BODY DOUBLE

In 1976 Brian De Palma made 'Obsession', a film inspired by the Hitchcock classic, 'Vertigo', yet eight years later he directed and co-wrote this thriller, which has a similar plot device.  It's a bit odd and suggests that De Palma was running out of ideas or (more likely) this was something to churn out while he was waiting for the green light on a more personal project.

Whatever the truth, this is a playful variation on 'Vertigo', with echoes of 'Rear Window', and in one short sequence, 'Dial M For Murder', thrown in for good measure.

The main protagonist is Jake, a struggling actor who suffers not from a fear of heights but instead claustrophobia.  He becomes obsessed with a rich woman Gloria, who he spies on at night when she cavorts half-naked in her apartment.  

'Vertigo' benefits from the protagonist being played by the great James Stewart, who can make us sympathetic to him no matter how creepy or odd his behaviour.  Here Jake is played by Craig Wasson (who?) who struggles to make me care about his fate, especially given the icky scene where he spies on Gloria trying on new underwear, and then retrieves her discarded underwear from a trash can.

It's all very sleazy and a bit weird, featuring an odd-looking Indian who is stalking Gloria, who then kills her, in a most unpleasant manner.

It's at this point that the film picks up considerably, due to the introduction of Melanie Griffith as a porn star (Holly Body) who was pretending to be Gloria when Jake was spying on her, as part of a murder plot she was unaware of. 

Griffith has great comic timing, and together she and De Palma get a lot of fun out of the situation, before we build up to a pretty decent climax.  We also get a couple of false endings which left me rather confused as to what was real, or imagined, or simply a film within a film, not that it really matters.

Since nothing here is taken too seriously I guess it doesn't matter either that the plot doesn't really hold water.  Where for example is the real Gloria when Holly is in her apartment pretending to be her?