14. “Hi, Mom!” (1970)
While an arch and devilish sense of humor is key to understanding the stylish, over-the-top second half of De Palma’s career, one has to wonder if ‘70s cinephiles lamented the end of his irreverent, reckless, scruffy and ’60s-inspired groovy style that spanned his early career and ended with “Greetings” (and to a lesser extent “Get To Know Your Rabbit“). Continuing De Palma’s amusing socio-political exploration, the filmmaker’s fourth feature is a counter-cultural comedy/quasi sequel to “Greetings,” this time focusing on Jon Rubin, the peeping tom/aspiring filmmaker played by Robert De Niro. A media satire and send-up, “Hi Mom!” centers on Rubin, back in New York finding his voyeuristic tendencies have taken on a more demented bent. Once Rubin gets involved with adult porn magnate, John Barren (Allen Garfield, sort of reprising his role from “Greetings”), he hatches a plan to shoot pornographic pictures by filming his unsuspecting neighbors; going as far as dating a girl next door and attempting to time their lovemaking to his calculating camera. With appearances by Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning and Paul Bartel, “Hi Mom!” is almost two movies in one, with its second half taking on an angry, politically charged mood in a completely different cinema verite style (this character could easily be a precursor to Travis Bickle). It’s as if the movie takes a “Vertigo”-esque turn (Hitchcock preoccupation alert!), and changes gears as Rubio becomes increasingly violent and urban guerilla-esque. When his porn-career plan fails, the disillusioned veteran turns to a radical theater group simply to fit in somewhere. Cue segments and the famous “Be Black, Baby” section, shot in documentary style that could be a movie unto itself. Structurally, the wild and ungainly narrative falls apart, but “Hi Mom!” is a complex and ambitious send-up of political extremism, white guilt and media perception, even when it doesn’t work.
13. ”Dressed to Kill” (1980)
De Palma’s love for and homages to Alfred Hitchcock have been discussed to a brutal, stabby death, but it’s impossible not to bring up the original Master of Suspense when talking about this particular movie, a “Psycho” homage taking in Angie Dickinson’s frustrated housewife, Michael Caine’s psychiatrist and Nancy Allen’s call girl. We imagine it’s the film that De Palma thinks Hitchcock would’ve made were he not operating under the Hays Code. Echoing “Psycho’”s most famous scene, this 1980 film begins with Dickinson’s Kate Miller in the shower having a rape fantasy, and the film isn’t shy about showing every inch of the actress. While Hitchcock’s shower scene doesn’t show the blade piercing the skin, De Palma’s murder later in the film zeroes in on a slicing blade and glories in the spurting blood from the first strike — what a difference two decades makes. Beyond the individual moments, there are of course thematic and stylistic echoes, including doubles, voyeurism and blondes (there are apparently no brunettes in De Palma’s New York), plus the ‘twist’ of *SPOILER* killing off your lead, Marion Crane-style, halfway through. But outside of the easy comparisons to the classic filmmaker’s work, “Dressed to Kill” stands on its own as a fun, sometimes silly psychosexual thriller that only De Palma could have made. The film is steeped in the year 1980, and many of its elements haven’t aged particularly well (it’s not one of Michael Caine’s best performances, to say the least), but it is still an enjoyable exercise in style, and one of the most fetishistic films of a highly fetishistic career. Ann Roth deserves extra notice for creating the glamorous costumes.
12. ”Obsession” (1976)
Considering how much bloody violence and explicit sex Brian De Palma has committed to cinema over the years, it’s pretty strange that “Obsession,” a PG-rated romantic mystery chiefly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock‘s “Vertigo,” remains one of his most controversial. The movie itself is pretty simple, at least within the decidedly warped canon of De Palma movies: a New Orleans businessman (Cliff Robertson) loses his wife and daughter in a kidnapping plot gone wrong and years later falls in love with a woman (Genevieve Bujold) who looks exactly like his late wife. Of course, his new obsession runs the risk of turning out like the last one, with Robertson losing the person he loves the most, especially since the dark forces that were responsible for the previous kidnapping are realigning. The main area of contention is the movie’s (SPOILER) incestuous subplot, with the eventual reveal being that the woman Robertson falls in love with in the second timeline is actually his daughter (she didn’t really die in the original kidnapping plot). In an effort to lessen the overt incest subplot and gain a distributor for the independent production, De Palma and his editor Paul Hirsch added effects and an establishing shot of Robertson sleeping to suggest much of their relationship, including when they have sex, was actually a dream. While “Obsession” is far from perfect — its pacing often drags, the cast is somewhat second rate (Robertson can’t pull off the psychodrama or the sexuality) and Vilmos Zsigmond‘s diffused cinematography is sometimes so soft that the image becomes a blurry haze (though there are some truly wonderful shots, of course, including a great moment that’s meant to represent the passage of 15 years). But there are just as many delights, like Hermann’s sweeping score and John Lithgow‘s bonkers performance.
11. ”Body Double” (1984)
While “Blow Out” is the undisputed masterpiece from De Palma’s so-called “red period,” “Body Double” might be the most flat-out fun. From the infamous teaser poster (which won an advertising award) to the movie itself, “Body Double” was marred by controversy that often tipped over into outright hate, with De Palma facing accusations, not for the first time, of misogyny, the criticism centered around a scene where a woman is impaled by an oversized phallic drill. Perhaps we’ve been desensitized over the years, but now the film plays more as a clever mash-up of elements of “Vertigo” and “Rear Window,” significantly sexed-up for the MTV eighties (there’s even a music video within the movie) It’s also infused with De Palma’s trademark absurdist sense of humor, particularly when, towards the end, the narrative shuffles between the actual plot and the cheesy vampire movie-within-the-movie (it sees actor Craig Wasson become obsessed by a neighbor (Deborah Shelton), then falling for a woman who doubled for her before she was murdered (Melanie Griffith). But even if you find “Body Double” deplorable (“sadistic” was probably the word most often used to describe it), it’s hard not to be awed by the technical achievements of some of the set pieces, including the extended chase that travels through an outdoor mall and out onto the beach or the aforementioned Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video. And there’s a certain baring-the-psyche, autobiographical joy in the way that De Palma indulges himself here, up to and including having Dennis Franz playing a version of the director. It’s undoubtedly #problematic, but Griffith is at least allowed to be a real character rather than just a sexual object, and the film ends up with the tone of someone telling a dirty joke, rather than feeling completely toxic.
