Déclics

According the cinematographer R. Michael Stringer called out of the bed to bring help of the director William Byron Hillman that had already shot half movie in anamorphic ratio in bad manner, so Stringer advised him to reshot it entirely, well aside the bad start a lousy screenplay did not help to much the lame offering, worst the leading character Michael Callan overacted as wacko mid-age man often wake up fully wet with sweat after terrible nightmares, also as his closest brother the poker-face James Stacey in bad acting as well.

So what reliefs the audience's suffering, the gorgeous girls casting, Joanna Petet aside a slight older can pass for good enough all remaining girls are really sexy as Pamela Hensey as Sgt. Fountain, the heavenly Bambi portraited by the eye-candy Misty Howe and low and behold the newest Sally Kirland passing by as Boulevard street's easy girl among others beauties, without forget the classy Seymour Cassell the black star Cleavon Little and the iconic tough guy and old acquaintance Robert Tessier.

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5.

A photographer keeps having bad dreams where he has visions of him murdering many of his models. His amputee stuntman brother tries his best to keep his head afloat as the photographer starts a relationship with the woman of his dreams. Is the photographer really the killer? And will he make his new girlfriend his latest victim?

Double Exposure is a wonky and uncomfortable mix of drama, police procedural, and slasher/giallo cliches. It wants to be a character driven psychodrama, but it's never quite deep enough. It doesn't succeed much as a slasher either due to the poorly paced suspense/attack scenes that tend to end on more of a whimper than a bang. To make matters worse, the final twist is telegraphed from a mile away and triggers more eye rolls than gasps.

That said, Double Exposure looks like about 50 million bucks. There's clearly a ton of talent involved in this film and every shot looks like something from a film that's got a ton of money behind it. When all else fails, just turn off the sound and enjoy how the film looks.

First time I saw this film many years ago, I thought it was a pretty fair slasher film, but on second recent viewing, it's waned a bit - while Callan is okay as the central character, a men's magazine photographer suffering from bizarre and murderous apparent dreams, Jim Stacy as his knock-about brother, maimed in an auto-accident, is perhaps the film's highlight. The switch in dominance between Callan and Stacy's characters is interesting to see evolve, but it's a transition that's made difficult to follow due to the film's erratic narrative. Joanna Pettet gets undressed and even has a "When Harry Met Sally" moment with Callan in the back of his camper-van, as the only woman with whom Callan's emotionally fragile character can consummate.

The violence is pretty extreme at times, with sado-masochistic homicide the flavour of the early eighties slasher film getting 'double exposure' here, full-frontal female nudity, mud-wrestling, even Cleavon Little in a minor supporting role as a cranky police chief. It's eclectic. The cast has surprising depth with producer Callan managing to assemble an enviable cast that includes big Bob Tessier as a bar manager, Pamela Hensley as a ball-breaking detective, Seymour Cassel as Callan's shrink, Misty Rowe as Stacy's squeeze, Sally Kirkland as a voluptuous hooker and blink-and-you'll-miss Terry Moore in a flashback dream sequence.

Lairy wardrobe, colourful dialogue, pulsating synthesisers and tricky cinematographic effects momentarily distract you, but the narrative is so inconsistent and the editing (or perhaps scene sequence and continuity) so incoherent at times, that it never maintains any momentum. Highly stylised, the bold concepts and loud motifs (not to mention the substantial cast) should have made for a better movie all things considered, and yet, it's still no Brian DePalma psycho-thriller.

Here's something a little different from Crown International Pictures: a giallo-flavoured slasher with a strong psychological angle and a decidedly nasty edge. DOUBLE EXPOSURE tells the tale of a photographer plagued by nightmares in which he kills a string of young and beautiful women, and a real-life series of killings taking place at the same time. Could he really be the serial killer responsible?

DOUBLE EXPOSURE feels very much like an '80s-era giallo along the lines of A BLADE IN THE DARK or NOTHING UNDERNEATH. It has an unusually vicious edge to it for a Crown International film; it's not that it's particularly gory - and it's certainly nowhere near as gory as your average Italian giallo - it's just that the murders are ruthless and mean-spirited. Being a Crown film, there's ample nudity if you're after that, along with a very low budget that gives a schlocky look to everything that occurs.

The cast give solid rather than unspectacular performances and there are supporting turns for a few familiar faces like Cleavon Little. Michael Callan is pretty good as the weirdo lead, covered in sweat and acting deranged for the most part, although anybody with any experience of this particular genre of films will guess the identity of the killer early on in the proceedings. Nevertheless, DOUBLE EXPOSURE is a breath of fresh air when compared to Crown's typical output (i.e. low budget sex comedies).

I had to scan the credits of this movie for surnames beginning and/or ending in vowels because I'd swear it was an Italian giallo. All the signs are there: gratuitous violence and nudity, out-of-control cinematography, a completely ridiculous plot. Michael Callan is a photographer who has incredibly cinematic dreams where he murders his beautiful, half-naked models. When his beautiful, half-naked models start being murdered in real life, both the police and his psychiatrist (Seymour Cassel) begin to suspect that he is the killer. But is it him or is it his creepy brother who is missing both an arm and leg (but still gets to date former "Hee Haw" honey Misty Rowe and mud wrestle Playmate-to-be Kathy Shower)? If you've seen even one of these kind of movies, you already know the answer. Still if you love Italian giallos and 70's and 80's low-budget American exploitation flicks (a select group of people, I know) you'll be in drunken, late-night TV-watching heaven with this one.