Thursday Movie Picks #230: Meet the Parents

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "Meet the Parents". If you've watched François Truffaut's Day For Night, you may recall that the movie-within-a-movie that Truffaut's director character was filming was "Je vous présent Pamela", a movie in which a young man brings his girlfriend home to meet the parents. Well, I used Day For Night earlier this year, and I wanted to do something different. But then life intruded and I got too busy to worry about whether or not I've repeated titles here. So instead I decided to go for a theme within a theme and if I've repeated anything, I apologize:

Family Plot (1976). Alfred Hitchcock's final film stars Barbara Harris as a phony psychic who learns about a wealthy woman looking for her long-lost son (which is how this one barely fits the theme), and she decides to get in on the action with the help of her taxi driver boyfriend Bruce Dern. However, the search gets dangerous as it brings them into contact with high-class kidnappers (William Devane and Karen Black) who have a taste for diamonds.

Marnie (1964). Sean Connery meets frigid kleptomaniac Tippi Hedren who also has a fear of the color red. The two marry, and Connery sets out to find just why his new wife has all the fears she does. The answer will be learned with he meets her mother (Louise Latham). Bruce Dern has a pivotal if brief part in the climax, although that's not part of the theme within a theme.

Psycho (1960). Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) talks about his mother to anybody who will visit his out-of-the-way motel. Various visitors (Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, and John Gavin) meet Norman's mother, although it's not quite the meeting they hoped for.