Body Double

De Palma created the concept of the film after interviewing Angie Dickinson's body doubles for Dressed to Kill.[6] " I started thinking about the whole idea of the body double," he said. "I wondered what I would do if I wanted to make sure to get somebody's attention, to have them looking at a certain place at a certain time."[7] The erotic thriller was also becoming a popular genre to audiences, with the box offices successes of Dressed to Kill and Body Heat. After fighting with censorship boards over the rating of Scarface — they rated it X and he had to battle to make it R — De Palma resolved to make Body Double as pushback. At the time, he said "If this one doesn't get an X, nothing I ever do is going to. This is going to be the most erotic and surprising and thrilling movie I know how to make...I'm going to give them everything they hate and more of it than they've ever seen. They think Scarface was violent? They think my other movies were erotic? Wait until they see Body Double."[6]

Having been impressed with the horror film Blood Bride, De Palma enlisted its director and writer Robert J. Avrech to write the Body Double script with him. Both were fans of Alfred Hitchcock, and screened Rear Window and Vertigo to gather inspiration. Avrech later described his work on the film as "working off of De Palma's ideas of Hitchcock's ideas."[8]

De Palma initially wanted pornographic actress Annette Haven to play Holly, but she was rejected by the studio due to her pornographic filmography.[9] Nonetheless, Haven did appear in a minor role and consulted with DePalma about the adult film industry. De Palma then offered the role to Linda Hamilton, who declined to begin pre-production on The Terminator.[9] Jamie Lee Curtis, Carrie Fisher, and Tatum O'Neal were considered for the role before Griffith won the role. De Palma later said Haven "was an enormous amount of help" to him in his understanding of the adult film industry and what Holly's background might be, and Griffith brought "a comic edge that I wanted to be a major part of the tone of the second half of the movie."[7] Griffith initially was reluctant to take the role, thinking she "didn't want any more nymphet roles, but now I think I can bring a lot of life to that kind of character...I think I gave her a great amount of intelligence."[10]

De Palma also considered Dutch erotic actress Sylvia Kristel for the role of Gloria, but she was unavailable. Although he cast Deborah Shelton, he found her voice to be unsuitable and had her lines dubbed by Helen Shaver in post-production.[9]

Body Double contains a film within a film sequence in which pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood performs their song "Relax"[11] on the set of a pornographic film, and in which scream queen Brinke Stevens,[12] and adult actresses Cara Lott and Annette Haven appear. The club scene was converted into a music video and shown on MTV.[13] Voice actor Rob Paulsen makes a cameo as a cameraman who utters "Where's the cum shot?".[14]

Chemosphere, the ultramodern house used in Body Double

Principal photography began in Los Angeles on February 21, 1984.[13] Several locations in and around the area were used, including: Tail o' the Pup, the Beverly Center, Barney's Beanery, the LA Farmer's Market, the Rodeo Collection mall on Rodeo Drive, the Spruce Goose dome in Long Beach, the Hollywood Tower and adjacent Hollywood Freeway, Tower Records, and the Chemosphere house.[15]

The film was initially given an X by the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board. Because many theaters refused to show X-rated films, De Palma had to re-edit the film as he did on Dressed to Kill and Scarface. De Palma cut what he called "a few minor things from the porno movie scene" and secured an R rating. De Palma said Columbia did not support the film due to its excessive violence. "Do you think the guys who run Coca-Cola (Columbia Pictures' parent company) want publicity about violence? They are very aware of their public images, and when they start seeing articles in The New York Times about their product and violence, they go crazy. They're not showmen They're corporation types."[16]

Body Double debuted to mixed reviews and intense controversy due to its sex and violence.[17] De Palma says that Columbia Pictures executives were at first enthusiastic about the film until it was previewed in Van Nuys.[13] Response from the audience was not strong "and the studio started to get really worried," he said. "The only people crazier than the people who criticize me for violence are the people at the studios. I can't stand that sort of cowardice."[16] De Palma and Columbia mutually agreed to end the three-picture deal.[5]

