HotToastyRag Hooray, it's another Wait Until Dark! Audrey Hepburn stars in another thriller, where three men are out to get her, and she has to unsuspectingly save herself and her fortune. This one isn't as good, though, but if you like to see an older Audrey defending herself, you can put the kids to bed and watch this one. A recurrent side plot of the film is the dirty business-no pun intended-of making snuff films. If you don't know what those are, don't research them and don't rent this movie.Audrey's mogul dad dies at the start of the movie, and she finds herself a target because of her stock in the corporation. Ben Gazzara, James Mason, and Omar Sharif all stand to gain if she relinquishes her inheritance. Which one is behind the threats? Well, with two veteran villains among the suspects, it's a toss-up between Ben and James, so you'll be on the edge of your seat until the end.Omar Sharif serves at the much-needed comic relief, believe it or not, and his scenes were my favorites in the movie. He has three daughters with his wife, and three sons with his mistress, and while he juggles both families, his mistress constantly threatens to expose his second to his first. Unless you like seeing how everyone aged, though, you might want to just rent movies where they're younger. The few funny scenes Omar has doesn't really make the entire movie worth it.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to nudity, violence, and graphic sex scenes, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

dbdumonteil 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.

VincentElgar Following the release of Wait Until Dark (1967) and the break-up of her marriage to Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn retired from the screen. By the mid 1970s her subsequent marriage, to Rome-based psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, had become strained and this is often cited as one of the reasons for her decision to resume her acting career. It may also account for the fact that her choice of material was so ill-judged.Bloodline (1979) was Hepburn's second 'comeback' movie and appeared three years after the underrated 'Robin and Marian'. Based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon it can be compared in many ways to The Adventurers (1970). Both are based on trashy bestsellers, both feature journeyman multi-national casts, both are directed by James Bond series veterans and both benefit from the services of first-rate cinematographers – in Bloodline's case Freddie Young, David Lean's regular cameraman, who previously worked with his namesake Terence on You Only Live Twice. (Trivia note: Sean Ferrer, Hepburn's eldest son, would later work as an assistant director on Terence Young's Korean War epic 'Inchon'). Both movies were poorly received and both have enduringly awful critical reputations.So is Bloodline that bad? Well, it isn't very good – but bear in mind that it dates from an era when the notion of 'guilty pleasures' was unknown. The movie opens fairly well with the murder of pharmaceutical magnate Sam Roffe and the inheritance by his daughter Elizabeth (Hepburn) of his Zurich-based empire. We are then introduced to Elizabeth's cousins (Sharif, Schneider, Mason) all of whom, we later find out, have reasons for wanting her dead. So far so good – but unfortunately things don't stay that way for long. There is a long, redundant (and excruciatingly poorly acted) sequence detailing the birth of the Roffe empire which really drags things down. Scenes become increasingly disjointed – at one point, following the murder of one of the company's research scientists, Hepburn yells "I want them out!", a statement which makes no sense whatsoever unless you've read the book, in which case you'll know she's referring to the security personnel who've failed to protect the murdered man. Bloodline bears all the signs of heavy cutting, indeed one source (Leonard Maltin) says that 40 minutes were added to the movie's first network showing. Even if this footage were to be restored for a DVD release, it is doubtful given the quality of that which remains, that Bloodline would suddenly turn into a masterpiece.For a movie with a fairly reasonable budget (Hepburn's Givenchy-designed wardrobe reportedly cost $100,000, and she does look great) it looks remarkably shoddy in places (witness the back projection during the Le Mans sequence) and with a couple of exceptions (Hepburn – and Schneider, who is delicious as a Contessa de Sade-type) the performances are strictly one-dimensional. Ennio Morricone's score is effective, especially during the striking main title sequence, but is disappointingly uneven overall.Lovers of eurotrash will lap Bloodline up, but even they may find it a bit heavy going. Recommended with strong reservations – 5/10.

paulmarthinessen-1 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.