Body Double

Body Double (1984), remastered, directed by Brian de Palma, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including 5.1 remaster, original theatrical stereo, isolated score, and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086984/

Video encoded in two-pass 9 000 kbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

English subtitles OCRed, proofed and corrected.

Note : Brian de Palma is a fascinating director, and his weirdness is on full display here. A clearly Hitchcock-inspired erotic neo-noir thriller about sexual obsession and perversion, and where pretty much all of the main characters pretend to be someone else, sometimes multiple alternate identities, during the movie. The plot itself is kind of preposterous, involving an out of work actor (Craig Wasson) who by luck gets to live in a luxury villa for free and gets obsessed with spying on a neighbor who does a striptease in front of her window every night, but that doesn't matter much. It's a sleazy, weird, nightmarish sort of vibe, early 80s Hollywood, gory murder is committed by a deformed looking "Indian", all of a sudden, Frankie Goes to Hollywood pops up, an extended musical sequence leads into a sex scene with a porn star (Melanie Griffith), and it just gets weirder. Just go with it and Relax, as Frankie would say. Oh, and look out for the Brinke Stevens cameo.

This is a decent remaster, although the prominent grain/noise made it hard to encode well. The cinematography is interesting, on one hand fairly typical colored gels and neon 80s night shots, but contrasted with a kind of washed out, ugly, sun drenched look for the daytime, which I guess reflects the film's view of Hollywood. I wish there was a commentary track, but probably no one dared try to sit down and analyze this.

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