So it was only natural that they teamed up again .

The screenplay is a mess,a disaster ,and it's more complicated than complex.Full of plot holes,of implausibilities (the fabulously rich heiress ,after several murder attempts does not even think of hiring a bodyguard!),and see how Young even copies himself for the last sequence where Hepburn is alone in the house ,of course in the dark,like in the 1967 highly superior effort.

An absurd international cast gives the coup de grâce to the movie: Americans (Ben Gazzara),English (James Mason),Germans (Romy Schneider,Gert Froebe),French (Maurice Ronet) ,Greeks (Irene Pappas),Egyptians (Omar Sharif).All are given lousy parts .They are supposed to be the suspects of a whodunit.

When "Bloodline" was released in 1979, a major magazine review pointed out that in the course of the story, ostensibly for failure to pay a gambling debt, a character's knees are nailed to the floor. The critic then went on to say, `This is what Paramount Pictures is going to have to do to get audiences to sit through this picture.' There aren't enough negative things to say about this abomination of a movie. The meandering, incoherent story is hampered at every turn by ludicrously bad production values. The direction, the inept blocking of the scenes, the lighting, the sets – in every case conspires to make the results look cheap and hollow. The movie is really a miracle of dreadfulness. The following is one of thousand small crimes against cinema throughout the picture: There is an explosion in the street. This is conveyed by a flash of light on the actors in the scene and a sound effect. The next shot, meant to be the view of the street from the window, is a still photograph beneath which someone is apparently waving a lit piece of paper. Just before the cut from this scene, the photograph actually starts to buckle from the heat of the flame. And the filmmakers left this in the film! The real crime against cinema is the fact that the name of Audrey Hepburn is associated with this repugnant film, a monstrosity so putrid, one wishes every single copy of it would magically disappear.

Very disappointing.

Nobody expects film based on Sidney Sheldon's book to be come art-house masterpiece but at least it could be made into enjoyable crime movie like Death on Nile. Well it was not. Despite the rather famous director (Young is not Fellini of course but most his previous films were enjoyable eye-feasts; would that be a spy adventure (2 Bond movies), eurowestern (Red Sun) or costume drama (Mayerling)) and all-star cast the film is very weak.

The plot is inconsistent and empty the idea to equip the Agatha Christy-like crime puzzle with subplots from other genres may seem not bad idea but it doesn't work at all

Subplot 1- (WWII -Jewish Tragedy with absolutely aimless trip to Poland) and Subplot 2 (French one - Schneider/Ronet story ) seem to be taken from the absolutely different film as well as the type-cast Shariff's line

Actually this all-star cast is the only reason to watch it, but its is painful to watch so much talent wasted. If Hupbern, Gazarra and Mason are at least is doing something during the boringly unveiling plot, the others are just fitting the empty space. especially annoying to see superb dramatic actresses like Papas and Schneider wasting their talent in this turkey.

Regarding "Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline", I'd like to correspond to Paramount and inquire why not re-edit the film (remaster), and create a SPECIAL EDITION, maybe with deleted scenes (with Ursula Buchfellner and Eleonore Melzer, which were cut), and commentary. I read parts of the book, and like the book, but the movie, when I watched it in the theater back in 1979, it made no sense, and was confusing, particularly with the Snuff films. The book lets you know WHY these films are created, as with the movie, you wonder why?! OR: remake the movie the way the book is! Great cast, but overall, movie STINKS! Anyway, anybody know the address to write to Sidney Sheldon so I can ask him?! Thank you.

Audrey Hepburn returned to Hollywood in the late 1970s to much fanfare...but once her return movie, "Robin and Marian", was finished, Hollywood didn't know what to do with her. Throwing money her way to get the Audrey Hepburn name on a film product seemed to be the industry's answer, and Hepburn collected a $1,000,000 paycheck (plus profits, though I doubt there were any) for this adaptation of Sidney Sheldon's bestselling novel. It all must have looked good expense-wise, but one has to wonder if she even read the script. It's a pallid whodunit: pharmaceutical titan is killed in a mountain-climbing accident; his daughter, though left out of the industry-loop for most of her life, decides not to sell out and run the empire herself. This is disconcerting to her greedy relatives on the board of directors, who had hoped to reap profits in their boss's absence. After a police inspector deduces the billionaire was actually murdered, and the daughter's brakes go out on a winding mountain road, it becomes clear to her there's a fox in the henhouse. Boring mystery is 'spiced up' with a snuff-film subplot involving the killer, a bald, naked strangler and some unfortunate prostitutes (and which, like many of the story threads, is never resolved; this movie doesn't end, it just stops). Hepburn is lovingly lighted and, though she's rail-thin, is the sole bright spot in this catastrophe. Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Omar Sharif, Gert Fröbe, Romy Schneider, Irene Papas and Beatrice Straight are all wasted. Terence Young directed, bringing absolutely no personality to the job. Talented writer Laird Koenig did the adaptation, which is humorless and without a shred of suspense. The finale seems to be an homage to Hepburn's classic "Charade", but here the staging is so static and clumsy it doesn't come off. Rightfully regarded as one of the worst films of Hepburn's career. * from ****