Body Double
It’s fascinating how two pretty great filmmakers both start from a similar place- paying tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”- and both made trashy variations on the form. In 1992, we got Paul Verhoeven’s more direct visual references in “Basic Instinct.” Eight years before, Brian De Palma did his most direct variation on Hitchcock’s masterpiece in “Body Double.” Both of them take the basic premise of Hitch’s film into explicitly erotic territory; that both succeed on the other side is a credit to how delightful they are at their own perviness, and how exemplary their respective craft is.
De Palma’s film begins with an actor (Jake, played by Craig Wasson) who’s claustrophobic. He’s on the set of a low-budget vampire movie, and he is doing a scene in a coffin, and freezes up. He is dismissed from the set, goes home, and finds his girlfriend (Barbara Crampton) in bed with another man. Dejected, he goes to a workshop where he meets Sam (Gregg Henry), who may be the best friend he never expected. He’s able to set up Jake with an apartment (temporarily) with a gorgeous woman who, every night, does a crazy striptease in front of the window. He begins to follow her, and sure enough, Jake is caught in a trap of murder and different identities, much like Scottie in “Vertigo.”
Jake is not as affable a lead as Jimmy Stewart’s “Vertigo” character is, so when he starts to follow Gloria (Deborah Shelton), it’s not quite as shocking to see his character doing it. (And not being a former cop like Scottie, it’s also not surprising how ridiculously awful he is at tailing her from a distance.) And yet, De Palma draws us in all the same, because he understands the voyeurism at the heart of cinema; we are watching lives not our own pass before our eyes, and he uses the language of film to draw us into those lives. Yes, the cinematography by Stephen H. Burum is peak ’80s cheese aesthetic, and the score by Pino Donaggio hits some similar moods as Bernard Herrmann’s iconic work in “Vertigo,” but in a distinctly ’80s way. De Palma was at his most unhinged at this time, and God bless him.
After Gloria’s “murder” (I know it’s a 40-year-old movie, but I’m trying not to spoil everything), Jake sees something that makes him question everything he’d seen before, leading him to the ’80s LA adult film scene, and the proximity of adult star Holly Body. Originally, De Palma wanted an actual porn star for the role, but he went with Melanie Griffith, and it’s one of her early roles, and she is sensational as a woman who knows more than she’s letting on. At this point, we also get a full performance of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” while on set with Holly. During this point, we also see how De Palma’s story falls into place. While it’s not sure to Scottie until late in “Vertigo,” Jake seems to figure it out earlier, maybe not entirely, but enough to where he goes to Holly, putting her is even more peril. From there, “Body Double” moves to the beat of its own drummer and is both wildly absurd and hilariously fun to watch. Yes, De Palma wanted to do his own spin on “Vertigo,” and did it, but he never promised it would be high art, and God bless him.
