Brian De Palma’s sleazy, sexy, and visually intoxicating 1984 film Body Double is many things at once: A critique of Hollywood, a retort to film critics, an homage to Hitchcock, a lurid thriller with sex and violence ramped up to a nearly comical degree, and a self-reflexive essay on the auteur behind the camera. This was one of the first movies by De Palma that I had the chance to see, and it’s left a mark on me that will never completely vanish; there’s something so off the wall about the absurd plotting and its mixing of black comedy and suspense is also something that is very hard to pull off. Craig Wasson delivered one of the greatest deer-in-headlights performances ever, Stephen H. Burum put on a cinematography clinic, and the nerve of De Palma to present a pornographic music video at the film’s mid-point and as a main set-piece is a decision that I’ll always treasure. Melanie Griffith was impossibly hot in this film as a porn starlet with a specific set of on-camera rules, Deborah Shelton is unforgettable as the hapless victim that incites the plot, Dennis Franz appears in a very funny bit part as a C-movie horror director, and there’s so much Gregg Henry POWER all over this movie that it’s not even worth trying to put it into words. Pino Donaggio’s sinister and sultry musical score is the aesthetic icing on this perverted, bloody, and totally awesome slice of cinematic cake that skewered audience and critical expectations, essentially becoming a cult classic before a frame was ever shot and printed.
Review by Nick Clement
Body Double can be purchased on Blu Ray on Amazon HERE
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Body Double
Summary
Perverted, bloody, and totally awesome slice of cinematic cake that skewered audience and critical expectations, essentially becoming a cult classic before a frame was ever shot and printed.
