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Global thing: Body Double (1984)



 
01:19
Videos (1)
created on: 6/10/2016
by: DOLF77 (27349)
Globalises the following things :
S
T
S
T
 
 

Movies properties

Displayed (non textual) :
- :
Displayed (written) info :
Brian DePalma

BODY
DOUBLE
Movie Genre :
Thriller
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Color & sound :
Color
Originally released :
1984
Language - Spoken :
English
Rating :
MPAA (US) R – Restricted
Running time :
110
Movie credits (on artwork) :
Actor : Craig Wasson
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Actor : Gregg Henry
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Costume Design By : Gloria Gresham
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Directed By : Brian De Palma
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Director Of Photography : Stephen H. Burum
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Editor : Gerald B. Greenberg [Jerry Greenberg]
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Music By : Pino Donaggio
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Producer : Brian De Palma
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Production Design By : Ida Random
This endpoint is new to the database, please check he (it) is not in with a similar endpoint name association (and use the ENA function if necessary).
Screenplay By : Brian De Palma
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Screenplay By : Robert J. Avrech
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Story By : Brian De Palma
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Copyright Holder [©1989] : Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Presented By : Columbia Pictures
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
End credits (not on artwork) :
Actor : Deborah Shelton
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Actor : Dennis Franz
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Actor : Guy Boyd
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Actor [Uncredited] : Steven Bauer
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Art Director [Uncredited] : William A. Elliott
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Casting By : Jane Jenkins
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Casting By : Janet Hirshenson
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Editor : Bill Pankow
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Executive Producer : Howard Gottfried
This endpoint is new to the database, please check he (it) is not in with a similar endpoint name association (and use the ENA function if necessary).
Set Decoration By : Cloudia Rebar [Cloudia]
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Description (by producer & GT in English only) :
Brian De Palma invites you to witness a seduction...a mystery... a murder. It's Body Double a spine-tingling look at voyeurism and sexuality from the modern master of suspense. Jake Scully (Craig Wasson), an unemployed actor, is asked to house-sit at a luxurious hillside apartment. As a bonus, the home offers Jake a telescopic peek into the bedroom of Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton), who performs an arousing striptease. When Jake discovers another man is also spying on Gloria, he begins an obsessive surveillance of her. Soon a grisly murder leads him into the world of X-rated films where he meets sexy porn queen Holly Body (Melanie Griffith), who is a key to the crime. De Palma has created a gripping adult thriller of eroticism and horror!
Comments & Reviews :

Posted by CinemasFringes (219) on maart 09, 2017
Craig Wasson plays Jake Scully, a struggling Hollywood actor whose role in a tacky vampire flick is hampered by claustrophobia brought on by a childhood trauma. To make matters worse, when he gets home he walks in on his girlfriend having sex with another man. The next day he learns that Rubin (Dennis Franz), the director of the film he was appearing in, is fed up with his inability to play the part and has fired him. He's now without a job and without a place to stay.

He goes to acting class and through a session that forces him to relive his childhood trauma. Sam (Gregg Henry) witnesses his panic attack and protests to the teacher for putting him through it. The pair quit the class together, and Sam suddenly makes an incredible accommodation offer to him: to housesit a flying-saucer shaped condo overlooking the Hollywood hills for a rich friend and "make sure he keeps the plants watered". Sam also reveals that a telescope in the living room provides a perfect view of a mysterious woman who dances half-naked every single night in her house downhill from them.

The following night Jake decides to sneak another peak of this woman. This time however he sees a trilby-hatted man with her, who roughs her up and then leaves. The night after that, when she performs her dance again he spots her being watched by a satellite dish repair man who looks like a particularly ugly Native American. When the sun comes back up he is driving around the streets nearby when he sees her being pursued by her ugly (other) stalker. He decides to follow them.

Who is this mysterious woman? Why does the perform this dance each night? Who is following her and what do they want?

It's the general critical consensus that Brian De Palma is a director who has always aspired to be the successor to Alfred Hitchcock, and sometimes comes close to being as great. The trouble is that his flirtations with brilliance manifest more in individual setpieces than in whole movies. Such is the case in Body Double - De Palma's homage to Vertigo, Rear Window and even a slight dash of Frenzy.

The film’s midsection involving Jake Scully following the mysterious woman he is obsessed with while also observing her pursuit by the mysterious Native American is a wonderfully orchestrated mini-movie. The scenes with the three main players scoping each other out (in an open air shopping mall and a series of stepped Venice Beach front apartments) are frequently shot from a bird’s eye perspective, giving the feel of an elaborate chess game playing out. DePalma throws something new into the mix at every turn, be it plentiful roving camerawork, a couple of dramatic episodes of Scully’s claustrophobia, our “hero” nearly being arrested for stalking and a hint (a la Dressed To Kill) that the woman, fully aware of his pursuit, is subtly flirting with him (by leaving a gold bag with a pair of knickers in it rather conveniently placed so it pops conspicuously out of the top of a full waste bin). It all reaches a false (pun intended) climax with Scully and the woman steamily making out while the camera rotates 360 around them, the backdrop an obvious but vivid matte painting as if to deliberately play up the fantasy aspects of the moment.

The real climax comes soon after - a murderous penetration with a massive drill and its accompanying ejaculatory squirts of blood. Jerry Greenberg’s editing is masterful and tight, making it seem that the viewer has seen more than what has actually been displayed onscreen.

Unfortunately the film’s last 40 minutes where the details of the plot are finally pulled together is less good. There are far too many conveniences and contrivances for it to seem convincing, and the feel turns a lot more towards lengthy stretches of dialogue whereas the preceding 40 or so relied so singularly on camerawork and movement. There is also a moment when it turns into a gratuitous Frankie Goes To Hollywood video for some reason. This is leaving aside the fact that the whole thing is a male fantasy about unfettered obsession being not only reciprocated but also an act of heroism.

Mind you, there are hints that the bulk of the film might have taken place in Jake’s imagination. The unreality of the erotic beach scene, the blatantly false disguise the killer wears and the ending where one specific detail is put to rights in a way that just wouldn’t be at all plausible if all that preceded it were reality. There’s an earlier hint too when we seem to get a scene on a palm tree-strewn beach lit in gold-tinged sunlight, only for it to be a fake backdrop that is carted away by a pair of handlers. De Palma, are you playing with us?

It’s the kind of stuff that, along with its wonderfully audacious midsection, make it something of an entertainingly bonkers cult favourite, even with its obvious structural issues when viewed as a straight-on thriller.

Rating:

6,33

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Item number : 13064

Submitted by : DOLF77 (27349)
on : 06/10/2016
Refined by : bob (9218)
Last updated on: 19/02/2017