Editorials
The Self-Aware Meta Commentary in Brian De Palma’s ‘Body Double’ [Sex Crimes]
Considering how long I’ve been writing this editorial series, it’s wild that this is the first entry tackling Brian De Palma. While there’s a history of contentious reactions to his works (primarily from feminists in the 70s and 80s who accused him of misogyny for his often brutal treatment of female characters), aside from Adrian Lyne, De Palma is easily one of the most significant directors to work on mainstream Erotic Thrillers.
Body Double is a solid entry in his filmography. It is also incredibly representative of his filmmaking interests in that it focuses on doubles, deep focus/split screens, Hitchcockian themes of obsession, sex and voyeurism, and, finally, a mystery murder that is more complicated than it initially appears.
For first time viewers, it might be surprising to learn that star Melanie Griffith does not appear until well past the one hour mark, after her doppelgänger, Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton), has been brutally murdered. In this way the film is loosely split in two: before Holly and after.
In the first half, claustrophobic actor Jake Scully (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’ Craig Wasson) discovers that his girlfriend is cheating on him and moves into the gold standard of Hollywood bachelor pads, courtesy of acquaintance Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry). The swanky set-up includes a rotating bed, aquarium, well-stocked bar, and – naturally – a telescope to capitalize on the expansive view.
Before his departure, Sam ensures that Jake takes note of one specific sight: a stunning brunette who performs a daily striptease in front of her wide-open windows. But when Jake notes that Gloria is being observed by an “Indian” man (ah, the problematic 80s), he embarks on a voyeuristic odyssey to protect her.
Body Double is famous for several key sequences. First there is Jake’s attempt to tail Gloria when she leaves her house to go to the mall and buy lingerie. It’s a long, drawn-out affair involving migrant tree-cutters, underground parking attendants, and a store employee who is not nearly concerned enough about the dual peeping toms observing her clientele.
De Palma and cinematographer Stephen H. Burum shoot the mall sequence in long or extreme long shots. Considering how innocuous most of this drama is, as characters spy on each other, the direction and editing (courtesy of Gerald B. Greenberg and Bill Pankow) do a masterful job of elevating the cat and mouse affair. All of the running up and down escalators is the visual double of another stair-dominated sequence later in the film when Jake tracks Gloria to an isolated beach house built into the side of a hill.
The other notable sequence is, of course, Gloria’s murder. As Jake watches through the telescope, the woman is attacked in her apartment. As he sprints through the Hollywood Hills, Gloria is first strangled with her telephone cord, then brutally penetrated (offscreen) by a massive phallic drill that literally cuts through the ceiling to leak blood.
It’s a virtuoso sequence: the murder is incredibly tense despite its somewhat inevitable conclusion, as well as its slasher-esque sexualized violence. And while Gloria’s death is brutal and unrelenting, it confirms Jake’s responsibility in the proceedings: as the police note, had he simply owned up to his fetishistic voyeurism earlier, Gloria might still be alive.
While it’s easy to dismiss the detective because he is so smug, he’s not wrong. Jake then basically doubles down on the wrong idea for the last act of the film, when he takes it upon himself to “solve” the case and track down Gloria’s body double.
Enter porn star Holly Body.
It’s an understatement to say that Griffith is pretty fantastic in the role. She brings a spunky feistiness that energizes the film following Gloria’s murder (be prepared to lament her limited screen time). It doesn’t hurt that her introduction coincides with a stylistically fun sequence as De Palma briefly immerses audiences (without warning) in a porn narrative as Jake goes undercover. The film-within-a-film is a completely different movie (by design), but it is so fun, breezy, and, yes, sexy that one wonders if, like Wes Craven, De Palma could have made a career shooting porn.
The introduction of Holly naturally plays into the mysterious (not quite femme fatale) aura of the character. Naturally she becomes Jake’s new obsession, though Body Double fails to flesh her out or give her agency. In this way, Gloria and Holly represent the dual sides of Jake’s obsession with the Madonna (Gloria)/whore (Holly) complex.
While underdeveloped female characters would normally be lamentable, in Body Double it makes sense. The narrative is all about Jake’s ill-advised desire to “play” the hero – a role that effectively contributes to Gloria’s death and nearly gets Holly killed in the climax. It’s pretty self-aware of DePalma and co-writer Robert J. Avrech to play on the former’s reputation for mistreating female characters by making the whole film about the male lead’s insecurities and inefficiencies.
As we’ve discussed in previous entries, Erotic Thrillers owe a great deal to Film Noir, which – thanks to the Hays Code – tended to end by reinforcing a morally black and white view of the world. Body Double refuses this script: not only does Holly disapprove of being forced into Jake’s crusade and nearly being buried alive, but the pair don’t wind up together. And while the end of the film confirms that Jake has overcome his claustrophobia and returned to work, the final scene plays like it is gently mocking Jake’s B-movie role as a pervy vampire who is still working with body doubles.
In this way, Body Double works both as a great Erotic Thriller, and as self-aware meta commentary by De Palma about the subgenre and his own reputation within it. That’s pretty clever.
Sex Crimes is a column that explores the legacy of erotic thrillers, from issues of marital infidelity to inappropriate underage affairs to sexualized crimes. In this subgenre, sex and violence are inexplicably intertwined as the dangers of intercourse take on a whole new meaning.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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