Body Double

Now, as for Barbara Crampton, this was only her fifth film ever.

She had appeared in her debut just a few years earlier, small role, actually nudity featured in it, in Body Double.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Brian De Palma movie again.

Yeah, yeah.

But what do you, you know, she was this huge supporter of De Palma until Body Double, actually, until just when this comes out.

in 1980, in which she says, like, body double is terrible and whatever, whatever, and they have this huge falling out.

But- Did he

make Dressed to Kill before or after that? Before.

I remember thinking to myself, Brian De Palma is trying to do Dressed to Kill again.

He's trying to do Body Double.

He's trying to bring all of that bravura sleaziness to the production.

And I just remember thinking, I don't think he knows what this movie is actually about.

Oh, goodness, no.

And a lot of the better De Palma movies, the plot makes no sense.

Body Double is an absurd plot.

Yes.

In the words of Eros magazine, "The Gone With The Wind of adult films." Holly does Hollywood in a hedonist heaven.

heaven.The first on-screen depiction of a video store in a Hollywood film came one year later, in 1984, in Brian De Palma's Body Double.

It is easy to imagine the fervently cinephilic De Palma being an early proponent of video technology and ownership, which seemed, in 1984, as the natural evolution of consuming and possessing the films you loved.

Holly Does Hollywood, now playing at the X Cinema.

He created the template that two subsequent decades of video store interactions on screen will follow.

First, the store is seen as an archive of unfathomable depth, as evidenced by the knowledgeable clerk offering that they have the film in several, albeit historically improbable and unlikely formats.

Second, Body Double presented the very notion of video acquisition as illicit, sexual, and dangerous, years away from the sanitized safety of Blockbuster Video.

Here, in the early 1980s, the format is still the domain of sex and violence.

What was that? [laughs] Welcome back to the podcast.

This is part two of our discussion on Brian De Palma's Body Double, a film that you famously love and champion 100% with no qualms or, or questions.

No issues whatsoever.

My bio on every social media site that I have a profile on says Champion of Brian De Palma, so.

I didn't go to a strip club for my bachelor party.

Nothing wrong with that, but there's so many dudes who will go to a strip club for their bachelor party.

You didn't just watch Body Double and get a bunch of dudes and just [laughs]-

Yeah

Bonfire of the Vanities.

Body Double.

You got Dressed to Kill.

Not the best movie.

it moving he's still interrupting

what up everybody it's your boy chris i'm like guess the fuck have you seen

aka play brigante

Sure

... talking about Body Double, which is, um, a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition in which there's no particular point except that the hero is flawed, weak, and in terrible danger, and we identify with him completely.

In Rear Window, sure.

In this movie-

[laughs]

Let's hear what Pauline Kael has to say.

"But coming from De Palma, Body Double is an awful disappointment.

The voyeuristic themes and the scare sequences are so similar to elements of his earlier movies that you keep waiting for the thrills, the moments when he'll top himself, and he doesn't.