Murder à la Mod (1968) review

In order to make enough money to divorce his wife, photographer Christopher (Jared Martin) makes films of women undressing, tries explaining the situation to his girlfriend Karen (Margo Norton) ... but then she's murdered and a prankster named Otto (William Finley) is running around with two ice picks: one's real, the other is fake.  As De Palma's first feature-length film it provides an early peek into the Hitchcock influence that would carry him through his whole career and it's certainly not without some energy (he was in his late 20's), although the acting is quite rough and his experimenting with time frames makes it unnecessarily hard to follow.  For fun, the good folks at Criterion included this as an add-on for their release of Blow Out: those with an interest in cinema's history should take a peek since it's important to see how a notable American auteur started out.