Kidnapped (1971 film) Kidnapped (1971 film) Kidnapped is a 1971 British adventure film, directed by Delbert Mann and starring Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Jack Hawkins and Donald Pleasence, as well as a number of well-known British character actors. The film is based on the novel "Kidnapped" and the first half of the sequel "Catriona" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Young David Balfour arrives at a bleak Scottish house, the House of Shaws, to claim his inheritance after his father. The house and land have been under the custodianship of his father's brother, Ebeneezer Balfour, but on reaching adulthood, the land and property become David's.
Robert Louis Stevenson brothers (Robert's uncles) Alan and David were in the same field. Even Thomas's maternal grandfather Thomas Smith had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family were gentry, tracing their lineage back to Alexander Balfour who had held the lands of Inchyra in Fife in the fifteenth century. His mother's father Lewis Balfour (1777–1860) was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and her siblings included physician George William Balfour and marine engineer James Balfour. Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder what I inherited