Body Double (1984)
December 4, 2022 3:01 PM - Subscribe
A young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences. Directed by Brian DePalma and starring Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith. Featuring in-movie music video for "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Jake Scully comes home to find his girlfriend with another man and has to find a new place. In between his acting workshops and his job in a vampire B-movie, he scans the paper looking for anything. He happens to meet Sam Bouchard, a fellow actor who needs a house sitter. Both are pleased with the arrangement that will have Jake staying in the house and for a sweetener, Sam shows him his favorite neighbor, a well-built woman who strips with her window open each night. Jake becomes obsessed with meeting her and is able to help recover her purse from a thief, but shows his own phobia, he is incapacitated by claustrophobia when the thief runs through a tunnel. When Jake witnesses a murder, he finds out that the police love to pin crimes on peeping Toms. Jake discovers that here are just too many coincidences but must hunt them down himself without the police.
Jake Scully comes home to find his girlfriend with another man and has to find a new place. In between his acting workshops and his job in a vampire B-movie, he scans the paper looking for anything. He happens to meet Sam Bouchard, a fellow actor who needs a house sitter. Both are pleased with the arrangement that will have Jake staying in the house and for a sweetener, Sam shows him his favorite neighbor, a well-built woman who strips with her window open each night. Jake becomes obsessed with meeting her and is able to help recover her purse from a thief, but shows his own phobia, he is incapacitated by claustrophobia when the thief runs through a tunnel. When Jake witnesses a murder, he finds out that the police love to pin crimes on peeping Toms. Jake discovers that here are just too many coincidences but must hunt them down himself without the police.
This movie is wild.
Pointless sidenote: I just watched Avatar for the first time tonight and the lead in that is also called Jake Scully. This gave me strange pause.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:15 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Pointless sidenote: I just watched Avatar for the first time tonight and the lead in that is also called Jake Scully. This gave me strange pause.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:15 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I remember the reviews of this centering around how much DePalma had lifted from Hitchcock's Vertigo, but I hadn't seen that movie, so I was mostly impressed by Melanie Griffith (first thing that I'd seen her in) and her porn star character's matter-of-fact list of what she wouldn't do: "I do not do animal acts. I do not do S&M or any variations of that particular bent, no water sports either. I will not shave my pussy, no fistfucking and absolutely no coming in my face. I get $2000 a day and I do not work without a contract." I'd also seen Craig Wasson in the film Four Friends, which was well-reviewed but didn't make a big impression on me; eventually, he would also be in the DS9 episode "Hard Time", which did make a big impression on me.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:23 PM on December 4, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:23 PM on December 4, 2022
I haven't seen this yet, but it featured heavily in an episode of the most recent season of podcast You Must Remember This.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:21 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:21 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
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posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:05 PM on December 4, 2022