Body Double - ***1/2
Now Playing: (1984, Brian DePalma) [seen on DVD]
I find it a little odd that DePalma's 1976 film OBSESSION is that one everyone thinks of as his VERTIGO homage (it's always felt more like Sirk to me) when it seems pretty obvious that VERTIGO was the major structural inspiration for this later film. Which is certainly not to DePalma's detriment as a filmmaker- if Tarantino can wear his inspirations on his sleeve, then DePalma's entitled as well, just as long as the film works on its own merits as well, which BODY DOUBLE most definitely does. The film stars Craig Wasson as Jack, a struggling actor shacking up in the extravagant home of an actor friend, who quickly becomes a rabid voyeur (perhaps the scent of REAR WINDOW threw critics off the VERTIGO scent) and watches his sexy neighbor through a telescope. It all goes wrong, naturally, when the neighbor is brutally murdered, and Jack comes to believe that he was set up as an unreliable witness, and as a result tries to get to the bottom of the crime he couldn't prevent. DePalma being DePalma, many of the clues are pretty obvious, to the point where the artificial aspects of the story supply a pleasure of their own, in particular the obvious makeup job on the villain. In fact, it's this artificiality that tips DePalma's hand as to his ideas about voyeurism in the world of the film- that everyone here either wants to watch or to be watched- and his setting the film in Hollywood underlines this idea, with his protagonist playing both roles at various tims in the film. But for those not interested in subtext, the film also works as a thriller largely because of DePalma's knack for visual storytelling, which places us squarely in the shoes of his hero (whose voice becomes more and more Jimmy Stewart-like as the film progresses), and the film's best sequence is its most extended homage to VERTIGO in which Jack follows his comely neighbor, with the added twist that she's also being followed by a sinister man, and Jack is torn between keeping his distance from her and protecting her from the menacing stalker. All in all, this is loads of fun (and similar enough to FEMME FATALE that I was second-guessing my original pan of the film), and filled with awesome DePalma moments, including an out-of-nowhere porn scene set to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and a gloriously over-the-top climactic showdown.