Bloodline * (1979, Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Irene Papas, Romy Schneider, Omar Sharif, Gert Fröbe) – Classic Movie Review 7779

Audrey Hepburn was lured back to the screen after a three-year gap following Robin and Marian  1976) for director Terence Young’s thoroughly disappointing 1979 film version of Sidney Sheldon’s best-selling thriller Bloodline.

She plays Elizabeth Roffe, the daughter of a murdered pharmaceutical tycoon, who may be the killer’s next victim. The top international all-star cast of Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Irene Papas, Romy Schneider, Omar Sharif, Gert Fröbe, Beatrice Straight, Maurice Ronet, Wolfgang Preiss, Pinkas Braun, Michelle Phillips and Marcel Bozzuffi supports loyally, but it is really a lost cause, and experienced director Young does not really seem to know what to do to rescue it.

The main fault must be with the creaky, unconvincing screenplay. Writer Laird Koenig adapts Sidney Sheldon’s novel.

Sadly, it is one of only five films that Hepburn made in her last 26 years before her tragic death from appendiceal cancer, way too early, in 1993, aged 63. She followed it with They All Laughed (1981), the TV Movie Love Among Thieves (1987) and Always (1989).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7779

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