10. “Raising Cain” (1992)
In the nineties, De Palma’s style had become almost a parody of itself, and its a credit to him that he didn’t alter his point-of-view, but rather embarked on a search for the camp within. Which is why “Raising Cain” might be one of his more overt homages to Hitchcock, mining the crux of “Psycho” to produce a murder mystery labyrinth balanced by one truly gonzo performance. A bug-eyed, memorably unhinged performance by John Lithgow carries “Raising Cain” as Dr. Carter Nix, who is basically the twist of “Psycho” made flesh and turned into the premise for a film. Nix is so disturbed by memories of his mother that he’s developed an excessive case of multiple personality disorder, one that has resulted in several new identities for him to try on. And all the while, he tries to find the root cause of the condition, with frequently murderous results. De Palma’s mastery of long shots reveals itself in a more contemporary context, as “Raising Cain” is also loaded with the sort of maddening trick angles and forced perspectives that reveal a storyteller brazenly emptying his bag of tricks. Less a movie than a magic trick, it’s De Palma dealing with a skimpy psychosexual theme, using it as an excuse to showcase not only a post-modern Hitch homage (watch those thundercracks!) but a standout nutball performance by Lithgow, never more terrifying, even as he tries on a number of increasingly absurd costumes and wigs. Rumors suggest a disastrous test screening forced De Palma to toss the set-up involving damsel in distress Jenny (Lolita Davidovitch), which gives “Raising Cain” a more askew, difficult reputation, as, essentially, the killer is the main character. What tickles isn’t the off-center moral confusion that creates, but the idea that De Palma is relishing challenging our notions of whether the “thriller” genre can ever feature a relatable “bad guy” who also happens to be totally batshit insane.
9. ”The Fury” (1978)
Usually you can tell whether or not someone is a De Palma die hard by where they stand on “The Fury.“ To the faithful, it’s a kicky, super-charged thriller, one in which the heightened style De Palma developed with “Carrie” spins gloriously out of control, a movie so artfully entertaining that it supposedly inspired Godard to return to more mainstream enterprises. For those on the other side of the fence, it’s an unnecessarily violent, muddled retread of the infinitely superior “Carrie,” one in which the constant flow of sparky shocks trumps little things like narrative coherence or tonal consistency. What makes “The Fury” such a singular moment in the director’s filmography is that both lines of thought are essentially correct: it is kind of a shit show, with the movie’s highly emotional thematic core, which attempts to dramatize what it’s like to be a young person victimized by powerful adults, repeatedly getting undercut by De Palma’s show-offy camerawork and abrupt tonal shifts. It’s an absurdist delight, one in which the rigid conventions of the seventies paranoid thriller are taken to such extremes that the movie takes on its own kind of profound, abstract beauty; earthly logic doesn’t matter because you’re so wholly transported. The plot of “The Fury” concerns teenagers who possess a psychic ability that makes them very attractive to a covert government shingle that hopes to weaponize them (led by a gloriously villainous John Cassavetes, who gets his comeuppance in the movie’s unforgettable final moment). Like the “X-Men” movies, “The Fury” mines the transition from childhood to adulthood as a metaphorically rich period of time, where the emotional trauma and feelings of alienation and heartache translate into superpowers and exploding heads. For such an underseen movie, it also has some of the director’s most virtuosic set pieces, including a wordless foot chase sequence (scored by John Williams’ amazing music), a foggy car chase that seems to have been filmed almost entirely on an elaborate set, and an absolutely astounding sequence set at a now-defunct indoor amusement park where one of the psychically gifted teens lets out his fury.
8. “The Untouchables” (1987)
De Palma’s first of two blockbuster revamps of classic TV series is hardly a feat of historical accuracy. The story of Elliott Ness, his team of super-cops, and their attempt to take down Al Capone in Prohibition-era Illinois is, through De Palma’s lens, and the words of writer David Mamet, whose theatrical, tough guy dialogue (“He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”) is perfect here, more comic book than history lesson. While plenty of facts are smudged to tell the audience the legend instead of the truth — this is like the dime-store paperback edition of the truth, “Dick Tracy” for adults if you will — it’s hard to argue in favor of verisimilitude when the results are this entertaining. Kevin Costner’s take on Elliot Ness as a goody-two-shoes cop who just wants to take down Capone is the star at his peak, just the right moral center to give balance to all the high quality (and high decibel) work done by the supporting cast: Robert De Niro as Al Capone is lights out; Best Supporting Oscar winner Sean Connery (being awesome and so wonderfully Conneryish as a badass Irish beat cop); fellow untouchables Andy Garcia and especially Charles Martin Smith, who brings so much joy whenever he’s onscreen, be it firing a shotgun for the first time or digging into Capone’s taxes for any angle at an arrest. And we can’t forget Ennio Morricone’s lovely, bombastic score, old fashioned in all the right ways. It’s a tough trick to pull off something as strong as “The Untouchables,” which is artful purely and only for being so damn entertaining. It’s inarguably De Palma as director for hire, but his own stamp is clearly visible, “Battleship Potemkin” homage and all.
