Body Double · reception & legacy
1984 · Brian De Palma
How Body Double has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Trashed on release in 1984 — critics called it sleazy and misogynist, protests and thinkpieces followed, and it flopped — but decades of reappraisal have turned it into one of the most beloved entries in the De Palma cult, now read as his most gleefully self-aware movie about voyeurism and moviemaking itself.
What's debated
The evergreen fight: is it a brilliant satire of Hollywood sleaze or just the sleaze itself — De Palma diehards say the excess IS the point, detractors say that's a convenient alibi.
Its footprint
Home of the infamous 'Relax' sequence, where the film morphs into a full Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video mid-scene — one of the great 80s cinema/pop crossovers — plus a power-drill set piece that's shorthand for peak De Palma outrageousness.
Where it stands
A cult object turned canon climber: once the 'indefensible' De Palma, now a Letterboxd favourite and a rite of passage for anyone working through his filmography.
Named by the director
Influences Brian De Palma has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Rear Window (1954) — De Palma openly framed the film's voyeur-across-the-way premise as his riff on Hitchcock's apartment-watching thriller.
- Vertigo (1958) — He acknowledged building the film's obsessive-following strand directly on Vertigo's template.
- Alfred Hitchcock — De Palma has repeatedly and unapologetically cited Hitchcock as the master whose grammar of suspense and voyeurism this film deliberately reworks.