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Body
Double (1984)
 
Review
Brian De Palma returns to the erotic
thriller sub-genre after the successes of
Blow-Out
and Scarface.
But while his wonderful 1980 entry
Dressed
to Kill was playful and sexy, Body Double
ultimately goes from playful to absurd and from sexy to vulgar.
After a straightforward set-up, our out-of-luck protagonist Jake
Scully (Craig Wasson) is offered to sublet the amazing Chemosphere
house in the Hollywood Hills by acting colleague Sam (Gregg Henry).
There, he finds himself slowly turning into a voyeur and stalker,
looking through a telescope at a beautiful female neighbour whose
nude erotic dancing in her bedroom quickly has Jake more than
intrigued. The film reaches its zenith through a lengthy
Hitchcockesque segment in the middle part in which Jake shadows his
neighbour after suspecting that she’s being targeted by a suspicious
third party. This cat-and-mouse game is so obvious in its
inspiration that it almost turns parodic, especially as Jake’s
claustrophobia takes hold, but De Palma plays his instrument well
and the suspense is retained. That is until Body Double moves
into its third act, with Jake’s foray into the pornographic
industry. Enter Melanie Griffith as porn actress Holly Body, exit
suspense and eroticism, despite the fact that Griffith initially
seems well-cast and brings some zest to her role. The reason the
film ultimately doesn’t quite work, is that De Palma starts
dissociating himself from his material and lets his characters run
their own course. The ending is mechanical and cold, like a horror
movie without heart and soul.
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