Bloodline (1979)

When her father is murdered, a pharmaceutical 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:

murder of a nude woman | snuff film | heiress | attempted murder | detective | 

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Taglines:

The line between love and death is the bloodline.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

West Germany USA

Language:

English Italian French

Release Date:

29 June 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline

Filming Locations:

Burghausen, 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 (cut) (original)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Director Terence Young' and star Audrey Hepburn re-teamed after previously working on Wait Until Dark (1967). One reason actress Audrey Hepburn was cast in the lead role in this suspense film was because she had starred in two classic thrillers, Charade (1963) and Wait Until Dark (1967).

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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

Kate Erling: Remember, the cousins are just people.
Elizabeth Roffe: Mmm, it's just people that terrify me. Particularly cousins.
Kate Erling: I'll tell you what you do: You go in there, and you look them square in the eye, and you think of them sitting around the board table in their underwear.
Elizabeth Roffe: Trouble is most of them look absolutely gorgeous.

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Alternate Versions

According to Playboy magazine, some scenes of explicit sex were deleted from the US version of the film. It's not known if edits in other countries included this material.

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Connections

Featured in Sneak Previews: Prophecy/Bloodline/Moonraker/Dracula/Nightwing (1979)

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.