Roger Ebert praised the film, giving it three and a half out of four stars and calling it "an exhilarating exercise in pure filmmaking, a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition in which there's no particular point except that the hero is flawed, weak, and in terrible danger -- and we identify with him completely."[18] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that De Palma "again goes too far, which is the reason to see it. It's sexy and explicitly crude, entertaining and sometimes very funny. It's his most blatant variation to date on a Hitchcock film (Vertigo), but it's also a De Palma original, a movie that might have offended Hitchcock's wryly avuncular public personality, while appealing to his darker, most private fantasies."[19] Todd McCarthy of Variety stated, "To his credit, DePalma moves his camera as beautifully as any director in the business today and on a purely physical level 'Body Double' often proves quite seductive as the camera tracks, swirls, cranes and zooms towards and around the objects of DePalma's usually sinister contemplation. Unfortunately, most of the film consists of visual riffs on Alfred Hitchcock, particularly 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window.'"[20]

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote "When the drill came onto the screen, De Palma lost me and control of his movie. At that point 'Body Double' ceased to be a homage to Hitchcock and instead became a cheap splatter film, and not a very good one at that."[21] Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times panned the film as "elaborately empty, silly and desperately derivative," and suggested that De Palma "finally may have exhausted the patience of even his most tenacious admirers."[22] Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post positively reviewed the film, writing, "A lewd, gory, twisty-turny murder mystery swirling around Hollywood's porn industry, 'Body Double' finds Brian De Palma at the zenith of his cinematic virtuosity. The movie has been carefully calculated to offend almost everyone—and probably will. But, like Hitchcock, De Palma makes the audience's reaction the real subject; 'Body Double' is about the dark longings deep inside us."[23][24]

The film was criticized for its violence towards women. "Women in peril work better in the suspense genre," said De Palma. "It all goes back to the Perils of Pauline...I don’t think morality applies to art. It’s a ludicrous idea. I mean, what is the morality of a still life? I don’t think there’s good or bad fruit in the bowl."[25] A specific scene where a character is killed by a drill was controversial, as many saw the violence as sexualized. De Palma said it "was not my intention to create a sexual image with the drill, although it could be construed that way."[25] The London Clinic for Battered Women asked Columbia Pictures for a percentage of the profits from the film, claiming it was "blood money" for using "the victimization of women as a source of massive profit."[26]

Body Double opened at number three at the box office, earning $2.8 million in its opening weekend.[27] The film earned $8.2 million over its first three weeks, before being pulled in its fourth week.[2][1] The film earned $8.8 million on a $10 million budget, making it a box office bomb.[2][1]

In following decades, Body Double underwent a critical reassessment and developed a cult following, with critics citing its directorial and aesthetic indulgences,[28][29] its early 1980s new wave soundtrack, homages to Alfred Hitchcock,[30] and the use of iconic Los Angeles locations.[31] Writing of the 2013 Blu-ray release of the film, Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine said, "Body Double’s consciously derivative thriller plot is as dense with meta-text as any film in De Palma’s career; the searing personal material, which has been buried underneath the film’s superficial happenings with precision and élan, must be discovered with the eyes."[32]

In 2016, Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times named Body Double as one of De Palma's "underrated gems" of the 1980s, stating, "Even more than 'Dressed to Kill' or 'Blow Out,' for me 'Body Double' is the most quintessentially Brian De Palma movie of what might be thought of as his 'high period' — that late-’70s, early-’80s moment when he was making relatively high-budget, high-profile movies that culminated in 'The Untouchables.'"[33]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 78% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The critical consensus reads: "Exemplifying Brian De Palma's filmmaking bravura and polarizing taste, Body Double is a salacious love letter to moviemaking."[34]

Griffith later gave credit to the film and the accolades she garnered for her performance for helping launch her career.[9] The film helped reintroduce the song "Relax" in America, where it recharted and reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1985.[35]

In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, De Palma reflected on the film's initial critical reception, saying "Body Double was reviled when it came out. Reviled. It really hurt. I got slaughtered by the press right at the height of the women’s liberation movement...I thought it was completely unjustified. It was a suspense thriller, and I was always interested in finding new ways to kill people.” [36]

In addition, the film's trailer won a Clio Award in 1984.[40]