Shawn Francis takes us on a journey into Brian De Palma's seedy world of BODY DOUBLE with his look at the directors 1984 film. The disc Shawn is looking at is Twilight Time's very limited blu-ray release. Having Seen a lot of De Palma's films Body Double is the one which I have yet to see. Check out Shawn's review after the jump....
Written By Shawn Francis
Any
cinema lover who’s a member of Generation X will have this movie
jammed somewhere in their psyche,
I’ve
never been a real big fan of Brian De Palma, The Fury (1978)
being the only one of his movies I really like, and still like
to this day. If there were a second one of his flicks I’m a fan of,
I’d say it’d be Dressed To Kill (1980), and like Body
Double I have very little recall of that flick as well. One of
the few things I do remember about Body Double is the
commercial for it and then catching it on cable sometime later. I was
fifteen when it hit theaters and can only assume 16 when I saw it on
cable.
Craig
Wasson (Ghost Story, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors)
plays a struggling actor, Jake Scully, who has just lost his latest
job playing a punk rock vampire when out of the blue, while doing a
scene in a coffin, he gets claustrophobia and freezes up right in
front of the camera. He’s sent home by the director (Dennis Franz),
but his streak of bad luck continues when he finds his girlfriend,
played by a pre-Re-animator, Barbara Crampton, whose total screen
time amounts to something like 15 seconds, cheating on him.
Out
of work and homeless now (that was her apartment), his streak of bad
luck finally abates for a while when he bumps into Sam Bouchard
(Gregg Henry), a fellow actor who’s house sitting for a friend. He
decides to give the job to Jake so he’ll have a place to stay for a
while.
His
new sudden steak of good luck continues when Sam introduces
him to the telescope and the woman, Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton),
who strips and fondles herself ever night in the house nearby. This
is like crack for Jake, the woman’s hot and he can watch without
getting caught. But his bad luck rears it’s ugly head again when he
spots someone else watching her, a someone else who eventually breaks
in and murders her with an industrial sized power drill. Jake
witnesses all this, some of it up close and personal when he tries to
prevent the murder by breaking into her house, but never makes
upstairs thanks to the woman’s vicious dog.
Jake
isn’t quite innocent here. By no means is he a killer, he’s just
got some very strong peeping/stalking urges which came out prior to
the murder as he spent a day following her around town, watching her
buy new underwear, stealing her old ones, eventually meeting her and
then finally and incredulously making out with her on the beach. A
scene that is sorely out of place in the movie. I would have bought
it had it been a fantasy scene.
Frankie
Goes To Hollywood and their song, “Relax,” is featured as Jake
ends up starring in this porn/music video. I can’t recall if this
was the first time I’d heard the song or not. Melanie Griffith’s
porn star character, Holly Body, doesn’t show up until late in the
film, but figures prominently in the plot. I seem to think this is
one of those before-they-were-famous roles for her, or the one that
got her famous.
Spoiler
Warning . . . I’m not too fond of the ending with the dog
saving the day and the cut to the final scene where we see Jake has
gotten his role back as that punk rock vampire, and for reasons I
can’t fathom Holly is there with him watching it being filmed. I do
remember this whole ending/epilogue now and not liking it even back
when I first saw it. I kept thinking, did they cut out part of the
movie, or something? Before that last scene they weren’t getting
along too well.
Body
Double hits blu-ray here in the States courtesy of Twilight Time. Its
high definition anamorphic 1.85:1 1080p aspect ratio is quite
stunning to look at and the English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio was crisp
and clear to listen to. Subtitles are in English only.
The
one new extra is an Isolated Score; other features are
direct port-overs from the special edition DVD that was released back
in 2006:
‘The
Seduction’ (16:42): Dennis Franz, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton,
Melanie Griffith and Brian De Palma are all interviewed about the
movie. Had no idea De Palma got the idea for it back when he was
working with a body double on Dressed To Kill (1980).
‘The Setup’
(16:54): Interviews De Palma, Gregg Henry and Deborah Shelton on
various topics (i.e. De Palma’s background, locations,
architecture, porn stars, Hitchcock, etc). Nice piece of trivia, the
dog they used was the same one in the movie White Dog (1982).
‘The
Mystery’ (12:14): Again De Palma, Griffith, and Henry are
interviewed. Topics range from Porn, to the movie’s score, to the
Holly Body character, to Melanie’s rising fame in the wake of this
movie. De Palma also dissects various scenes including the make-out
scene on the beach, the movies resolve and the following epilogue.
And he states audiences universally laughed at that make-out scene on
the beach.
‘The
Controversy’ (5:31) pretty much covers how audiences reacted
when it came out, which wasn’t good. De Palma goes on to state that
fans he bumps into bring up Scarface and Body Double
the most. The usual suspects are interviewed.
All
these featurettes are non-anamorphic and there isn’t one interview
with Craig Wasson in them. I’m surprised he wasn’t included.
For
those not aware Twilight Time is a boutique label that just so
happens to only produce their blues in limited quantities (3,000
units) and with a lot of their cult movies they generally sell out
during the pre-order period. As of this review Body Double is
now out of print.
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