Body Double (1984)

A down-on-his-luck horror film actor scores free accommodation in a plush pad with a revolving bed and views of a sexy neighbour's nightly stripshow, in Brian de Palma's sleazy thriller, an unabashed exercise in emulating Hitchcock replete with voyeuristic hero (Rear Window) with a debilitating psychological condition that gets in the way of his uncovering the truth of a mystery involving body doubles (Vertigo), double-crosses, and murder.

★★★★☆

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Passion (2012)

The original Love Crime was a peculiar slip of a corporate thriller seemingly made up of lethargic first takes and about as remarkable as an episode of Models Inc but it still managed to intrigue, which cannot be said of Brian de Palma's remake which tries to dress things up with some de Palma thriller clichés - sex and a spiral stair and masks and twins - but they add nothing, really, and the new revamped ending is meaningless.

★★☆☆☆

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Dressed To Kill (1980)

Modern audiences won't be surprised by the twist in this 1980 Brian De Palma thriller about a high-class prostitute on the trail of a killer, but it is interesting to watch for the director's nods to Hitchcock, specifically Psycho, including an extended sequence in which poor short-term lead actress, Angie Dickinson, meets a kind of Psycho shower scene demise, her death being the last of a long string of insults to befall her including her repeatedly losing her gloves, misplacing her diamond ring, falling into a sexual liaison in the back of a taxi, becoming exposed to venereal disease, and being stuck in an elevator going down, not up, with a starey, obnoxious girl - you can imagine Dickinson thinking, "Just kill me already."

★★★★☆

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Blow Out (1981)

A movie sound guy becomes an earwitness to the death of a US politician, and his sound recordings of the incident suggest an assassination, in Brian De Palma's classic but very ugly, masochistic thriller starring John Travolta.

★★★★☆

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