lasttimeisaw While Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE taps adeptly into its hetero-normative erotic thrust, in post-mortem, its central plot fits right into a cracking-a-nut-with-a-sledgehammer case that if the nefarious perpetrator simply needs an eye-witness for his purported burglary-turned-murder skulduggery, he really wouldn't have concocted such an involute set-up to pull the wool over the eyes of our protagonist, Jack Scully (Wasson), a struggling actor in Hollywood afflicted by claustrophobia. So what De Palma blatantly exploits down pat is the libidinous bent and voyeuristic tantalization mostly derived from the straight male demography, plundering Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO no end, BODY DOUBLE's misbegotten plot is at first a thoroughgoing manifestation of female objectification through man's wish-fulfillment, as if in real world, a luscious woman really enjoys putting on such a show for no one's gratification but herself, also the camp choice from a telephone cord to an electric drill in terms of the murder weapon in the archly designed gore climax does writ large a wicked sign of its times and De Palma's thinly-veiled mean-spiritness. Jack Scully is hare-brained enough to not suspect something bizarre is afoot right from the start, but the same can be referred to the culprit, so inimitable is the seductive routine that he must hire the porn star who invents it to do the same performance, and thanks to the slipshod prosthetics wearing by the ghastly-looking "Indian", any sharp-eyed spectator can more or less guess who is underneath that halfway through the journey, ergo, thrill is drained by half. Having said that, Melanie Griffith does hold court in her breakthrough performance as the titular double, who only makes her appearance in the second half but charmingly weds immaculate allure with an air of nonchalance in her trademark cooing articulation, the paradigm of a woman in the eyes of her opposite sex beholder. Ultimately, the takeaway of the film is exclusively ocular apart from Griffith's grand entrance, the strikingly futuristic dwelling Chemosphere and a vampy music video of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's RELAX are here to stay, but as for De Palma's facility, that Dutch-angle tunnel-vision might be any viewer's best shot.

Uriah43 After being booted from a film due to his being claustrophobic, "Jake Scully" (Craig Wasson) goes back to the apartment he shares with his girlfriend "Carol" (Barbara Crampton) and discovers her in bed with another man. This results in him moving out and at the suggestion of a recent acquaintance named "Sam Bouchard" (Gregg Henry) he is offered the opportunity to temporarily reside in a luxurious high rise apartment while Sam is out of town on business. After quickly showing him the place, Sam then beckons him to a telescope he has pointed to another apartment window where an extremely beautiful woman named "Gloria Revelle" (Deborah Shelton) performs a sexy striptease at the same time every night. Naturally, being a red-blooded male he watches her the next night as well and it's during this time that he notices a strange person stalking her and immediately becomes convinced that she is in danger. So in an attempt to protect her he begins to follow her as well--and things take a turn for the worse immediately afterward. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an interesting film which greatly benefited from the presence of two attractive actresses in Melanie Griffith (as the porn star "Holly Body") and the aforementioned Deborah Shelton. Likewise, it also took several strange twists and turns which served to maintain the mystery throughout most of the film as well. That said, I enjoyed this particular movie and have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Martin Bradley One of Brian De Palma's masterpieces and yet one that is grossly underrated. It's amazing how, even in this day and age, (see "The Neon Deomn"), critics still tend to judge films on content rather than on style or technique and "Body Double" is style personified. He was still paying homage to Hitchcock, (in this case both "Rear Window" and "Vertigo") and he still tended to use actors who were somewhat limited in their abilities, (the exception being the extraordinary Melanie Griffith who won the National Society of Film Critics Best Supporting Actress prize), but the set pieces are sublime and the suspense sequences are beautifully handled. Essential.

gridoon2018 "Body Double"'s plot is transparent and derivative - it's like a slick, R-rated update of "Vertigo" (although there is at least one crucial difference: here, the hero falls obsessively in love with the real thing, not the double; and I have to say I agree with his choice, Deborah Shelton is hotter than Melanie Griffith), with some "Rear Window" thrown in, and a (mostly satirical) side trip to the pornographic industry. But if you surrender yourself at the hands of Brian De Palma, his direction is so fantastic, and so assured, that the film becomes an entertaining, at times even exhilarating, experience. It's erotic, (briefly) violent, surprisingly funny, and occasionally positively surreal. Perhaps one of the key thrillers of the 1980s. *** out of 4.