Body Double

This article is about the film. For the novel by Tess Gerritsen, see Body Double (novel).

Body Double
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Brian De Palma
Produced by	Brian De Palma
Written by	Brian De Palma Robert J. Avrech
Starring	Craig Wasson Melanie Griffith Gregg Henry Dennis Franz Deborah Shelton
Music by	Pino Donaggio
Cinematography	Stephen H. Burum
Editing by	Gerald B. Greenberg Bill Pankow
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	October 26, 1984 (1984-10-26)
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10,000,000
Box office	$8,801,940

Body Double is a 1984 American thriller film directed by Brian De Palma starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, and Gregg Henry. The film is an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder. The original musical score was composed by Pino Donaggio. The film was marketed with the tagline "You can't believe everything you see".

Plot

The film begins and ends with the protagonist, Jake Scully (Wasson), playing the part of a vampire on the set of a low-budget horror film. After he ruins a take by being unable to rise from a coffin due to a claustrophobia-related seizure, a fire breaks out on the set and he is sent home by the director Rubin (Dennis Franz).

Scully arrives home early and catches his girlfriend having sex with another man. Heartbroken, he goes to a bar and downs a few quick shots. The bartender, an acquaintance of Scully, lets him sleep on his cramped couch for a night or two. Later, at an acting workshop, he makes a new friend, Sam (Henry). An exercise at the workshop, in which Scully revisits a childhood claustrophobic trauma, reveals the incapacitating nature of his overwhelming fear of confined spaces. As Scully breaks down and begins to cry, Sam "rescues" him and they go to get a few drinks, where Sam learns of Scully's recent break-up and that, because the apartment belonged to the cheating ex-girlfriend, he is temporarily homeless.

Sam offers him a house-sitting arrangement at an opulent Modernist bachelor nestled in the Hollywood Hills. He also points out a sexy female neighbor, Gloria Revelle (Miss USA 1970 Deborah Shelton), whose seemingly exhibitionistic antics can be viewed by telescope; she is a wealthy and beautiful woman who evidently performs a remarkable erotic dance at her window, nightly according to Sam, "just like clockwork." The next night, Scully becomes concerned when he spots an Indian with a disfigured face standing on a satellite television tower also observing Gloria's sexy routine. He later sees the Indian parked down the street from her gated driveway. Gloria leaves to go shopping, the Indian follows her, and Scully follows them both. Near the valet station in the mall's parking structure, Scully eavesdrops on her at a bank of pay telephones and overhears her as she makes plans to meet someone and says that she'll wear something special. She buys a new pair of panties at a chic boutique; Scully watches through the window as she changes into them, and sees the mysterious Indian also watching her from the opposite side of the shop. After a brief chase, Scully gets into an elevator with Gloria. Just as he works up the nerve to say something to her, a large group files into the elevator and squeezes him against the back wall. The Indian tries to get in on another floor, but the car is completely full, and, as the doors slide shut, he smiles wickedly at Scully's confined state and obvious discomfiture. Exiting the elevator at the valet, Gloria drops her used panties into a garbage can, where Scully clandestinely retrieves them and quickly stuffs them into his pocket.

Scully then follows her to a beachside motel, and again overhears her on the phone as she is stood up by her lover. Determined to warn her about the Indian, he finally speaks to her as she's walking toward the water. The Indian suddenly runs by and snatches her purse, is chased by Scully into a tunnel and, after Scully freezes in a claustrophobic seizure, steals what is later discovered to be a card key to Gloria's house. In an ironic twist, Scully is "rescued" this time by Gloria, who helps him out of the tunnel. He is enamored, and she is emotionally vulnerable, so they briefly embrace, make out, and grope each other as the camera revolves in a continuous 360-degree arc, until Scully kisses her neck and Gloria comes to her senses, apologizes and pushes him away, adjusts her bra and blouse, and departs hastily. Back at the home he's using, Scully then becomes an eyewitness through the telescope as the young woman is brutally attacked and killed by the Indian, who pins her down and runs an electric drill the size of a jackhammer through her body - the auguring bit repeatedly emerges from the ceiling of the room below in a torrent of blood - after she catches him removing items from a wall safe. That a purported thief would have and use with extreme deadly force such an implement leads viewers to suspect that perhaps the murder was of a personal nature as opposed to merely a bungled burglary.

While interviewing Scully at the scene, the sardonic detective assigned to the case deftly plucks Gloria's panties from Scully's pocket and accuses him of being a pervert and a sex offender, saying "You peep on her, you follow her, you fuck her, you keep her little panties as a memento, and then you take a seat on the fifty-yard line!"

