Over the course of the next three articles, I will explore and look at (in some cases for the first time, in others for the hundredth) each film in the oeuvre of perhaps the great modern master of suspense; Brain De Palma, across a multi-decade spanning career, perhaps no other director has embodied themes of suspense and voyeurism like he has. A provocateur in every sense of the word, his films are at times uncomfortably and almost always rapturously divisive. Even, from the off it seems, with what many see as his first film... Murder A La Mod from 1968.

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Murder A La Mod (1968)

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Often declared as the “lost horror film of Brian De Palma”, this film written and directed by the auteur, is a stirring example of exactly the sorts of pshyclolgical horrors his films will plumb the depths of time and time again, aswell as giving us multiple trademarks of De Palma’s style and signposts for where we can expect to go moving forward in his career, whilst also featuring whole scenes and concepts that De Palma will later re-fashion for future works, in particular in this case an early interview scene conducted by the voice of De Palma himself which will later be moulded into something rather different for The Black Dahlia. The film even has another staple of early De Palma work with a delightful title song humoursly commenting upon the title and themes of the film that we are about to see, here the song is written and performed by William Finley, who will also star in the film as the perverted director Otto. Finley was a true staple of De Palma’s work featuring in one of his earliest short films Woton’s Wake, aswell as multiple other films across the 70’s, 80’s and even in Dahlia in 2006, before he passed some six years later. The film is of course an amateur effort and the stuff for completionists to view rather than your average audience member, however any De Palma fan would be frankly amazed to see to what extent the style and brilliance of De Palma’s craft was already partially cemented in even this, his earliest feature film.

Greetings (1968)

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For me one can’t help but feel that GREETINGS comes off as HI, MOM! lite. Where all the comedy, satire and darkness in the latter feels focussed, genuine and thought though, where there is an icky roughness that does lead one to contemplate whether or not the notions of hatred are being presented as a form of intelligent satire or rather just cheap and lazy racist and homophobic improv, another angle for this to not come off as effective as the latter film is a very clear lack of a through line. Now sure HI, MOM! ends up having close to three entirely separate through lines, buts it’s still something, here the looseness of the feature, written by De Palma and Charles Hirsch, starring De Niro once more, as well as Jonathon Warden and Gerrit Graham, all just comes off as amateur and provocative without substance. The cited original influence as commented by De Niro and Hirsch on the film of Godard is more than obvious and is a nice Godard homage infused with a late 60s American cynicism and Vietnam war based satire. Again we are in the early territory where this is much rather a work for De Palma completionists to view rather than a general audience, whereas as we will now discuss HI, MOM! remains one of De Palmas best films in his entire ouvre.

The Wedding Party (1969)

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Nowadays The Wedding Party like many of ​these early films were looking at feels like an artefact rather than a film to return to and enjoy overtly, even the IMDB plot synopsis doesn't read like the basic synopsis as normal, even that must mention "Robert De Niro in his first starring role in Brian De Palma's wildly comic first feature". It's a film of firsts (De Niro was only paid reportedly $50 to appear) rather than a keen piece of knowing comedy about the wedding machine in America, although it is chaptered by the usual nuptials and goings on that a wedding should feature. De Palma may have directed the film but is credited without a writer and rather as a 'film by Brian De Palma, Wilfred Leach and Cynthia Munroe", with certain outputs also crediting these two as co-directors and all three as producers. Despite being made in 1963, the film wasn't released until 1969, largely taking advantage of early buzz around De Niro and De Palma following Greetings and De Niro's other acting work. However as much as this is indeed De Niro's first starring role, he's barley in the thing and he certainly isn't the lead. This is a low budget comedic farce that does indeed have moments of rather funny comedy, but overall just fails to capture any of the intricacies of a great event farce, and of course what better location for a farce is there but a wedding? No, the cracks here show and not especially one must say in a charming early feature kind of way. If De Palma wasn't so humble about his beginnings it would be the sort of film like Fear and Desire for Kubrick that you can easily see a creator disowning, however I wouldn't dream of putting that opinion in De Palma's mouth, for there is a clear intentionality here and an early love of dark comedy that would of course underpin the majority and certainly the best of De Palma's later masterpieces. It's just not for me, not as a film, nor even as a novelty piece of film history marking the debuts of two future legends of the screen. 

