Power-drilling scene any good?

I'm not sure where this discussion is going. In the case of Body Double, or American Psycho, to read either of these movies literally is to entirely misunderstand the point. They are both, through and through, satire. Body Double, it could be argued, is actually a critique of the objectification of women in cinema. Look at the story. Guy peeps. Guy is actually peeping at a body double. He is a voyeur looking at something he is erotically stimulated by. It turns out he is looking at Melanie Griffith, the real heroine, who it turns out is smart, business minded, and actually rattles off a laundry list of things she's NOT willing to do for money. She holds her ground, tells the idiot lead he's full of crap and shoves off. This is essentially the movie going experience in a nut shell. We are never actually looking at what it seems we are looking at. De Palma got the idea for Body Double while he was making Dressed to Kill, while they used a body double for Angie Dickinson. It's about cinema itself, as so many great movies are, such as Blow Up, for example, or Adaptation, or 81/2. It's not nearly as good as any of those other movies, but it's pretty funny, if read as a satire. My reading of American Psycho is as an indictment of the 80's in general. This could easily be interpreted as one of the most selfish decades in the history of the United States. Reaganomics, junk bonds, liquidations, abandonment of the mentally ill, I mean what more do you need? The relentless playing of the most popular songs of the era really drives the point home, particularly his obsession with Phil Collins. It's actually a very funny movie, as are most Brian DePalma movies. The thing is, you have to go into it with the right mindset to enjoy it. If you go into a Brian DePalma movie looking for reasons to be offended, you're definitely going to find some. But you're also missing the point.

The smart thing with this film and De Palma is that the film is quite consciously parodying the violence/eroticism thing that many horror films go for -- especially the teen victim slasher films in which many death scenes involving the young female victims (and the male victims too sometimes) definitely feature the knife (or whatever tool) being used in a very phallic manner.

The film's last scenes especially parody these conventions, and the over the top blood/boobage image that is on screen while the final credits roll is hilariously silly (especially right after we hear the actress give her list of instructions as to how she wants things to be handled so to speak). And as another poster astutely noted Melanie G is anything but a helpless slasher victim in this film. Rather the opposite -- very street-smart, very sexually confident, and no tolerance for obnoxious idiots.

"I love those redheads!" (Wooderson, Dazed and Confused, 1993)