Lighthearted suspense film about a phony psychic/con artist and her taxi driver/private investigator boyfriend who encounter a pair of serial kidnappers while trailing a missing heir in California.



The trickster Madam Blanche Tyler lures the elder millionaire Julia Rainbird that believes she is a spiritualist. After a séance, she discovers that Julia is tormented by her past, when she forced her sister and single mother Harriet to deliver her baby for adoption to avoid a family scandal. Julia promises the small fortune of ten thousand-dollar to Blanche if she finds her nephew and heir of her fortune using her phony powers. Blanche asks her boyfriend George Lumley, who is an unemployed actor working as cab driver, to investigate the whereabouts of Julia's nephew. Meanwhile, the greedy jeweler and collector Arthur Adamson kidnaps wealthy people with his girlfriend Fran to increase his collection of diamonds with the ransom. When George concludes that Arthur Adamson might be the heir of Julia Rainbird, the reckless Blanche gets in trouble with the kidnappers.
- Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil




Wealthy and aged Julia Rainbird wants to bequeath her vast fortune to her only presumed living heir, her illegitimate nephew, who was given away as a baby and as such whose whereabouts and identity she does not know. Rather than go to a private investigator to locate him, a P.I. who would use public means to do his work, Julia instead enlists the more discreet services of her psychic, Madame Blanche, to locate her nephew, with a payment of $10,000 upon delivery. What Julia is unaware of is that Madame Blanche - really Blanche Tyler - is a charlatan, who uses basic information of her targets often uncovered by her actor/taxi driving boyfriend, George Lumley, to perpetrate the scam. Blanche and George feel this $10,000 is their meal ticket, despite having only scant leads as to the identity and whereabouts of the nephew. Their initial leads indicate that the nephew may in fact be dead... or perhaps not. In reality, the nephew is Arthur Adamson, a jeweler, who, along with his secret associate/girlfriend Fran, have amassed their own small fortune through the theft of gems, largely through kidnapping the gem owners, with the said gems being the ransom paid. Arthur grew up as Edward Shoebridge, the adopted son of friends of the Rainbird's chauffeur. Along with another associate, Edward killed his parents in a house fire twenty-five years ago, and faked his own death in the process, although he had never been declared legally dead since there was no conclusive evidence of such. He assumed his current identity after the fire. When Arthur learns that these strangers, George and Blanche, are trying to locate Edward Shoebridge but not knowing the reason, Arthur and Fran believe it's because of their latest kidnapping, and thus decide they need to do whatever, including murder, to keep George and Blanche from finding "Eddie".
- Written by Huggo




Fake medium Madam Blanche and her taxi driver boyfriend George make a living by scamming people with her phony powers. They are hired by an aging widow, Julia Rainbird, to find her nephew who was given away for adoption many years earlier following a family scandal. Meanwhile, an extremely clever couple, diamond merchant Arthur Adamson and his attractive girlfriend Fran, are behind a series of kidnappings of various VIPs in the San Francisco area. The two couples paths soon cross and chaos results in Hitchcock's last film.
- Written by Col Needham




Spiritualist Blanche Tyler is asked to locate a missing heir, whom she pursues with her cab driver boyfriend Geroge Lumley, an unemployed actor. The man they seek, Arthur Adamson, is posing as a legitimate jeweler while kidnapping wealthy people for a ransom in diamonds. He is assisted by his girlfriend, Fran.
- Written by filmfactsman





SYNOPSIS

The story involves a fake psychic, Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris), and her con artist taxi driver boyfriend, George Lumley (Bruce Dern), who attempt to locate the nephew of a wealthy and guilt-ridden old woman, Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt). Julia, one of Blanche's clients, was responsible for her now-deceased sister giving up a boy for adoption years earlier and now wants to make him her heir. She will pay Blanche $10,000 if he is found.

However, the nephew and prospective heir is now a successful jeweler in San Francisco known as Arthur Adamson (Williams Devane), who has a secret and lurid past, having apparently murdered his adoptive parents and faked his own death. With his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black), he has successfully kidnapped an assortment of millionaires and dignitaries, returning them when the ransom, a valuable gemstone, has been delivered, which they hide in their chandelier.

Eventually the paths of these two couples cross when Adamson learns that Blanche and George are pursuing him, and he suspects the worst, putting their lives in danger. When George begins to research the history of the missing nephew, he learns about the original name of Adamson. In the birth and death register, the audience can see the silhouetted shadow of the director of the film, Alfred Hitchcock, in one of his renown cameos. There, George learns that the real name was Edward Shoebridge and he follows the leads to a gas station owner named Moloney (Ed Lauter) who helped Adamson fake his death and covered it up. Adamson then sends Moloney to kill both Blanche and George by pretending that he knows information about the missing nephew and agrees to meet at a remote restaurant in the mountains. Moloney attempts to sabotage the brakes on George and Blanche's car while they wait at the restaurant for Moloney to show up. When he doesn't, they leave and find themselves trapped in their car as it skids town the sloping mountain road. But they manage to survive. Failing this, Moloney attemps to run them down on the road, only to have his own car go over a cliff and crash... killing him.

George learns from Moloney's wife about his part in the Edward Shoobridge murder/coverup and learns the alias of Arthur Adamson. While George has to take a shift at driving his taxi, Blanche decides to look for Adamson on her own. Finally tracking down Adamson to the jewelry store which he owns, she goes over to his house where he and Fran are in the process of delivering back another kidnap victim, a wealthy Catholic bishop named Wood (William Prince), when they are about to pick up their latest ransom.

Adamson and Fran trap Blanche in the basement garage of their house when she comes to tell them the good news about the Rainbird inheritance. Seeing that Adamson is a criminal responsible for the kidnappings in the area, Blanche attempts to flee, but they capture her and drug her, and lock her in their secret room in the basement where they keep their captives.

A little later, George, learning about Blanche's discovery, heads over to the Adamson's house and after finding nobody home, he notices Blanche's car outside. George sneaks into the house through a basement window. When Adamson and Fran return after collecting another diamond for this latest Bishop Wood ransom, George hides and follows them down into the basement's secret room where he overhears them plotting to kill Blanche. George and Blanche manage to turn the tables on the other couple and succeed in locking them in their own secret room.

Afterwards, Blanche is elated when she thinks about how much the reward will be for catching these thieves, until George points out how much more it will be if they could also locate the stolen diamonds. Suddenly, Blanche seems to go into a trance and makes her way to the crystal chandelier on which the diamonds are hanging. George congratulates Blanche for really being a psychic. As George picks up a phone to call the police, Blanche smiles and winks at the camera.