Body Double


1984 Hitchcock rip-off

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An unsuccessful actor with peeping tendencies finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery.

Why pick one of Alfred Hitchock's pockets when you can thrust your hands in two of them? This never hides that it's borrowing heavily from Rear Window and Vertigo, but it does it with so much of that exaggerated style you'd expect with a Brian De Palma movie, that you just have to applaud the guy. It touches on the same themes of the obsession of an ideal and jacking off with the help of telescopes. It's got the same natural layers of any film about voyeuristic characters. The viewer starts to feel a little trashy as he secretly watches a character without that character's knowledge while he is secretly watching somebody else. There's another great lengthy chase sequence--this time through Los Angeles--like in Dressed to Kill, not quite as artfully choreographed but equally thrilling. And Melanie Griffith repeats these nifty dance moves.

If this was remade, which it shouldn't be, it should star Jessie Eisenberg, Nicolas Cage, and Miley Ray Cyrus. Don't pay any attention to me, Hollywood, because I don't know what I'm talking about.

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