Body Double (1984) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Thriller |
Biographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Dolby Digital Trailer-City |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1984 | ||
Running Time | 109:36 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Brian De Palma |
Studio
Distributor |
Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Craig Wasson Gregg Henry Melanie Griffith |
Case | Brackley-Trans-No Lip | ||
RPI | $34.95 | Music | Pino Donaggio |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
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Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
English German French Dutch Spanish Italian Portuguese Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | No |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | Yes, during credits |
From there, he delves into the world of porno filmmaking for reasons I can only guess at. I mean, think about it in a logical fashion for a second: the object of your desire is murdered, you see this awful looking blonde in a porn film, and suddenly you decide that the two must be connected in some manner. You then rush off to start a career in pornographic films, in the hope of getting some answers as to what motivated the crime, not to mention a chance to get your grubby hands on the perpetrator. As Jake dives into this world, he meets up with a cardboard cut-out posing as a porn actress by the name of Holly Body (Melanie Griffith). To go into the film any further here would be traumatic to me, but suffice to say that there's plenty of violence and hot sex from this point onwards. By the time we get to an explanation of the actual story, most sane people will have ceased to care.
Not surprisingly, the only lead actor in this tragic load of slop who had a real career afterwards was Melanie Griffith, and the career she had after this film was not what you'd call a particularly remarkable one. The cast listing on the packaging would have you believe that Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame is a star in this film. He gets maybe all of fifteen minutes screen time in this film, if that. All in all, this has to have one of the most poorly executed plots and hysterically bad acting I've ever witnessed. In the end, this all seems to become a film about how an actor overcomes his claustrophobia rather than anything with any real interest. If there is one great thing about this film, it is that it is just so hard to take seriously. The packaging would have us believe that this is supposed to be some kind of erotic thriller, but I cannot help but get the feeling that director Brian De Palma was laughing his bum off all the way through making this film.
Strong fluorescent lights become a blur of white, lacking in any distinction as an object. However, if there was an area where this film truly showed its age, it was in the colours. The colour scheme is muted and drab to the point where it looks more like an animation using a series of oil paintings, and after nearly two hours of this kind of video quality, I had a similar feeling to that which would come from watching a Days Of Our Lives marathon. However, this would appear to have more to do with the film that was used in 1984 rather than being any fault of the transfer. MPEG artefacts were mostly absent from the presentation, although details in objects distant from the camera were lost. Whether this is the result of the MPEG encoding or the logistics in the original photography is a moot point because some of the scenes where this occurs suffer for it quite a lot. However, most of the film is shot with bright lighting. The most likely problem is that you're going to find the picture blurring as your eyes start to close in a reflex of sheer boredom.
In spite of that artificial feel, the dialogue was clean and easy to understand throughout the film. The only times when it was not perfectly clear was when one of the main characters, usually Scully, was muttering something that wasn't meant to be understood. Some listeners will have a little trouble fully understanding the lines spoken by Deborah Shelton, but I am not amongst their number. Essentially, any losses in clarity of the dialogue can be attributed to the director's intentions. Audio sync was not a problem on either player, although I guess I would have to use a Pioneer player to really tell if there were any problems - suffice to say that non-Pioneer equipment will not have a problem with this dialogue. It is so banal at some points that sync problems might actually make it more interesting.
The only memorable piece of music in this film was the song Relax, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. It appears for about three minutes in a sequence where Scully is wandering around a nightclub with some unsavoury characters (I believe parts of this sequence were used to comprise their music video, in fact). This, more than anything, is what dates this film beyond the point of no return. Contrary to what some people might believe, Frankie Goes To Hollywood were the first commercial band to become the focus of a computer game all the way back in 1984, with Michael Jackson and The Spice Girls following suit years later. This five minute sequence is really the only memorable portion of the film.
The surround channels yawned occasionally at the limited amount of work they were given, and the subwoofer basically twiddled its thumbs for two hours. This is very much a frontal mix, and it couldn't be clearer from this sound and the aforementioned video problems that this DVD was rushed to release. A little more time and effort for a 5.1 remix would have worked wonders for the entertainment value here.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video quality is average at best, and enough to give you a headache at worst.
The audio quality is pretty ordinary.
The extras are very ordinary.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Toshiba SD-2109, using S-Video output |
Display | Samsung CS-823AMF (80cm). This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL). |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. |
Amplification | Sony STR DE-835 |
Speakers | Panasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Sharp CP-303A Back Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer |