Brian De Palma’s 1973 comedy thriller, full of false promise. At the time, its way of wringing thrills from genre conventions at the same time it mocked them seemed imaginative and original; but in the light of Carrie (1976), Obsession (1976), and The Fury (1978), it seems more like a dead end—the mark of a superficial stylist unable to take anything seriously, including his own work. The tip-off is in the relentlessly brutalized characters—including Jennifer Salt as an impossibly idiotic girl reporter and Margot Kidder as a separated Siamese twin.