Dressed to Kill
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Movie Reviews of Dressed to Kill
Movie Review: Dress to Kill still thrills after all these years
Summary: 4 Stars
When Dressed to Kill came out a lot of people were furious. Some thought it was a rip off of Psycho and Vertigo. Some thought it was woman hating becuase the heroines are an adulteress and a hooker and the villain only attacks women who are not virtuous. People acted like Brian DePalma was film enemy number one. Years have passed and the critics looks silly. Dressed to Kill was a brilliant homage to Hitchcock's body of work. It was both a riddle and a campfire scary tale brought to life on film. Angie Dickensen as Kate, plays a woman who's frustrated and suddenly in an extraordinary sequence gets a chance to make her fantasies come true. Pale, ice blonde and dressed in ladylike white she goes to an art gallery and meets a tall, dark man and falls into his arms, car and bed. Dreamy, right? Yes, but since this is a Hitchcockian movie, poor Kate wakes up to a nightmare. Mr. Tall and Dark has a venereal disease and deliberately exposed her to it. DePalma doesn't tell which one. AIDS was unknown back then but everyone was talking about Herpes which had and still doesn't have a cure. VD was terrifying. All of a sudden Kate's boring life and boring husband don't seem so bad and she just wants to run home. She does but meets someone even worse than Mr. Tall and Dark.
A brassy haired woman in a trenchcoat, sunglasses and a big ole knife catches Kate on the elevator and stabs her to death. Just as the audience is going "Hey, they killed, Angie!" a new heroine appears. Nancy Allen, who was no Kim Novak but not as bad as the critics said back then, plays a cheeful, unashamed prostitute who is just leaving a client when she comes sees Kate being attacked. The killer gets a good look at her and the chase is on. Kate's precocious son, the hooker with a hear of gold, and the salty tounged detective who's assigned to the case try to catch the killer.
The crazy woman with the knife turns out to be someone who's been hidden in plain sight to the audience all along and it's shocking when the truth comes out. The ending is violent and a real kick in the gut. It's not a happy ending. The killer is caught but the survivors are left with scars that DePalma seems to hint, won't ever go away. Dressed to Kill stands up well after all these years. It's a wry commentary that says some dreams shouldn't come true and sometimes you really don't want to know what's really behind a man's mask.
Movie Review: De Palma's mastery of the craft
Summary: 4 Stars
There are sequences in DRESSED TO KILL that may be as formally accomplished as any film sequences ever made. The scene in the police station, with multiple framings and glass partitions mirroring De Palma's use of the split screen in other sequences (and with the characters secretly eavesdropping and spying on one another while being oblivious to how they are being spied on by others) is a virtuoso example, but the most stunning--and the most famous--may be Angie Dickinson's cruising sequence in the museum, with Dickinson lured and teased by a mysterious man with whom she's flirting. Although this was a big hit when released, DRESSED TO KILL has not sustained its reputation quite so much over the years as much as other De Palma films have, such as CARRIE and THE UNTOUCHABLES and even SISTERS. In part this may be because the homages to Hitchcock in this film are a bit TOO over the top, even for De Palma. (The dream sequence at the end, as beautifully accomplished as it is, was a mistake to include after the similar dream sequence ending CARRIE.) It's also hurt by the feeble acting of Nancy Allen, De Palma's Tippi Hedren and wife at the time: although memorable as the spoiled beauty queen in CARRIE, Allen just didn't have the chops to compete onscreen with Michael Caine or, particularly, the astonishing Dickinson, who gives a superbly nuanced and sympathetic performance as the lonely aging beauty despite the fact that she has so few lines in the first half of the film. But the great technical virtuosity of this film carries all before it: no one can play with multiple points of view like De Palma can, and his very jokey script allows him numerous opportunities to play hilariously mean pranks on his characters.
This edition of the film comes with a fine featurette with Keith Gordon, who plays the teenage hero of the film, analyzing De Palma's techniques in this film with genuien insight; it also has another featurette that seems like a real mistake about the controversies surrounding the film's release, with De Palma still bitterly whining about accusations at the time of the film's putative misogyny and sensationalism (given his spectacular subsequent career in Hollywood, and the film's financial success when it was released, his grousing seems churlish).
Movie Review: Has not lost its impact...