Scully later learns from his agent that not only has he been fired from the vampire movie, but his agent also represents the actor who was hired to replace him. He decides to investigate the murder on his own, and pursues a porn queen, Holly Body (Griffith), whose signature dance - "a routine that's a sure ten on the peter meter" according to her - he recognized on a 24-hour porn channel. A descent into her sordid world follows. He lands a role in an adult film, after auditioning with the line "I likd to watch," and then pretends to be a skilled porn director who wants to hire her. He takes credit for a mirror (which inadvertently reflects the camera and crew as the door on which it is hung swings open during the scene). Their trail takes them back to the bachelor pad, where Scully confesses that he is not a porn producer and does not want to cast her in a film, but instead points out the Revelle house and asks her if she was the woman he had observed doing the erotic dance routines in the window. During a brief telephone call from Sam to Scully, Holly identifies Sam as the man who had hired her to perform specifically for the supposedly voyeuristic Scully. Convinced that he is a sick voyeur, she storms out in a blustery huff and is picked up while hitchhiking by the Indian, who knocks her out with a tire iron and escapes by driving up an access road leading to a reservoir, which is quickly locked by two men who scurry away into the shadows as Scully approaches. He scales the gate and sprints up the road, arriving at an open grave that the Indian has just finished digging adjacent to the Owens Aqueduct. It is not explained how the grave was dug so quickly. When Scully and the Indian get into a confrontation in the open grave, Scully grabs at the Indian's face, inadvertently tearing off part of what is actually a latex facial mask, and revealing that the Indian is actually Sam. He then overpowers Scully (when the latter is again frozen by claustrophobia) and begins to bury him as he confesses his scheme, which was to set Scully up as a witness when Gloria is murdered by the "Indian," thereby giving Sam an alibi. Feeling confident that Scully is totally incapacitated, Sam mocks and challenges him to overcome his claustrophobia by fighting back to save himself. The film then cuts to the set of the vampire movie, where Scully (wearing the dirt-caked leather jacket from the aqueduct grave scene instead of the vampire costume and heavy makeup as before) again freezes during the coffin scene and ruins the take. This time, however, he convinces Rubin to let him try it again. Cutting back to the grave, we see Scully shout, rise, and grab Sam's shovel. Sam is then knocked into the aqueduct when his dog charges at Scully and misses. The film ends with Scully, back on the set and in his vampire costume, filming a shower sequence in which a body double of the vampire's next victim is being carefully inserted into the scene, while Holly watches with the film crew.

Cast

• Craig Wasson as Jake Scully
• Melanie Griffith as Holly Body
• Gregg Henry as Sam Bouchard
• Deborah Shelton as Gloria Revelle
• Guy Boyd as Detective Jim McLean
• Dennis Franz as Rubin
• David Haskell as Will
• Al Israel as Corso
• Douglas Warhit as Video Salesman
• B.J. Jones as Douglas
• Russ Marin as Frank
• Lane Davies as Billy
• Barbara Crampton as Carol
• Larry Flash Jenkins as Assistant Director
• Monte Landis as Sid Goldberg
• Slavitza Jovan as Saleslady
• Rob Paulsen as Cameraman

At one point in the film, we see a "film within a film," with Frankie Goes to Hollywood performing the song "Relax" on the set of a porn film, in which scream queen Brinke Stevens, adult actresses Cara Lott and Annette Haven appear. Slavitza Jovan, who appeared as Gozer the Gozerian in Ghostbusters the same year, briefly appears as a saleslady. Prolific voice actor Rob Paulsen, known for voicing Raphael of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pinky of Pinky and the Brain, also makes a rare live action performance.

DePalma originally considered Annette Haven to play the lead female role that eventually went to Griffith. Before filming he commented, "I'm already thinking of casting. I don't know if there's any good young porno stars out here, but the older ones - Annette Haven, Seka - some of them can really act. And Annette Haven has a terrific body."

Locations

The film was shot in the Los Angeles area, and is notable for its inclusion of many recognizable locations, including Tail o' The Pup (a hot dog stand formerly on La Cienega Ave. at Beverly Blvd.), the Beverly Center, Barney's Beanery, the Farmer's Market, the swanky Rodeo Collection mall on Rodeo Drive, the gleaming Spruce Goose dome in Long Beach, the Hollywood Tower and adjacent Hollywood Freeway, Tower Records, and the iconic Chemosphere as the Modernist bachelor pad.

Critical reception

The movie was largely dismissed by some critics upon release, and even denounced outright by others. Brian De Palma earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Director for his work on Body Double. Only star Melanie Griffith received rave reviews from the film, earning a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and the Motion Picture Booker's Club Award as "Star of Tomorrow."

However, Roger Ebert praised the movie, giving it three and a half out of four stars. The film developed a dedicated cult following, which remains strong today, perhaps due to its directorial and aesthetic indulgences, early 1980s new wave soundtrack, and the use of iconic Los Angeles locations.

But now, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 84% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10.

The movie's trailer won a Clio Award in 1984.

Cultural impact

Body Double is referenced repeatedly throughout the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, as the favorite film of the protagonist and narrator, businessman and serial killer Patrick Bateman, who is drawn to the film's lurid violence and sexuality. He mentions that he has seen the film 37 times, and rents the tape of it from a video store several times in the story. He also occasionally repeats his preferred moments (the most violent scenes) from the film to the reader or to other characters, especially "the power drill scene" (he has apparently masturbated to this scene several times).

The futuristic octagon house Jake tends to is the Chemosphere, found in Los Angeles, California. Troy McClure resides in a near-identical household in an episode of The Simpsons, owing largely to Body Double.

Remake

Though often seen as partly a remake itself, Body Double was remade in 1993 in India as Pehla Nasha. The movie was directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, in his directorial debut. Deepak Tijori plays the lead role alongside Pooja Bhatt, Raveena Tandon and Paresh Rawal.

See also

• List of American films of 1984

External links

• Body Double at the Internet Movie Database
• Body Double at AllRovi
• Body Double at Box Office Mojo
• Body Double at Rotten Tomatoes