Hi, Mom! (1970)

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Certainly the best of the original triple bill of De Niro and De Palma has to be 1970’s Hi, Mom! (described in some marketing as a “A darkly twisted voyeuristic comedy”), however of all the films it’s the one where the De Niro factor is the least interesting element by far. Although the film does start off by with a return of De Niro’s Jon Rubin character from Greetings now entering the world of blue movies to put it lightly, or illegal peeping tom videos to put it rightly, the film eventually segues into its most interesting work and some of the best stuff of De Palma’s years – the ‘Be Black Baby’ experimental theatre performance. But we can get there in a moment. Firstly we are once more brought into the key concepts of De Palmas work, a continuing modernised exploration of the themes that Hitchcock so perfected, that of the moral depths of voyeurism and the easy perversion of such a thing. However this film is more interested from the off with lampooning the media landscape of the late sixties and early 70’s in the worlds of TV and later in the greatly expanding world of experimental immersive theatre. The film opens with De Palma shooting a POV recreation parody of a public service campaign from the time entitled “Give a Damn”, and where this scene at the time will have played perfect as a spoof, nowadays it still works as an exceptionally funny comment on the New York housing market and all the issues that so involves. The film too will later parody the National Educational Television network with its own National Intellectual Television network. It is with this network that we are first introduced to the centrepiece of the film, a piece of vital theatre called ‘Be Black Baby’, where righteous liberal white audience members are brought into a dilapidated building, put in black-face makeup and led around with violence both physical and verbal by black performers in clown-like white-face. The brutality and documentarian style of the extended central set-piece leads one to forget what film we are watching, no longer are we in the whacky Technicolor and high octane comedy of Hi, Mom! We are now in the hands of this theatre troupe, rather than the early humorous hands of De Palma. For a very long time we sit in this piece and let it play out to its natural end, before we are brought out back into the streets for a hilarious capper with the initially enraged audience goers no proclaiming loudly in audience testimonials outside ‘the theatre’ that everybody should come down and “try being black”. It’s a fierce, vital and deeply influential piece of mockumentary verite cinema in the middle of an otherwise slight whacky comedy, and what is that but the perfect encapsulation of the sorts of tone and genre shifts we will encounter along the entirety of De Palma’s illustrious career. To boot the film too abruptly concludes with for me one of the best and darkly dry uses of a character saying the title of a movie I’ve ever seen. With its hip sensibility and its tagline of “the ‘right on’ movie”, one could immediately jump to finding the film a touch dated, however any new viewer will find a complex and rather riveting look at themes perhaps all the more contemporary now than then.

Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)

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Perhaps the biggest oddity of De Palma’s early career is that of Get to Know Your Rabbit, a whimsical and wonderfully dry film following the absurd tale of a businessman who gives up his job “with a $9,000 sports car, a penthouse, and a terrific blonde” as the posters tagline states only to find happiness in the world of magic and tap-dancing, becoming a free lance tap-dancing magician. The film was written by Jordan Crittenden, who only went on after this to write four episodes of Soap and a TV movie from 1976 starring Desi Arnaz Jr. called How to Pick up Girls, and truly is a bizarre little comedy film with multiple different plot strands and many characters that pop in and out some effecting the plot and some, well, not at all. This also marks the first time De Palma worked within the studio system and it didn’t go as swimmingly as later efforts would, for instance De Palma was actually fired from the film and the studio too the film and re-cut it, swapping out De Palma’s darker and more nihilistic ending for a sweeter and more commercial one (even if it’s rather illogical). However for all the well-documented issues between De Palma and the studio, the fabric of those early De Palma comedies is all still here, with many of the repeated visual motifs that he would use to greater effect within his thrillers and horrors. The film as it stands today is however still that of an oddity, time after time the film will bring in repeatedly intriguing concepts that all really do blend together somewhat well to make a bizarre little comedy film with huge themes and ideas on business and the commercialism and capitalism in the case of packaging the possibility of happiness. The film also has some lovely performances by Tom Smothers and Katherine Ross, aswell as two really interesting turns by John Astin and Orson Welles (who in typical later years fashion didn’t learn his lines and didn’t get along all that well with folks on set). Although the film is indeed of course an oddity, one can really see the De Palma core, even if it’s was re-cut by its studio. De Palma wouldn’t work with Warner Bros studios again until The Bonfire of the Vanities, unfortunately another cataclysmic commercial and critical disaster.

