Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences. Body Double benefits from a strong perfomance from Craig Wasson but also an interesting plot and twists that i didn't see them coming. The soundtrack is also so 80's that it hurts plus Melanie Griffith does a good job as well. Now as far as flaws go? some twists weren't that good like the one before the big climax, the murder sequence seemed like it took forever to be filmed and some scenes (mostly with Griffith and the Pet Shop Boys sequence were a little bit? weird) but overall not a bad movie but not one of De Palma's best either. (7.5/10)

Arguably the one movie among Director Brian DePalma's back catalogue which owes a great debt to his hero, the late great Alfred Hitchcock. Body Double marks something of an oddity which far from perfect didn't deserve the critical dismissal it received, leading to it being a commercial failure at the box office. It also marked the closest thing that actor Craig Wasson had to a mainstream leading role. The movie revolves around Jake Scully, (Wasson) a struggling actor starring in cheap, tawdry Vampire flick which proves more trouble than it's worth. He suffers from claustrophobia which Isn't exactly helpful when he has to appear in scenes of him sleeping in a coffin. Upon arriving home he finds his girlfriend in bed with another man, forcing him to find a new home. A chance meeting with fellow out of work actor Sam Bouchard at an acting workshop proves fortuitous as he needs a house-sitter while he's away on an acting job. Jake jumps at the chance of taking care of the plush apartment, and to top things off, each night a sexy alluring neighbour who lives in the building across performs a sexy striptease which Jake views via a telescope. This leads to an unhealthy obsession with wanting to meet her which eventually leads to him witnessing her murder. Inevitably finding himself the chief suspect he finds that he must work to clear his name which gradually draws himself in to the seedy world of the porn industry and where he learns that everything he saw that night wasn't quite as it seemed. Glossy, beautifully filmed and with a slightly surreal edge Body Double while largely effective and never boring is marred predominantly by a vacuous plot which tries to hide the silliness behind flashy window dressing. De Palma delights in excess which was very much a hallmark of the eighties, especially in the shamelessly O.T.T. murder scene and when Jake reluctantly appears in a pornographic Horror Movie, marching through a brothel to the strains of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's, Relax, and marks an inspired foray in to opulence and indulgence which De Palma captures beautifully. Ultimately a movie of two halves with the first being one long set-up for the main plot as Jake's obsession with the mystery woman grows unabated. Wasson, a limited actor in some people's view is actually effectively cast here as he makes for a likable screen presence. He has an amiable, good natured quality which makes for it being all the more troubling and cringe-making as he descends in to essentially becoming a stalker. It's these moments which ironically prove more tense and unnerving than the inevitable killing. Unfortunately the combining of plot aspects from of two of Hitchcock's more renowned thrillers don't exactly make for a cohesive plot, which under close scrutiny is rather flimsy. The eventual plot twists are either predictable or when they do arrive although unexpected don't have the jarring effect of shock they were clearly designed to invoke. On the plus side, Melanie Griffith who doesn't make her long awaited appearance until over an hour in to the picture is on top sleazy yet naive and ultimately bemused form as porn star, Holly Body(moniker which was actually taken by a genuine porn star after the movies release. Below the surface there is however some rewarding self referential observations on the pitfalls of the Hollywood film industry, De Palma sublimely delights in bewildering his audience with a neat psychological deception which will have you double guessing yourself. Topped off by a beautiful, haunting score by Pino Dinaggio it's an entertaining foray in to style over substance, deserving of the critical reappraisal it has garnered. Not necessarily to be missed if you can get past it's shortcomings.

Body Double shows the ugly, moral tawdriness of the bottom rungs of the Los Angeles acting scene. When we first meet Jake he's in danger of being fired from Z-grade horror film. De Palma has crafted a beautifully structured thriller with a mystery that we piece together along with Jake. The story is suspenseful, mysterious, touches on Vampire and porn film-making, and conveniently provides sex as the substitute for drama. Controversial movies like this always result in a lot of contradictory feedbacks.The plot revolves around a failing actor (who could use some serious couch time, if you know what I mean), who becomes obsessed with "the girl next door" - a sexy neighbor whose 'jones' for late-night dancing in the "all-together" and abhorrence for window blinds makes house-sitting worth the lousy pay. And as we've seen in dozens of erotic thrillers, someone dies, someone is accused, and our hero must save the girl and get the bad guy. Nice twists along the way keep this one very intriguing. A spectacularly hot, 28 year old Melanie Griffith, who about steals the movie and registers a "'10' on the peter meter" whenever she's on-screen. Sure, there are elements of real, American "cheese" here; leaps in logic (the plot tenuously hinges on a couple "convenient" things happening at just the right time) and an overall "over-the-top" feel will turn some viewers off and have them scrambling for the remote. But Body Double is truly one of those late night cable classics that many have duplicated, but few have surpassed. It has just enough art, just enough schlock and just enough brains to keep your attention - and did I mention Melanie Griffith? Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

