REGION 2 DUAL-FORMAT RELEASE TO INCLUDE NAPOLITANO BONUS, ISOLATED SCORE, 40-PAGE BOOKLET, MORE
Indicator is a new British Blu-ray/DVD spinoff of Powerhouse Films that will focus on cult movies. Its first two releases, both on October 24, will be limited dual-format editions of Brian De Palma's Body Double and John Carpenter's Christine (the latter will include audio commentary by Carpenter and star Keith Gordon). Both are region 2 releases limited to 5000 copies each.The Body Double release will include the film's recent 4K restoration, as well as last year's 38-minute bonus feature, "Pure Cinema," in which first assistant director Joe Napolitano discusses De Palma's working methods and visual approach. It will also include the film's isolated score, an 8-minute TV interview with Craig Wasson from 1984, and a 40-page booklet "with a new essay by Ashley Clark and archival reprints, including a lengthy 1985 interview with De Palma." It will also have bonus features that had previously appeared on the 2002 DVD editions of the film.
ROBBIE COLLIN: WHY 'BODY DOUBLE' DESERVES ANOTHER LOOK - "IT ISN'T TRASH, IT'S UNREPENTANTLY TRASHY"
The Telegraph's Robbie Collin previews the Indicator release by saying, "When it was released in 1984, Brian De Palma's follow-up to Scarface was dismissed as exploitative trash. And that's exactly what he wanted." Here's a bit of an excerpt:
Few directors seize an opportunity like Brian De Palma. In 1983, riding high on the success of Scarface, De Palma was offered a three-film deal by Columbia Pictures, who wanted to see where this stylish and controversial pulp auteur would go next.The following year, he repaid them with a film that was so squalid, so bloodthirsty, and so critically pummelled that three weeks after its release – roughly, the amount of time it took to vanish from cinemas – the studio had torn up his contract, painted out his private parking space, and thrown him off the lot.
The film the then-44-year-old director gave them was Body Double: a Los Angeles-set erotic thriller in which a Peeping Tom becomes the key witness in the murder of a nymphomaniac trophy wife. Among its notable traits are an apparently wilfully bad lead performance from a virtual nobody, entire scenes openly plagiarised from Alfred Hitchcock, walk-on appearances from genuine adult film stars, and a sequence in which the aforementioned desperate housewife is skewered on an enormous safe-cracking drill. As far as Columbia was concerned, it was a $10 million fiasco. But for De Palma, the outrage was worth every last buck...
...Talking to Quentin Tarantino for a 1994 edition of the BBC’s arts series Omnibus, De Palma admitted that “after these battles…I said, ‘OK, you want to see violence? You want to see sex? Then I’ll show it to you.’” In short, the film was an almighty up yours – aimed not just at the censors, but also the critics, commentators and Hollywood players for whom Brian De Palma films were just brand-name misogynistic trash.
Except Body Double isn’t trash, misogynistic or otherwise. It’s unrepentantly trashy – not the kind of film you watch while your parents or kids are in the house, or with your curtains open. But it’s also a complex, provocative suspense thriller that bears comparison with the three immaculate Hitchcock classics – Vertigo, Psycho and Rear Window – it gleefully drags through the sludge.
Updated: Saturday, September 24, 2016 4:31 PM CDT
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