Sisters (1972)

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Now with the first half hour of Sisters, a viewer watching chronologically De Palma’s career with a knowledge of what’s to come may feel a wonderful sense that we have arrived at the De Palma that we know and love; the writer and director auteur of many slick erotic and deeply provocative thrillers that defined a genre by aping and homaging another and modernising it. And for the first half hour, I feel you’d be correct. However whatever the circumstances that surrounded it to get how it ended up, the final act of the film loses all its pretences of realism or heightened realism one should say and heads back unfortunately into the loose and absurdist experimental realm where he began. The first half of this film with its sublime sequences of tension and it’s first signposting of the many elements of De Palma that we will so come to know and love, feels propellant, feels fresh and feels frankly terribly exciting and entertaining. It is in this pivotal third act where De Palma’s script falls apart and in the aim of making a shocking twist completely undermines all that has come before, Sisters is more so a YouTube watch for me, rather than one I return to over and over again. I say YouTube because there are certain sequences that I return to over and over again in isolation for instance, but as an overall complete film, for me it does still feel like an effort very far removed from the pristine perversion and perfection of some of De Palma’s later thrillers. The plot itself feels like the sort of stuff ripe for a solid thriller, the tale of Siamese twins torn apart and now one of them or maybe both are. From a shocking and dynamic opening credits sequence scored by Bernard Herrman (a collaboration that birthed the many infamous quotes from Herrman that people quote, such as “you sir, are no Hitchcock” and the like). This then leads into a solidification of De Palma’s voyeuristic themes and concepts, with a satiric and dark look at a candid camera style game-show. The pace and clip of these opening scenes as they unexpectedly and wonderfully lead from one to another does lead one to build a false sense that this film may be one of De Palma’s most shocking and best, however following an incredible and instantly iconic split screen extended sequence regarding the clean-up of a dead body... Well, Sisters, for me at least loses it way. It just does. It grows convoluted, unsure and overly surrealistic to a point where the original form and tone of the piece has been completely lost.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

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Now where does Phantom of the Paradise land for me? Of course anybody who knows me that I adore the musical theatre, love a musical film and have in my top 20 of all time Rocky Horror Picture Show a firm constant. So what do I think of the film that not only combines my love of the above, but also has a score by Paul Williams of Bugsy Malone and frequent Muppets fame, a figure who often comment as one of the most underrated composers in the world of musicals on film. Fuel all this of course with the obvious De Palma of it all, and what do you get... Well a film that I enjoy a lot, but doesn’t have the overall quality that these things would infer. Now I have often fought on this blog, on the podcast and in social gatherings that Rocky Horror is a genuinely excellent film, very well made and propellant to a fault. For me I can’t say the same for Phantom. Is the scope bigger? Undoubtedly, yes. Does De Palma pull off this high wire act, yes he does for what it is. This is the ultimate rejection of all his Hitchcockian elements and instead a full throated return to his more bombastic comedic turns from earlier in his career, all now with a fervent musical addition. Williams music here is funny, dry, great, rocking and frequently believable as what it is presented as; ‘some of the greatest music ever written’. Williams even appears here as the film’s chief villain, that of Swan. A devilish (yes) figure of cunning charm and concoction that seduces, destroys and invigorates all in his wake. Williams is brilliant in the role and is a great disappointment that he never went further with other acting lead roles. William Finley and Gerrit Graham are on absolute top form as the camp hearts of the film’s melancholic, melo-dramatic and absurdist foundation of insanity. Jessica Harper is the songstress siren who compels all who hear her, and she is good, but a bizarrely un-even character in the overall arc. Once lot convolution begins to take over and once elements of the supernatural enter this tale that – don’t laugh – up until this point had some realm of absurdist grit to it, we are truly off the rails and for some this is where the film finally really clicks and for other’s it’s an undeniable hurdle to get over. The film is an absolute hodge-podge combination of so many elements that its hard at times to keep it all straight, a film that points fun at where De Palma has come from whilst also inviting its return with honour, a film that opens with an un-credited and completely sincere Rod Serling opening Twilight Zone riffing monologue. It’s an unwieldy beast and in that phrase we find all its’ short-comings and all its immense joys.

Obsession (1976)

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In one of the great collaborations of the 1970’s movie brat generation, the brilliant minds of both De Palma and Paul Schrader united, clashed and ultimately artistically disagreed to make this modernised, over-conceptualised, visceral and still shocking to this day homage of sorts to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The tagline for the film was brilliant apt; ‘The love story that will scare the life out of you’. From a story by the both of them, then solely written by Schrader, then solely directed by De Palma, Obsession incredibly manages to feel like a combination of each of these insanely talented figures best talents. The film is Vertigo in many different ways – it’s concept of repeated narratives, plots starting over again, tragic romance, deeply disturbed psycho-sexual concepts and characters all infused and fuelled by the brilliant modernisation that naturally was never at Hitchcock’s disposal. The film is bizarre, romantic, perverse, melodramatic and strange to its core. Everything feels of a debt to Vertigo and it seems that De Palma relishes it, even the insanely good score by Bernard Herrman, who also wrote the original brilliant Vertigo score, can’t help but a few nodding, perhaps contemptuous, strains of that originals core infused into these new pieces. Unlike Vertigo which has everything as a sub-text at the best of times, Obsession proudly and with great emphasis on the tragedy of the affair, places a deeply disturbed set of circumstances to a whole new level that would only be topped by certain films thirty years later. Now this was a film whose twist actually took me by surprise and managed to make the whole film even more tragic, perverse and intriguing that what it was before. Obsession is daring, provocative and startling, whilst also always being deeply melodramatic at its core and frankly absurdist at times with its level of convolution. The politics and plotting of Schrader’s script, along with its chief perverseness is what propels the film, however De Palma’s direction makes the reveal sequence and the finale sequence some of the most entertaining, tragic and beautifully realised and compellingly conceived sequences in a thriller I have ever seen in complete honesty.

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At the heart of the film is Cliff Robertson who is daring and startlingly to what extent he will just completely crumble on film. It is a very impactful turn for an actor of his stature, bolstered, bettered and bested by his co-lead Genevieve Bujold who takes on the more complex character in the Kim Novak mould, who must portray many different people all through different lens, never exactly getting a firm grasp on who is who and who is playing who at any time. Then on the outside we find John Lithgow who will begin here his set of brilliant supporting De Palma turns with a daring start.No film in this era of the thriller wore it’s melodrama so boldly, whilst also never letting that element get away from the core story, the characters or the deeply troubled core twist of the piece. This is a ‘basic’ thriller that constantly shifts to make for one of the most shocking films of its time in my eyes, all propelled by an incredibly big budget sensibility about the whole affair, making for a whole new level of prestige about what could have easily been a sleazy, twist and turn, standard thriller. Schrader’s original concepts were to take this even to a cosmic level, however De Palma grounds the film in its own insane realism and grit. No film of this ilk has at its the three leads this one does either

Carrie (1976)

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Was there ever a more haunting and tragic figure than Carrie White? As a huge fan of both King and De Palma’s work Carrie has always held a soft spot in my heart, however this is not a love blinded by an adoration of the chief creative’s, Carrie’s film adaptation from 1976 is one of the more finely crafted and taut of King’s adaptations and as time has proved to us, frankly one of the best. Where I feel this film works better in some ways than the original novel, and of course it goes without saying far better than either future remake, is in the characterisation of the lead role. For in the novel and other adaptations one can make the argument that my opening statement is entirely up to interpretation and that in actuality the nature of Carrie’s ultimate retaliation is more of a grey area than anything else (one could even go darker and make allusions to the film being that off a deeply fantastical ‘school shooter narrative’), however the greatest strength of De Palma’s film and ultimately that of Sissy Spacek’s ungodly powerful and effecting Oscar nominated (aswell as also deeply complicated) turn as our titular figure, is that her outbursts of violent telekinesis are seen as not entirely revenge based, or entirely for that matter of her own volition, they are often spurned or frantic reactions to the horrors of her life.

