DOUBLE EXPOSURE – Photographer / walrus Adrian likes to think he’s a bit of a lothario, until bedding the babes starts to seem more trouble than it’s worth – his paramours are turning up dead, and in his dreams it’s his fingers curled around the knife handle. ‘Double Exposure’ plays like a snappy attempt at a De Palma rip off. Many of those hit the vid store shelves around the time (1983, in this case), and ‘Double Exposure’ is fairly typical of its ilk, forever juggling style with grubbiness (mostly coming down in favour of the latter). There are some interesting things going on with the doubling motif that runs through it and structures the suspense – is dream guy the real guy, and how does it all relate to Adrian‘s twin brother, a former mirror image now mutilated after an accident? Don’t ask psychotherapist Seymour Cassell, he’s only on board to manifestly not give a flying f@ck and, in one weird scene that goes nowhere, to show off a series of his own deliberately bad amateur photos. But ‘one weird scene that goes nowhere’ is actually the clue to framing ‘Double Exposure.’ Its strength, for the likes of me anyway, is that by accident or design (I can guess which), many of ‘Double Exposure’s scenes have ended up weird and a bit random, and whilst they might not go anywhere or say anything that makes hard sense, together they pull the film away from being just a meat and potatoes thriller that comes with side dish of filth. Impromptu mud wrestling, fragments of police procedural that feel like they’ve drifted in from the film next door, psychodramatic meltdowns that seem almost played for laughs… all season the stew and slide the movie further into nonsensicality. I’m not saying it’s inept, because it’s actually quite tight in some ways and at least manages to stay on course until it resolves coherently, but there’s this mild haywireness present throughout that, depending on taste, either undermines it a bit or gives it an edge. There is bloodshed, a little, and some moderate sleaze, but the quirky atmosphere of this dog’s dinner of a thriller allows it to rise above the sum of its parts.
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