Film

Body Double

Name: Body Double
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Released: 1984
Cast: Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton, Guy Boyd

Body Double is Brian De Palma's audacious thriller about voyeurism, obsession, and the movies themselves. It's a Hitchcock homage soaked in '80s eroticism, genuinely gripping beneath its trashy surface. For viewers who want their mysteries stylish, their morality complicated, and their soundtracks synth-heavy.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love voyeuristic thrillers where the camera itself is the suspect, and you enjoy a director who turns a simple lurking glance into a baroque set piece, much like Rear Window's sly peeking.

Skip it if the sleaze runs front and centre, with explicit material and a leering view of women many viewers will find hard to sit through.

What it asks of you: Settle in for nearly two hours of lingering shots and a dark, sweaty mood; it rewards patience more than quick answers.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Vertigo1958

The Hitchcock blueprint De Palma remixes throughout. A man becomes dangerously obsessed with a woman he's watching; the voyeurism isn't incidental, it's the point. Essential.

But The pacing is deliberate and hypnotic rather than thrilling. If you want propulsive momentum, this moves at dream-logic speed.

Dressed to Kill1980

De Palma's earlier masterpiece of sexual anxiety and murder. Another telescope-and-transgression thriller with a transvestite killer and a woman in peril. Utterly confident filmmaking.

But It's provocative about gender and sexuality in ways that haven't aged without friction. Some will find it exploitative rather than exploratory.

Blow Out1981

De Palma at peak form: a sound engineer witnesses a car crash that might be murder, chases a conspiracy while falling for the wrong woman. Paranoid, erotic, technically dazzling.

But The ending is bleak in a way that punishes the protagonist for caring. Not cathartic; deliberately, painfully unsatisfying.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Body Double

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Stalking Moon1968

Both are about men watching women through systems (telescope/tracking) and the moral corruption that watching induces. Same ethical inquiry in different era and genre.

A western where Gregory Peck protects a white woman from an Apache pursuer. But it's really about surveillance, vulnerability, and the male gaze weaponized. Formal and unsettling in ways thrillers rarely are.

But It's slow, philosophical, and deeply weird. The genre doesn't promise what the film actually delivers.

Chinatown1974

A detective drawn into a mystery that keeps spiralling, where seeing too much is dangerous and doing the right thing is impossible. The template for cynical LA thrillers.

But It's slow. The genre is noir, which means mood matters more than plot momentum—you have to accept that.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie1976

Cassavetes' underground thriller about a strip-club owner in over his head with the mob. Raw, intimate, shot on a shoestring. A fever dream of Los Angeles corruption.

But The sound is muddy, the narrative deliberately fragmented. This requires patience and won't reward casual watching.

Laura1944

A detective investigating a murder becomes obsessed with a dead woman's portrait. Noir elegance, psychological depth, the original modern whodunit. Everything Body Double echoes.

But It's in black-and-white and moves at 1940s pace. The romantic elements may feel quaint to modern viewers.

Rear Window1954

Hitchcock's masterstroke about a housebound photographer who watches his neighbors through their windows and thinks he's witnessed a murder. The spiritual ancestor of every voyeurism thriller.

But It's a chamber piece—essentially one apartment set for most of the runtime. If you need scale and action, it's claustrophobic.

Blood Simple1985

The Coen Brothers' debut: a bartender in Texas gets tangled in a murder plot with a femme fatale. Gorgeous, tense, morally rotten. Released the same year as Body Double.

But It's deliberately opaque about what's true and what's paranoia. The ambiguity frustrates viewers who need clarity.

Jade1995

A later De Palma thriller about a woman suspected of murder during her therapist's investigation. Sexual intrigue, stylish murder sequences, delicious pulp. If you want more of the director's voice.

But It's campy and thin—a step down from his 80s work. The plot exists mainly to string together erotic set pieces.

In a Lonely Place1950

Both pin their narratives on Hollywood's perversion of desire—how the industry trains men to want images of women, then wonder why those men are dangerous.

Bogart plays a volatile Hollywood screenwriter suspected of murder. A paranoid, claustrophobic study of male rage and obsession with a woman who loves him despite knowing better. Brilliant.

But It's bleak and offers no redemption. Bogart is genuinely unlikeable here, which changes what the film is trying to be.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both treat voyeurism and cinema itself as intrinsically linked to eroticism and violence. Both men are asking: what does it do to you, watching?

Lynch's fractured noir about actresses, desire, and the falseness of Hollywood. Two women, a film within a film, a dreamlogic that refuses to cohere. Extraordinary formal control hiding genuine heartbreak.

But The structure is deliberately confusing. It demands multiple viewings and rewards interpretation over plot comprehension. Not for viewers who want answers.