Body Double is like drinking De Palma straight from the tap.
This was 1984, the full shoulder-chipped Brian De Palma-as-provocateur era. He starts with the Rear Window setup of an isolated man, a telescope, a woman across the way – and then powders it with even more Hitchcockian glitter.
The mall scene alone is enough for a semester’s worth of film class. There’s no dialogue, just some deft camera choreography and Pino Donaggio’s score dragging you deeper down the spiral. The whole plot is basically a delivery system for camera movement, blocking, rear projection, and split diopters. The film plays like a technical exercise staged with skin flick chic.
And as much as I like Craig Wasson, he lets the scenery chew him here, he’s directionless and passive, which absolutely works and it’s kind of his raison d’être as our disassociated stand-in.
The movie famously both comments on voyeurism, and unashamedly dabbles in it. And in typical DePalma fashion, there’s no real moral clarity at play, but you get plenty of technical bravado and escalating shock value. You know the drill.
It caught hell when it came out. Critics called it misogynist, mean-spirited, incoherent. And maybe it is. But it’s all done exactly on purpose. The craftsmanship is precise, and the sleaze is deliberate. Every frame is framed.
But that’s De Palma for ya. You never know if he’s slumming it or showing off.
The movie was clearly looking for trouble. -Pop