Holly Body and the Porn Industry Subplot Body Double

Holly Body collapses the line between Hollywood and pornography

The second half of Body Double moves Jake Scully out of the Hitchcock-homage thriller and into the Los Angeles pornography industry. To find the woman who performed the erotic dance in Gloria's window, Jake auditions for a porn film. This structural pivot — from Hitchcock pastiche to porn-world detective story — is the most radical thing about the film.

Griffith plays Holly as a professional who sees through everyone else's pretensions

Melanie Griffith plays Holly Body as a working professional who does her job, knows her worth, and has no patience for pretension. In a film full of deception, Holly is the only character who is exactly what she appears to be. She's honest about her work, her body, and her motivations. The porn actress turns out to be the most authentic person in a story about Hollywood illusion.

Griffith understood the character as something larger than the exploitation framework critics assumed:

"I know she's a controversial figure, but she pertains to women in all areas. She's proud of what she does and she's not affected by what people think. This is a means to an end for her. She does what she does and she does it the best. She's a business woman, first of all." — Melanie Griffith, The Morning Call (1984)

De Palma cast Griffith specifically for what she brought to the film's second half:

"Griffith brought a comic edge that I wanted to be a major part of the tone of the second half of the movie." — Brian De Palma, The Philadelphia Inquirer (1984) (paywalled, not verified)

Griffith's performance crackles with energy in scenes where the rest of the film is deliberately languid and controlled. Her scenes with Craig Wasson have a comic charge — she's smarter than Jake, more self-possessed, and completely unimpressed by him. Vincent Canby singled her out in the New York Times:

"She gives a perfectly controlled comic performance that successfully neutralizes all questions relating to plausibility... What is new is the self-assured screen presence she demonstrates here, and it's one of the delights of Body Double." — Vincent Canby, The New York Times (1984) (paywalled, not verified)

De Palma used the porn industry as a mirror for Hollywood

Griffith saw the film's real target clearly:

"It is a parody of Hollywood more than anything." — Melanie Griffith, The New York Times (1984) (paywalled, not verified)

The film's structural argument is that mainstream Hollywood and the adult film industry are engaged in the same enterprise — selling fantasies built on the display of bodies — and that the only difference is respectability. Dennis Franz (Body Double) plays the same character in both worlds: Rubin directs Jake in the vampire film in the first act and directs the porn film in the second. Same director, same set-up, same power dynamics. The casting is the argument.

The "Relax" music video sequence bridges the two worlds

The centerpiece of the porn subplot is an extended sequence set to "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. De Palma stages it as a full music video within the film, with Jake navigating a surreal, theatrical porn set. The sequence is deliberately excessive — gaudy, artificial, and hypnotic — and serves as the moment where the film's genre distinctions (thriller / music video / porn) collapse entirely. See The Frankie Goes to Hollywood Sequence.