Obsession (1976)

I felt like the timing in De Palma's Obsession was really off. But... well, this is just a weird movie all around. Cliff Robertson is the star, and though he's very attractive, he gives a very strange, wooden, almost amateurish performance.

John Lithgow is also in this – he is the villain in De Palma's Blow Out too, and is creepy as ever here – doing a questionable southern accent. Geneviève Bujold is great, as always – I will never understand why she wasn't a bigger star. And Bernard Hermann's final (or almost final) score is... insistent and very Bernard Hermann. Obsession's most important intertext is Hitchcock's Vertigo, which Hermann also scored. 

This was my selection this week for my unseen movie club, and we all thought it was a very silly, unintentionally campy movie. De Palma makes some very strange choices, although they're not all his fault. The script is by Paul Schrader. (Both Schrader and Hermann will work on Taxi Driver this same year.)