A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Brian De Palma, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it turned out to be a rather sordid and twisted thriller, a genre in which De Palma always excelled through his career. In fact, I found out afterwards that it was the first time he made one of his typical Hitchcockian thrillers so this movie was quite a milestone in his career. Of course, the concept was really preposterous but, in De Palma’s hands, it became actually quite entertaining. It was also pretty neat to see Margot Kidder before she became a household name with the ‘Superman’ franchise and she really nailed it. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the start that there was only Danielle around but it had nothing to do with Kidder’s performance who was so unhinged and pretty much pitch-perfect here. Concerning the rest of the movie, to be honest, the beginning was pretty clunky. Indeed, I get that Philip and Danielle had to get some kind of meet-cute but this whole peeping Tom TV-show felt rather half-baked. The ending was also pretty much a mess but, back then, it was De Palma’s first attempt at the genre and he had also some limited resources. Still, the whole Siamese twin thing was really unsettling and a perfect fit for a typical De Palma thriller. I also loved how he seemingly out-of-the-blue switched the focus to Grace Collier, obviously a homage to ‘Psycho’ (he would do it again and even better a few years later with ‘Dressed to Kill’). The split-screen scene afterwards was pretty wild but also really effective. I think it was also quite clever that Collier was a journalist for a cheap local paper. This way, it explained pretty well why she would be so invested in investigating this case, beside the fact that she also obviously witnessed a grisly murder. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I actually enjoyed the damned thing and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.