It's still Halloween season, so I wanted to focus on a hippie horror. Actually, things are more on the mod side in this 1968 Brian De Palma film: Murder a la Mod.
In this film, a young woman named Karen helps her boyfriend Chris raise enough money to divorce his wife. Oh, Karen. Chris is struggling to make ends meet as an aspiring filmmaker who is shooting a low-budget porno in a building that is also being stalked by a psychotic man named Otto.
Otto basically makes a real live horror film of his own while Chris is trying to make his film. We do not get to see the cool smut that Chris is making beyond some scenes of a babe in her bra. We do get to see Karen's butt when she steps into the shower...and her breasts when she gets viciously attacked.
Murder a la Mod is admittedly more about mods than hippies, but mods were the precursors to hippies. Mods were short-lived, shaggy-haired hipsters who loved British garage rock. They came in between the beatniks and the hippies, so it's safe to say they were also experimenting with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. So in a lot of ways this movie shows us everything that comes before, from the hippies to De Palma's career.
For a long time, Murder a la Mod was a legendary film in arthouse and horror circles. That is because it was only released in one movie house in New York City in 1968. It did not play anywhere else and it disappeared shortly after that one run. No one could find a reel of the film for decades!
You have likely never heard of De Palma's Murder a la Mod. There are a lot of reasons for that. This is actually Brian De Palma's first feature film to be released as his first film The Wedding Party did not get distribution until after Murder a la Mod and Greetings.
Murder a La Mod does not quite have De Palma's signature style yet, although you can see hints of his voice coming through. It is clear the filmmaker hadn't really found his horror-comedies that we would all come to know him by.
De Palma would get major success with 1972's Sisters which lead to his smash hit Carrie only a few years later. So, he wound up being totally fine! But what happened to Murder a la Mod?
It was thought to be lost for good until April 2011 when the print was found and released by the Criterion Collection as a bonus feature to the blue-ray of Blow Out. That is because in 1981's Blow Out, also directed by De Palma, one of the characters watches this film on TV. So it was never actually lost! De Palma sneakily had it the entire time.
Blow Out's plot is not really the same at Murder a la Mod, but it also involves a scary psycho with a knife. It makes sense that that slasher film would make a subtle nod to another one. I think that's a really cool move on De Palma's part!
Is Murder a la Mod a forgotten classic? Eh. Not really. It feels like it stumbles through De Palma's style and storytelling that we will get better versions of later. It is a cool watch from that perspective. It does, however, feature Margo Norton and Jennifer Salt showing skin, so that makes it worthwhile.
In fact, let's watch Margo Norton take a shower before she meets her gruesome end. Have a happy Halloween with this sexy scene:
