CATCH A CLASSIC
Directed by Brian De Palma
TCM, beginning at 5 p.m.
Turner Classic Movies often showcases the works of director Alfred Hitchcock, who has influenced many later artists with his work. Tonight, you’ll see a number of movies from one of the filmmakers who have most obviously been influenced by the Master of Suspense — Brian De Palma. In the style, content, plot structures and occasional outright homages contained in a number of the psychological thrillers he made earlier in his career, several of which will air tonight, De Palma has not hidden the impact Hitch has had on him. Before getting to those thrillers, though, the evening begins with a more conventional and commercial film that De Palma directed, 1990’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (pictured), making its TCM premiere. The dark satire is based on Tom Wolfe’s bestseller and stars Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith. Bonfire did not exactly burn up the box office and was also generally not as critically well received as the next films on tonight’s lineup, De Palma’s early thrillers. First among those is Obsession (1976), which clearly bears the influence of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and is just as thrilling in its tale of a man who falls in love with a woman who is the exact lookalike of his long-dead wife. Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold star. After that is the 1972 psychological slasher film Sisters, with Margot Kidder in a dual role as a woman and her separated conjoined twin who is suspected of a brutal murder. In its references to films like Rope, Psycho and Rear Window, and even with its musical score by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann, Sisters is clearly a De Palma work indebted to the Master of Suspense. The lineup concludes early tomorrow morning with the network premieres of Blow Out (1981) and Body Double (1984). The former thriller, starring John Travolta, is more directly influenced by another iconic filmmaker, Michelangelo Antonioni, specifically his 1966 film Blowup. Body Double, starring Craig Wasson and Griffith, brings De Palma back to his Hitchcock influence, in a graphically violent tale that references titles like Rear Window, Vertigo and Dial M for Murder. —