"Look," a movie director (Dennis Franz) frankly says to his leading actor, Jake Scully (Craig Wasson). "I got a picture to make here. I got 25 days to make it. I have no time to wait around for a claustrophobic vampire who freezes every time he lays down in a coffin."Scully is a young, struggling actor, good-looking, nice enough, but just passable when it comes to star power. He has landed a leading role as a vampire, true, but it's only a B-picture. One can hope for the best as he dons gaudy, glittery eye makeup and a pair of fangs that makes Bela Lugosi seem like a Dardenne Brothers figure. His staggering claustrophobia only makes things worse.As his professional life limps along, things only get worse when Scully discovers his girlfriend in bed with another man, which, in response, leave him homeless and alone. A fellow actor (Gregg Henry) offers him the chance to stay at his house for a few days, a house of fiendish tackiness that sits on top of a hill and looks like the Seattle Space Needle had a baby with a spaceship. Across the way is a mansion inhabited by a stunningly beautiful woman (Deborah Shelton) — Scully is able to watch her undress as his friend has equipped a telescope overlooking the balcony.If you've had a filling serving of Alfred Hitchcock movies, I'm sure you can only guess where the film is going. Body Double is Rear Window junior and Vertigo the second, except with a lot more blood, sex, nudity, and enough tawdriness to top off a jumbo sized popcorn bin. One night, as Scully peeps on his new neighbor performing her nightly striptease, he notices a deformed looking man perched on the satellite dish in front of her home, watching her with a sadistic thirst in his eyes. Skip to a few days later, the woman is brutally murdered in her bedroom, with Scully as the sole witness. The police (of course) laugh at him, passing him off as a paranoid pervert. But his neighbor's death leads him to a number of startling discoveries, the most shocking turning toward the world of pornography, where he enlists the help of actress Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) to find out the truth in the bizarre slaughter.Hitchcock had a fascination with hot blondes, armed-and-dangerous camera angles, and ever-present danger. Brian De Palma, billed as the Master of the Macabre in his heyday, likes all that, but he doesn't want to turn himself into a carbon copy of cinema's most predominant suspense filmmaker. De Palma's own Dressed to Kill, Sisters, and Blow Out (let's stop talking about Carrie and Scarface for a minute) were jaw-dropping in their stylistic dexterity, their stories borderline ridiculous yet efficient when connected with such unique visuals.Body Double is no different, even if it is sillier than some of De Palma's other efforts (which is saying something, considering Dressed to Kill gave the then 49-year old Angie Dickinson a blatantly obvious 20- something year-old body double, put Michael Caine in drag, and ended with a was that all just a dream? startler). The plot twists are sometimes inane, and sometimes too coincidental to truly be stunning, but De Palma is so self-assured that it isn't hard to make us want to just go with it. I have been purposefully vague when retelling plot points because so much of the film's success lies in its slimy thrills, but the style is something worth noting — Body Double shows the director at his optical peak. Early in the film, Scully, sensing his neighbor is in trouble, follows her to a Los Angeles mall, her actual soon-to-be attacker lurking in every nook and cranny. In the past, De Palma has payed great attention to split-screens and close-ups, but the entire sequence is notable for its remarkable combination of voyeurism and open space. There are three buzz characters moving around the complex all at once, with the camera sometimes peering onto them from above, most impressively when they walk on different floors. Without much dialogue to back it up, the scene rattles with tension. Will danger catch up in this game of cat-and-mouse?There are even more visual kicks (particularly the simultaneously laughable yet hugely ingenious moment where Scully and his neighbor run into each other, after he's been following her around for hours, embrace in fiery passion, the camera spinning around them with merry-go-round delirium), but the theme of voyeurism in Body Double is what makes the film such a wild experience. It's almost always uncomfortable — in every scene, you feel as if you shouldn't be there, as if you're intruding on something deeply private. The storyline may not always be strong (or even truly believable), but Body Double is about style, tone and mood. In that sense, it's more than convincing.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com