Body Double (1984)

A young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences.

Director:

Brian De Palma

Writers:

Robert J. Avrech (screenplay), Brian De Palma (screenplay)

Stars:

Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 1 win & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Craig Wasson	...	Jake Scully
Gregg Henry	...	Sam Bouchard
Melanie Griffith	...	Holly Body
Deborah Shelton	...	Gloria Revelle
Guy Boyd	...	Det. Jim McLean
Dennis Franz	...	Rubin the Director
David Haskell	...	Will the Drama Teacher
Rebecca Stanley	...	Kimberly Hess
Al Israel	...	Corso the Director
Douglas Warhit	...	Video Salesman
B.J. Jones	...	Douglas
Russ Marin	...	Frank
Lane Davies	...	Billy
Barbara Crampton	...	Carol
Larry Flash Jenkins	...	Assistant Director (as Larry 'Flash' Jenkins)

Storyline

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.

---

Plot Keywords:

lesbian sex | peeping tom | porn star | pervert | porn actress | 

---

Taglines:

A seduction. A mystery. A murder.

---

Genres:

Mystery | Thriller

---

Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

Sony Movie Channel [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

26 October 1984 (USA)

Also Known As:

Doble de cuerpo

Filming Locations:

1700 E. Ocean Blvd, Long Beach, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$10,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$2,837,978, 28 October 1984, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$8,801,940

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures Corporation,Delphi II Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

114 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Stereo

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The psychological phobia that Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) had was not Vertigo (1958) as in the Alfred Hitchcock film that partially inspired this movie but "claustrophobia" but this film was not titled with such a psychiatric term as "Claustrophobia" like with such earlier films as Phobia (1980), Frenzy (1972), Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958), and the later Arachnophobia (1990).

---

Goofs

In the dressing room, the saleswoman pulls a curtain partly closed. In the next shot, the curtains are in their original position until Gloria Revell herself closes them further.

---

Quotes

Jake Scully: Christ, I keep seeing it: Carol lying there. Her face was glowing.
[after discovering his girlfriend's infidelity]
Sam Bouchard: Her face was glowing?
Jake Scully: Yeah.
Sam Bouchard: How do you do that? How do you get a girl's face to glow? I got sixteen years of good humping, not once did I even get a glimmer, let alone a fucking glow! Glowing?

---

Alternate Versions

UK video versions were cut by 5 secs to remove Holly's refusal to 'shave my pussy', 'fist fucking' and 'coming in my face', and to fade out the final shot of a woman's bloodstained breasts. The cuts were fully waived in 2000.

---

Connections

References Vertigo (1958)

---

Soundtracks

Main Theme
Written by Pino Donaggio

User Reviews

Stylish, But Not As Smart As It Tries To Be

This was a wild, confusing - and extremely stupid - movie for the first 50 minutes BUT once the action kicks in and all the twists and turns begin happening, it's definitely a fun ride from that point. That's director Brian De Palma, for you: intriguing visuals, with Alfred Hitchcock- type camera angles, a lot of twists and sometimes a great movie and sometimes a very bad one. More often, sad to say, a bad movie.

I'd have to rank this closer to "bad" than "good." I'd like to rank it higher but Craig Wasson's character, "Jake Scully," (he's the lead) was so stupid at times that I almost stopped the tape. That, and too mean an edge overall to this movie, made it unappealing. It's not far removed from a very soft porn film at times, either, since the female lead, played by Melanie Grifftith, plays a porn star. We see a fair share of nudity, although it's hard to complain looking at a naked Griffith.

Overall, it has style - De Palma loves that - but it plays like a film that that thinks it's smart, but doesn't connect to its audience.....sort of like Hollywood in general.