Summary: 4 Stars
The master of the psych-erotic thriller, Brian De Palma, truly came into his own with this provocative piece of filmmaking. He does something unique, however, that sets him apart from other writer/directors, and that is he creates a work of pastiche, lovingly imitating and paying tribute to past masters of the genre, i.e., Hitchcock et al, though stamps his own inimitable signature, enabling anyone viewing the film to know without a shadow of a doubt that it is a Brian De Palma film. De Palma loves mixing dream sequences with reality. He uses this technique to shock, surprise and frighten the audience, and it works every time. In the opening scene of ~Dressed to Kill~, for example, Angie Dickenson is in the shower watching her husband shave through the glass. The eroticism begins slowly, the music is easy listening, lulling us into a sense of relaxation, while Angie starts to reach the inevitable conclusion from her actions, suddenly the woman is attacked from inside the shower, her husband oblivious to her screams for help. This technique pulls us into the film, keeping us on our toes at all times, because we never know what to expect next. Even though I have seen this film several times, this high suspense has not diminished in the slightest, because I still jump from my seat every time the killer appears from the shadows or is seen through the glass in the door.Michael Caine plays the young psychiatrist, who discovers that one of his patients has been brutally murdered, slashed to death from a razor, and the perpetrator could well be one of his other patients. A beautiful prostitute, (Nancy Allen) witnesses part of the crime and sees the slasher in the mirror of the elevator. She herself becomes a suspect and finds herself followed by the killer. The ending is very clever and quite surprising because, as with all horror films, when you think it's over and can finally sit back and relax, it isn't over al all...
If you haven't had the opportunity to see this picture before, and you're in the mood for some erotic, psycho/slasher fun, by all means do so...and if you've seen it before, see it again, for the years have not lessened its impact in any way. Excellent viewing.
Movie Review: Undressed To Thrill
Summary: 4 Stars
Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) has an unsatisfactory relationship with her bland husband. So she needs therapy. While flirting with her therapist (Michael Caine), he remains (somewhat) true to his ethics and basically tells her to go out and indulge herself. She then goes to the museum and, while pondering the paintings and patrons, meets a mysterious man and ends up getting a quicky in the backseat of a taxi. They drive back to his apartment for some more hanky-panky and after he's fallen asleep she leaves the apartment. While taking the elevator down a razor-wielding hooded psycho woman jumps in and dices her up. Thus begins the story of De Palma's 1980 thriller. In an unusual move, the star Angie Dickinson lasts only about 30 minutes. The rest is about the search for the killer by Kate's teenager-son Peter (Keith Gordon), the police department's Detective Marino (Dennis Franz), and the murder's sole witness, a prostitute named Liz Blake (Nancy Allen). De Palma created a captivating thriller. It's full of crude talk, razor-induced gore, sex, and suspense. Pretty saucy stuff for its time. It may lack some of its original punch, but it's still effective.
I haven't seen all of De Palma's films, but none of his other films match the style in this one. His use of building scenes together visually with windows, mirrors, binoculars, cameras, and glass doors is nowhere more evident than this film. Everything is about visual perception here and he's a master of the camera.
Concerning the DVD. While the picture looks great, with good colors and crisp detail, there remains remnants of scratches from the film transfer. The sound is good and the movie has a good score. The extras are above average with a nice informative documentary. There is an option to watch the movie in R-rated or un-rated mode. Choose the un-rated. The R-rated is a bit cheesy and nowhere as effective.
Must-have for De Palma fans. Definately worth renting for everyone else.
Movie Review: "Psycho" Redux.
Summary: 4 Stars
The year is 1980. Your name is Brian DePalma. You've already directed at least one great film under your belt (1976's "Carrie"). Now, you're inspired to create a film called "Psycho." The problem? It had already been done 20 years ago. So, what's a director to do? Make "Dressed to Kill." The similarities between this film and Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece are so striking that you'd think the estate of Hitch would be dialing their lawyers for plagarism. But for all that's derivative, "Dressed to Kill" is a stylishly crafted thriller that plays like an honest tribute instead of a cheap rip-off. Angie Dickinson is a well-to-do Manhattan mother who's stuck in an unfulfilling relationship, has a good-hearted teenage son (Keith Gordon) and vents her frustrations at her therapist (Michael Caine). Meanwhile, a graphic murder takes place, and the only witness is a call girl (Nancy Allen, then DePalma's wife) who gets caught in a tangled mess as she tries to identify the killer. That's as much as I can say without revealing spoilers, but I will mention that "Dressed to Kill," even after 20-plus years, holds up respectably as a decent thriller. Pino Donaggio's Herrmann-esque music underscores the film's dramatic tension, while many Hitchcockian elements and references surface. DePalma was hardly a feminist's darling, and the film's viewpoint of women (they're either hookers or victims here), may turn off some and reinforce his long-standing reputation as a misogynist (in one of the documentaries, DePalma addresses these charges). This DVD contains both the theatrical version as well as the unrated version; needless to say the latter is much more graphic. While we don't get a commentary, we do get a few retrospective documentaries with interviews from the whole cast of main characters (except for Caine). At such a reasonable pricetag, "Dressed to Kill" is a solid value for those who want a snapshot of the best of DePalma's work.