9. Obsession (1976)
Critics of Brian De Palma may suggest that the director has spent most of his career ripping off Hitchcock, with this perhaps being at its most blatant in his overwrought homage to Vertigo, Obsession. Cliff Robertson stars as a businessman who loses his wife and child in a botched kidnapping - however, ten years on, he meets a woman with a striking resemblance to his dead wife whilst on a trip in Italy. Despite borrowing heavily from Vertigo, I would argue that De Palma's Hitchcock 'rip-offs' are better than Hitchcock's own features in the twilight of his career (Family Plot, Frenzy, Topaz). Obsession features sweeping melodrama, romance, mystery and suspense - never resorting to gimmicky violence or shocks like many other Hitchcock imitators. One should also praise a stellar leading turn from Cliff Robertson, an actor who never seemed to get the praise his work merited. Here he captures the sheer heartbreak of a man losing the ones he loves and subsequent obsession with the supposed double of his wife. To draw further comparisons to Hitchcock, Obsession features a score from Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, The Wrong Man), capturing the haunting, melodramatic subject matter of De Palma's Hitchcockian masterpiece.