CRAIG WASSON      MELANIE   GRIFFITH     DEBORAH SHELTON      GREGG HENRY

Rear Window meets Vertigo in Brian DePalma's homage to Hitchcock. Budding actor JAKE SCULLY(WASSON)is having a bad hair day. First he gets fired from yet another movie set. Jake suffers from claustrophobia and the horror movie's director (DENNIS FRANZ from NYPD)refuses to keep a vampire on the payroll who won't shut his coffin lid. Then he comes home to find his girlfriend engaged in afternoon delights with someone else. It's her apartment so he has to move but with no job or money...enter SAM(HENRY) to the rescue who is going out of town for two weeks and has an ultra-luxurious condo complete with revolving bed, a telescope for star-gazing, and satellite TV where Jake can crash until he finds his own place. He just has to water the plants and keep tabs on Sam's favorite neighbor, a gorgeous brunette(SHELTON) into whose window he can peep through the telescope. Every night at the same time she puts on a "strip-and-much-more" erotic dance routine that makes JAKE forget about the girl who dumped him.

He has to meet her so one day he follows her from a shopping trip in Beverly Hills to the beach where a man snatches her purse and takes off into a tunnel. Jake runs after him but is immobilized when he gets inside the tunnel and has a claustrophobia attack. The man, who Jake describes as American Indian, gets away with some of her credit cards. She thanks Jake anyway for being brave enough to chase the thief and demands to know why he was following her. Her name is GLORIA REVELLE, she's very rich, in the middle of a nasty divorce, and thinks her husband paid him to follow her. Jake explains how he's been dying to meet her, she's flattered; but before he can see her again she is brutally murdered by that same Indian as Jake watches helplessly through the scope.
He runs to her building but it's too late. As the only witness he has a hard time convincing the cops that an Indian killed her. They suspect her husband. Worse is that the police think he did it because he was perverted enough to watch her through a telescope!

Jake happens to see an x-rated movie preview featuring a porn star named HOLLY (GRIFFITH) doing the same routine bump-for-grind that Gloria had done every night. He tracks her down and with her help discovers the setup: he was chosen by Gloria's husband to be a convenient witness to her murder. (I don't want to spoil it by telling any more but if you've seen VERTIGO you can guess the remainder of the plot.)

The one thing I disliked about this movie was the gory graphic depiction of the murder. It wasn't necessary. REAR WINDOW was just as suspenseful without making the audience sick. Likewise for the female nudity in the closing scenes..it serves no purpose like it did in the erotic dancing spots where the purpose was to keep Jake watching her so he'd witness the murder. Nevertheless this film was entertaining. If you like Hitchcock plots you'll enjoy this. So rent it and watch...instead of looking in your neighbors' windows.
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