Body Double

Name: Body Double
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Released: October 26, 1984
Duration: 114 min
Rating: 69
Cast: Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith

1984

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Generally favorable reviews based on 18 Critics

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Body Double

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Movie Details & Credits

Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 26, 1984

Starring: Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith

Summary: A struggling 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

Genre(s): Mystery, Thriller

Rating: R

Runtime: 114 min

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Awards & Rankings

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Slant Magazine - Eric Henderson

Body Double, while not his finest, is the best candidate as De Palma’s signature film. It’s a wicked, feature-length double entendre from a Doublemint era. Take it at face value, take it for its prurience or take it for all it’s worth. Hell, try taking on all three at once. Read full review

Chicago Reader - Dave Kehr

Brian De Palma has gotten a bad rap on this one: the first hour of his 1984 thriller represents the most restrained, accomplished, and effective filmmaking he's ever done, and if the film does become more jokey and incontinent as it follows its derivative path, it never entirely loses the goodwill De Palma engenders with his deft opening sequences. Read full review

The Telegraph - Robbie Collin

Body Double isn’t trash, misogynistic or otherwise. It’s unrepentantly trashy – not the kind of film you watch while your parents or kids are in the house, or with your curtains open. But it’s also a complex, provocative suspense thriller that bears comparison with the three immaculate Hitchcock classics – Vertigo, Psycho and Rear Window – it gleefully drags through the sludge. Read full review

Time Out London - Staff (Not Credited)

De Palma actually has the gall to combine the plots from both Vertigo and Rear Window in one big voyeur-fest and pull it off with a certain sly efficiency. Read full review

Empire - Kim Newman

Once you get past the ridiculous story this is a fine example of De Palma's lush overkill style and certainly has a redeeming thread of silly sick humour. Read full review

The New Yorker - Pauline Kael

Most of the movie lacks zest.

Time - Richard Corliss

His point here seems to be that voyeurism can induce a trancelike emotional paralysis—a message feminists could appreciate if Body Double took less pleasure in the mechanics of mutilation, and that ordinary moviegoers could ponder if the characters' motivations were not so numbingly nitwit. Upscale sleaze—so what else is new? Read full review

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