Musical Montage: Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Relax”
Along with all the other over-the-top things that happen in director Brian De Palma’s 1984 homage to Hitchcock, Body Double, the 80s band Frankie Goes to Hollywood is featured in a sequence that finds main character Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) on the set of a porn movie, performing their hit “Relax.”
“Relax” was released in the US in March 1984, but it was a slow burn up the charts, peaking at #67 on the Billboard Hot 100. In January 1985, the song was re-released in a mix close to the UK original, and that version eventually made it to #10. In their native UK, Frankie Goes to Hollywood held the #1 and #2 songs on the UK charts in the summer of ’84, with “Two Tribes” and “Relax,” although, for most of 1984, the song was banned by the BBC for its sexual content and the band’s overtly queer image and promotion. By the time the song and the band appeared in Body Double, the band had gone through three music videos, with a live performance version making the rounds on MTV. The sequence from Body Double was turned into a music video to promote the film and also made the rounds on MTV. The song found new life in the movies again in 2001 when it became a central plot point in Zoolander as the song that turns Derek Zoolander into a brainwashed assassin. You can watch the Body Double version of the music video below.
