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From: ecl@hocsj.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: BODY DOUBLE (*spoiler*)
Message-ID: <199@hocsj.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Oct-84 10:31:19 EST
Article-I.D.: hocsj.199
Posted: Mon Oct 29 10:31:19 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Oct-84 01:14:50 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
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                                BODY DOUBLE
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper

     The ads for this film call Brian De Palma "the modern master of
suspense."  To some extent, they are correct.  De Palma has made a series of
interesting horror films, including THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, THE FURY,
and especially CARRIE, without which public attention might never have come
to Stephen King.  He has also studied in depth the films and techniques of
Alfred Hitchcock.  He released OBSESSION at the same time that Hitchcock's
final film, FAMILY PLOT, was in the theaters.  I have also claimed that if
the two films were shown side-by-side, without credits, most people would
have picked OBSESSION as the new Hitchcock classic.  Other Hitchcockian
suspense films De Palma has made include SISTERS, DRESSED TO KILL, and BLOW
OUT.  His current effort along these lines is BODY DOUBLE.

     At this point, this review will become a minor spoiler review, much as
I would like to avoid it.  This is because the biggest surprise of this film
is that every single surprise is telegraphed.  In the second scene in which
the villain appears I told myself, okay, this guy is going to be the
villain.  The film introduces the characters and the situation, then has a
riveting suspense sequence in a shopping mall.  (This is a very well-
directed sequence, by the way.) Then just as the mystery is getting started,
it shifts to a purse-snatching scene on a beach.  We were still very early
in the mystery (certainly still in the first half of the film), and I said
to myself, "Oh no!"  Then I took my notepad and wrote down the entire
solution of the film: who was doing what to whom and exactly why, and
exactly how the villain's plot worked.  And it was no wild guess.  De Palma
can use Hitchcock's style and make polished mysteries, but he does not do
Hitchcock's homework.  Each Hitchcock film had a new and unexpected plot.
None were derivative.  The plot for BODY DOUBLE was clever when Hitchcock
used it in a previous film.  De Palma cannot borrow Hitchcock's plots and
expect them to still be surprising.

     Hitchcock proved that he was more than a filmmaker--he was a reader.
He read a lot of the mysteries being written in his time, took the better
plots, and made films out of them.  De Palma is more a student of film.  He
can pick up a lot from previous films, but it is pretty tough to pick up
mystery plots that other film fans will not recognize.  It is extremely
frustrating to see the care with which De Palma constructs his films and to
see all that care wasted.  By not having a fresh, original source of plots,
that effort is squandered on suspenseless suspense films.

					(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!lznv!mrl