The Last Embrace (1979)

Revisiting Hitchcock homage movies is not always the happy experience that can be found with director Brian de Palma.  This Jonathan Demme film (he subsequently made far more interesting ones) is very definitely sub-Hitchcock.  Roy Scheider plays a FBI (or CIA) agent who tries to return to his work after spending some time in a sanitarium occasioned by the murder of his wife on his last job.  He seems completely paranoid and is convinced that someone is trying to kill him -- and someone is, but not his puppetmaster nor his grudgy brother-in-law as we are meant to think.  The first half of the film is largely a collection of red herrings, rather than McGuffins.  The real mystery is about why someone has sent him a death threat written in Hebrew and who is trying to punish the descendents of early 20th Century Jewish whoremasters in New York City.  The unveiling of the real culprit comes as not much of a surprise nor was the denouement at Niagara Falls much of a tour de fource.