Watch Murder à la Mod For Free

best movie i've ever seen.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Murder à la Mod (1968)* 1/2 (out of 4) Brian De Palma's feature debut has a woman (Margo Norton) trying to raise money so that her boyfriend (Jared Martin) can continue shooting a movie. The only problem is that the girlfriend is brutally murdered but who committed the crime? MURDER A LA MOD is a film worth watching if you're a fan of De Palma and must see everything that he's done. It's certainly much better than THE WEDDING PARTY but that's not really saying too much considering how bad that one is. This film here offers up a few interesting ideas and it's clear to see a few things that the director would use in later movies.There are several homages here to Hitchcock including some obvious ones to PSYCHO. These are mildly entertaining but the biggest problem with this movie is the fact that the story itself is just boring and it's quite confusing. Some would say that the director was already showing his "more style than substance" here. As far as the actual style goes, there's some of that on display here but it's easy to see this was a director learning his trade.The young cast were good for the most part and we also get William Finley in a small role. As I said there are several bits here that will appear in later De Palma movie including the sped up action (like in CARRIE when the boys are trying their suits on) as well as a woman being directed by the director (later seen in BLOW OUT). This film is a bit too boring for its own good but De Palma die hards will want to check it out.

Naive young lady Karen wants to help her struggling amateur filmmaker boyfriend Christopher raise enough money so he can divorce his wife. Meanwhile, jolly psycho prankster Otto stalks the building where Christopher is shooting a low-grade adult movie in order to keep himself afloat.What we have here is the world of exploitation, underground film presented by a young auteur working in the experimental art scene. I think it works. Granted, this is not a fully developed film, as it had no budget and little cast. But not unlike the early work of Polanski or Cronenberg, there is plenty of potential here.The film was released in one cinema in New York City, quickly disappeared not long after, and was thought lost. Lucky for us, this was not the case. Although on its own it may be nothing special, it is a crucial piece in understanding De Palma's talent and vision.We also get some music and screen time from William Finley (1940-2012), who would go on to work with De Palma many more times (and also with Tobe Hooper). His character alone makes this worth a peek.

A box perched on a dolly is rolling down a hill in the cemetery. A woman watches as it comes to a complete stop and then tumbles to the ground, lying only a dozen feet away from her. The box is shaking. There is something alive inside. Because of what we as an audience have seen elsewhere in the film, we have an idea of what is trapped inside the box- and we yearn for the woman to hustle up, run over and open it. Instead, she hesitates before slowly advancing forward, preparing to open the box with caution. The suspense of waiting is unbearable.Murder a la Mod was Brian De Palma's first thriller, his first cinematic experiment, and his first full-length feature film. History has always told us that De Palma's first films were his comedic collaborations with Robert De Niro (Greetings; The Wedding Party; Hi, Mom!), and that he didn't truly begin paying homage to Hitchcock until Sisters in 1973. If I haven't convinced readers otherwise, then I will consider this review a failure. I want nothing more than to make sure that De Palma's very first full-length feature stands alongside the rest of his gleeful, gorgeous, under-appreciated gems. You want deranged serial killers chasing after vulnerable, half-naked babes? You got it. You want a voyeuristic camera that never seems to give anybody a moment's peace? Here it is. You want to see an incident from every point of view? It's all in Murder a la Mod. To put it simply, this is the film that started it all.Like a select number of De Palma films afterward, Murder a la Mod is purely an exercise in style. De Palma doesn't worry about whether or not you follow the plot, whether or not you take the writing and acting seriously, or whether or not you even care at all what happens to the characters. We spend the 80-minute running time getting to know people like Christopher the porno filmmaker (Jared Martin); his dumb blonde actress Karen (Margo Norton), who is falling in love with him; her lady friend Tracy (Andra Akers), who will also play an important role in the events to follow; the nosy producer Max Wiley (Murder a la Mod producer Ken Burrows), who keeps hounding Christopher to have his movie finished on time; and you know what? All of them are cardboard. We couldn't care less about who gets killed, who survives, who gains anything, who loses, etc. The only amusing character in the entire film is a skinny young man named Otto, who, when he's not busy playing a fashion photographer in Christopher's latest movie, delights in playing "tricks" on various crew members. Armed with two types of icepicks- a "trick" pick and a "real" pick- his tactic is to use the first (harmless) type of pick on his victims and then smear them with ketchup blood. Whether or not he ever even uses the real pick is a mystery.But that's quite enough of the plot. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the film's surprises; and how Tracy ends up in conversation with a queer little old bank clerk (John Quinn) who has her handcuffed to a briefcase, I will leave for you to find out. Let's just say that between 3:32 PM and 3:42 PM, something atrocious happens to one of the characters, and De Palma then proceeds to show us the event not from one perspective, but four perspectives. This plot device is familiar to anyone who remembers Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), but De Palma famously makes it his own in this film; he later recycled this device most famously in Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002). One by one, we see different variations on the incident involving the rolling box, and later there is a battle of fists in the cemetery that, for some reason, reminded me of the axe duel in the dummy warehouse in Kubrick's Killer's Kiss (1955). Midway through the film, there is also a frenzied moment when De Palma's cameraman, Jack Harrell, races to keep up with a character who is rushing up the stairs, onto the roof, and then back down the stairs again- all in one take. We can't help, either, but take pleasure in watching Jared Martin, Margo Norton, Andra Akers and Ken Burrows as they helplessly try to turn Chris, Karen, Tracy and Max Wiley into believable characters without giving overly hammy performances.And at the heart of it all we have the daffy, diabolical trickster Otto, played by none other than the Olivier of De Palma cinema: the great William Finley. It was thought for a long time that Finley owned the sole copy of Murder a la Mod right up until the year 2006, when the film was bought and redistributed onto DVD by- who else?- the cult classics home entertainment company Something Weird Video. The new DVD transfer is not entirely satisfying, as it lacks subtitles (it is difficult to hear what characters are saying in a few spots) and a Widescreen ratio, so therefore we end up getting only a fullscreen transfer and- I suspect- not the whole picture. Not that it's the end of the world; Murder a la Mod should be seen regardless of its current state. "It's everywhere! Why can't you see?" sings Finley in the film's title song. He's singing about the nature of the murder, of course, but I would like to think that he's also singing about the influence on De Palma's subsequent career by what resulted from Murder a la Mod. Everything that De Palma was, and is, came from this film. What's more, none of the characters exit the film without first being subjected to one of De Palma's cruel cosmic jokes. Even Otto makes a horrifying discovery of his own.

Brian De Palma would go on to become the number one Hitchcock imitator with the release of films such as Sisters, Body Double and Dressed to Kill. It's his style that he is most famous for; so as you would expect, his first feature is absolutely full of style and various experiments...the result is a mixed bag really. First of all, the stylish flourishes and experiments are all at the expense of the story, although some of it is interesting to watch. The plot itself focuses on a maker of very strange films and a girl who falls in love with him. The plot is clearly not the most important thing about the film, however, and really nothing in it makes a great deal of sense. The picture is a stark black and white and this gives the film a distinctive look which is to its credit. The majority of the movie is taken up by sequences that see the film's pivotal event (an ice pick murder) from the perspective of several different characters. I would not really say that this film is entertaining or even fun to watch really; but it is interesting to see the film that De Palma made before he got famous and the film is worth seeing for that reason.