Tag Archives: Brian De Palma

Body Double (1984) Brian De Palma, Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Mystery, Thriller

body-double-1984
Jake Scully comes home to find his girlfriend with another man and has to find a new place. In between his acting workshops and his job in a vampire B-movie, he scans the paper looking for anything. He happens to meet Sam Bouchard, a fellow actor who needs a house sitter. Both are pleased with the arrangement that will have Jake staying in the house and for a sweetener, Sam shows him his favorite neighbor, a well-built woman who strips with her window open each night. Jake becomes obsessed with meeting her and is able to help recover her purse from a thief, but shows his own phobia, he is incapacitated by claustrophobia when the thief runs through a tunnel. When Jake witnesses a murder, he finds out that the police love to pin crimes on peeping Toms. Jake discovers that here are just too many coincidences but must hunt them down himself without the police.
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Dressed To Kill (1980) Criterion Collection, Brian De Palma, Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

Dressed To Kill (1980)
One of Brian De Palma’s most divisive films, Dressed to Kill is a spine-chilling Alfred Hitchcock update for the late 1970s. Sexually frustrated wife and mother Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) visits her New York psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), to complain about her unfulfilling erotic life. When she then goes to meet her husband at a museum, she meets an anonymous man whom she follows out to a cab. After an afternoon of satisfying sex, Kate discovers that the man has a venereal disease, but that information becomes a moot point when a razor-wielding blonde woman slashes Kate to ribbons in the elevator of the man’s building. Blonde prostitute Liz (Nancy Allen), who caught a glimpse of the murderer, becomes both the prime suspect and the killer’s next target. With the police less than willing to believe her story, Liz joins forces with Kate’s son Peter (Keith Gordon) to get the psychopath themselves.
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Blow Out (1981) Brian De Palma, John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Mystery, Thriller

Blow Out (1981)
In the enthralling Blow Out, brilliantly crafted by Brian De Palma, John Travolta gives one of his greatest performances, as a movie sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a political assassination. He enlists the help of a possible eyewitness to the crime (Nancy Allen), who may be in danger herself, to uncover the truth. With its jolting stylistic flourishes, intricate plot, profoundly felt characterizations, and gritty evocation of early-1980s Philadelphia, Blow Out is an American paranoia thriller unlike any other, as well as a devilish reflection on moviemaking.
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