At the top of the heap when it came to bestselling novels designed to kill a few hours on an airplane with plenty of sex and suspense, onetime sitcom scribe and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sidney Sheldon had a far less successful run with adaptations for the big screen. The much-touted 20th Century-Fox film of The Other Side of Midnight seriously underperformed in 1977, and Cannon's 1984 film of The Naked Face barely made a blip at all. In between was the most star-studded of them all by a long shot, Bloodline, which reunited director Terence Young with his Wait Until Dark star, Audrey Hepburn, and which was put into motion as soon as the typewriter stopped clacking on Sheldon's 1977 source novel. The production went through a number of potential screenwriters (including some extremely X-rated drafts that never would have flown with a major studio) before it ended up in the lap of writer Laird Koenig, best known for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, who did his best to tame the book's bizarre stew of pharmaceutical corporate intrigue, soapy domestic melodrama, whodunit, and sleazy snuff murders. Though it did adequately at the box office, response to the film was tepid with Sheldon in particular dissatisfied with the editing of the final cut. In what was fairly common practice at the time, the film was significantly recut and expanded to 141 minutes for its network TV airing, filling in a great deal of character detail, explaining the family background behind the company, altering the voice of a crime-fighting computer, and clarifying one key killing involving an elevator that was completely incomprehensible before.

Our globe-hopping story beings with the murder of Rolfe & Sons Pharmaceutical head Sam Roffe during a mountain climb, which sends all the board members scurrying to jockey for power when the company falls into the hands of Sam's daughter, Elizabeth (Hepburn). CEO Rhys Williams (Gazzara, who reunited with Hepburn just after this in They All Laughed and reportedly had a romance with her on this production) tries to guide Elizabeth through a viper's nest of suspects including Alec (Mason) and his younger, gambling-addicted wife Vivian (Phillips), Ivo (Sharif) who has both a wife, Simonetta (Papas), and mistress, Donatella (Mori), and racing champ Hélène (Schneider) and husband Charles (Ronet). Meanwhile in the vicinity, someone is shooting hotel room sex films that turn into snuff productions with the victims bearing red ribbons around their throats, and the German officer in charge, Inspector Max Hornung (Fröbe), realizes there might be a connection when attempts are made on Elizabeth's life.

The kind of sprawling oddity that mostly phased out in the '80s, Bloodline is going to be a tough one to parse out for many viewers with its elements of giallo and Krimi while pointing the way to Sheldon's more successful forays after this into made-for-TV miniseries like Rage of Angels. Anyone who hasn't read the book will find the theatrical cut often baffling with its huge array of characters thrown at the screen in the whirlwind opening, while the snuff subplot barely has any connection at all no matter how you watch or read the story. It's certainly strange seeing Hepburn in an R-rated film with multiple scenes involving topless, oiled-up women getting throttled to death along with implied brutality like a character's knees being nailed to the floor. The editorial issues also had a huge impact on the score by the legendary Ennio Morricone (hot off his Oscar-nominated work on another Paramount film, Days of Heaven), which was sliced up and moved around a great deal and had one track (the company tour) completely replaced by another composer.

It's a fascinating film though, especially if you can compare the familiar theatrical version with the TV cut which was impossible to see outside of a dupey, rare VHS recording until the two-disc 2024 Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome. This marked the film's first physical media release in the U.S. since the Paramount VHS, with a handful of European DVD releases in the interim at least offering a chance to see it in decent widescreen quality. The Blu-ray is a massive improvement though in every way with a pristine 4K scan from the original camera negative; the colors here look especially great with those reds, oranges, and blues lighting up the screen. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono track sounds excellent and features optional English SDH subtitles. The TV version on the second Blu-ray also looks extremely impressive (up there with the TV cut of another Paramount title, King Kong), with slightly tighter cropping on the edges. In this case it doesn't have any blackout points for commercials either and has all the extra footage, with the expected bits of network censorship as well (removing most of the snuff scenes and shots of nude dead bodies, as well as some minor profanity from Gazzara and Phillips). The theatrical cut also comes with an audio commentary by this writer and Troy Howarth, so no evaluation on that but you'll hopefully enjoy. Video extras include "Stupid German Money" (53m27s), a candid and very colorful interview with German assistant director (and current painter) Clemens Keiffenheim about some visual tricks to wrangle all the cast who couldn't be there at the same time as well as methods he later worked into his TV projects, and "Off-Road" (23m7s) with stunt driver François Doge chatting about his career, the luxurious shooting conditions, and the execution of some of the road shots including how to blow up a tire on cue. An HD scan of the theatrical trailer (which features no footage from the actual film) is also included.

Reviewed on December 1, 2024.