Bloodline (1979)

When her father is murdered, a cosmetics heiress becomes the next target of an unknown killer amid the international jet set.

Director:

Terence Young

Writers:

Laird Koenig, Sidney Sheldon (novel)

Stars:

Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, James Mason

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Audrey Hepburn	...	Elizabeth Roffe
Ben Gazzara	...	Rhys Williams
James Mason	...	Sir Alec Nichols
Claudia Mori	...	Donatella
Irene Papas	...	Simonetta Palazzi
Michelle Phillips	...	Vivian Nichols
Maurice Ronet	...	Charles Martin
Romy Schneider	...	Hélène Roffe-Martin
Omar Sharif	...	Ivo Palazzi
Beatrice Straight	...	Kate Erling
Gert Fröbe	...	Inspector Max Hornung
Wolfgang Preiss	...	Julius Prager
Marcel Bozzuffi	...	Man in Black
Pinkas Braun	...	Dr. Wal
Wulf Kessler	...	Young Sam Roffe

Storyline

Sam Roffe, president of a multi-national pharmaceutical corporation, is killed while mountain-climbing. It is first determined to be an accident, but Inspector Max Hormung later deduces that Roffe was murdered. Sam's daughter Elizabeth assumes control of the company, and while traveling through Europe she immediately becomes a target as well. Suspicion falls on the Roffe cousins, all of whom want to go public with the company and sell their stock at a huge profit. Since this would be against her father's wishes, Elizabeth rejects their advice and decides to keep the company within the family. As Inspector Hormung investigates the background of the cousins, more attempts are made on Elizabeth's life. Hoping to reveal the guilty party, Hormung is able to connect these attempts to a series of murders on prostitutes, which are recorded on snuff films.

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Plot Keywords:

snuff film | heiress | murder | naked killer | prostitution | 

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Taglines:

Family secrets run deadly.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA West Germany

Language:

English Italian French

Release Date:

29 June 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline

Filming Locations:

Bavaria Filmstudios, Geiselgasteig, Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany

Box Office

Budget:

$12,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bavaria Film, NF Geria III-Produktion München

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min 117 min (original release) (cut)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Audrey Hepburn's first, and only R-rated film in the United States.

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Goofs

As Elizabeth prepares for her first meeting at Roffe, we see the board of directors waiting for the meeting to start...but the shot is taken from a later scene and shows them with different outfits, hairstyles and seating assignments than when the meeting starts a moment later.

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Quotes

Elizabeth Roffe: [during a board meeting to consider letting the company go public] Who didn't agree?
Simonetta Palazzi: Sam, but it was not, uh...

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Connections

Referenced in Terence Young: Bond Vivant (1999)

User Reviews

Wait until lark

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.