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All in all the tale being told in the film of Carrie manages for me to have a far greater impact in removing some of the ambiguities of the novel, this of course may be the exact reason a constant reader would hate the film, however for me in almost every case it works for the better. In making Carrie a complete victim and her actions of violence be based more so around retaliation than revenge, one finds a deeper heartache to the tragedy of the piece. In making Amy Irving’s Sue Snell and William Katt’s Tommy Ross wholly understanding and truthful in their attempts to make Carrie’s prom the best they can, bolstered by two wonderfully sweet and loving turns from the two actors, the tragedy of what occurs to Carrie is made all the more horrifying. In making Nancy Allen and John Travolta’s hardened bullies the most virile and purile combination of horniness and wicked teenage villainy, we get to the root of the unfortunate nature of who brought Carrie to her end. And last but not least of course in the films second Oscar nomination, Piper Laurie as Margaret White offers us a turn of complete performance on the character’s behalf, it is the absolute rarity that the sheen of Christian goodness is dropped, Laurie’s Margaret is perhaps the most horrifying thing of all – a villain who doesn’t for one minute believe that they’re in the wrong. To conclude I wish to touch on De Palma’s direction once more, the elongation of certain set pieces and the power of the films edit by Paul Hirsch, used sometimes for rather hilarious comedy and sometimes for a haunting quality, is what gives Carrie the weight this rather simple tale of a high school horror the power that has made it shine on for so long after its release. It certainly wasn’t all downhill from here, but this was an incredible high to start with.

The Fury (1978)

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Perhaps it’s the huge budget, perhaps it’s even the John Williams score, and perhaps it’s the core of a best-selling novel adapted by its own author in a very straight forward fashion – that all adds up to make The Fury feel for me like De Palma at an early stage at his most commercial. Now let me elaborate, commercial by no means factors into the creative processes of this film in any way and in fact in many senses this is fresh, vital and incredibly De Palma film-making, but the overall plot of the film and the character and the possible seeding for the future even does make The Fury feel like an alt-world where De Palma got given the chance to helm a proto-young-adult novel into the first entry of a franchise, or at least it’s fun to think about that way sometimes. On the surface, The Fury may even seem reductive in the De Palma oeuvre, following up Carrie with a bigger budget psychic film? But The Fury is a whole different kind of beast. The film is looser, has an incredible amount more strands to its construction and is constantly shifting from one different film to another almost. To start it is a CIA espionage action drama, opening with a thrilling and frighteneing staged terrorist mass shooting, with some Farley badly aged representation of middle-easterners. It is here where we find Kirk Douglas, John Cassavettes and Andrew Stevens for the first time. Douglas is worn and haggard and his main plot consists of him as a stuggling father trying to get his on back, it’s thrilling stuff and Douglas is a great leading man for the narrative. Stevens plot is perhaps one of the most interesting sub-plots and one of the most under-utilised, as Douglas’s son, taken under the brutal and manipulative wing of Cassavettes and Fiona Lewis as a pair of controlling, government villains. Lewis is solid, sexy and complex, but again under-utilised. Cassavettes however is the haunting, terrifying and deeply unsettling villain of all villains in the De Palma oeuvre, up there with the absolute worst of them. Following this action opener then the film shifts and enters more of a Carrie mould, with another William Finley small role, sending us down the path of following Amy Irving for some time. Now as the film goes on Irving gets more and more deeply hysteric, which is needed and not too removed from her character, but in these earlier scenes of contemplation of her power, she is the brilliant and vastly under-rated actress that I love so much. As the film goes on it continues shifting from plot to plot, genre to genre even, overall leading to a bit of a pacing issue. However at the end of the day this is De Palma working for the first time really on a big budget canvas providing what will distinguish his 80’s from other directors, offering big budget thrillers that for the most part don’t falter his artistic vision. And those final moments... Now that’s how you end a film. Not exactly my favourite closing sequence to a De Palma feature , but certainly up there with my all time favourite closing frames. Talk about ending with a bang... Too cute?

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Of course with bigger budgets De Palma had an awful lot more freedom for his work in the 1980’s, but of course working with studio’s did lead to some unfortunate blunders. The 70’s for De Palma will always best standout I feel as a high watermark for his joyous experimentation and the height of his comedic work, and maybe even with Carrie, some may argue, his finest film effort ever.

-        -  Thomas Carruthers