Director/writer: Brian De Palma
Photography: Ralf D. Bode
Music: Pino Donaggio
Editor: Gerald B. Greenberg
Cast: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Margulies
Director and writer Brian De Palma’s trashy, seductive ode to Alfred Hitchcock movies is full of twists and turns—however ludicrously unlikely they may be—so I will necessarily be letting slip some spoilers. The Hitchcock movies overtly saluted here include Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window, the latter two of which had been out of circulation for decades when Dressed to Kill was made. Clearly, De Palma had the resources to study them. The most obvious homage, and perhaps the best sequence in the whole picture, takes place in an art museum and compresses an amazing amount of Vertigo into it.
Angie Dickinson, like Janet Leigh in Psycho, disappears from the picture not even an hour in, the result of murder by a mysterious slasher. Here’s where Bernard Herrmann’s soundtrack goes “weet - weet - weet” in Psycho, but De Palma has turned instead to Italian film composer Pino Donaggio (Don’t Look Now as well as many other De Palma pictures), who generally brings more ripe, luscious, and swooning pathos. Dickinson plays Kate Miller, a middle-aged and sexually frustrated rich housewife in psychoanalysis with Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine). Here we collide with the most unbelievable developments in the thriller as well as its most unpleasantly dated, transphobic aspect. Fair warning: The telling of it reveals all.
Director and writer Brian De Palma’s trashy, seductive ode to Alfred Hitchcock movies is full of twists and turns—however ludicrously unlikely they may be—so I will necessarily be letting slip some spoilers. The Hitchcock movies overtly saluted here include Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window, the latter two of which had been out of circulation for decades when Dressed to Kill was made. Clearly, De Palma had the resources to study them. The most obvious homage, and perhaps the best sequence in the whole picture, takes place in an art museum and compresses an amazing amount of Vertigo into it.
Angie Dickinson, like Janet Leigh in Psycho, disappears from the picture not even an hour in, the result of murder by a mysterious slasher. Here’s where Bernard Herrmann’s soundtrack goes “weet - weet - weet” in Psycho, but De Palma has turned instead to Italian film composer Pino Donaggio (Don’t Look Now as well as many other De Palma pictures), who generally brings more ripe, luscious, and swooning pathos. Dickinson plays Kate Miller, a middle-aged and sexually frustrated rich housewife in psychoanalysis with Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine). Here we collide with the most unbelievable developments in the thriller as well as its most unpleasantly dated, transphobic aspect. Fair warning: The telling of it reveals all.
First, I don’t fault De Palma at all for constructing a first-rate abstraction of a thriller—it’s watchable and interesting no matter what, and genuinely suspenseful all the way. There is technique all over this. De Palma can do so much with nothing. There are enough plot holes in this you could hold an auto race inside them, but somehow he continually distracts us from thinking about them too much. The premise, however, is trying to sell the idea that transsexuality is a mental illness, specifically a symptom of multiple-personality disorder. The motive is delivered (something like Psycho, which has similar problems) with a lot of psychiatric mumbo jumbo about the male side of the personality objecting to the female side when it acts out, that is, dons a wig and dress. The male side reacts violently to stop it. Pure bullshit, basically—and I’m pretty sure De Palma knew it even then. But in commercial terms gays and lesbians remained acceptable targets in 1980, let alone trans people, so here we are.
Even if you don’t object to the transphobia in Dressed to Kill, which you should, there has always been a parallel matter of plausibility. Dressed to Kill asks us to accept that Kate never sees through Elliott’s disguise, even when she’s having sex with him in a taxicab and later a hotel room. She doesn’t recognize his face or voice or ever suspect anything? It’s her psychiatrist. She sees him several times a week and listens to his probing questions. You would think at least she would recognize his voice.
But there you go. Thinking at all about the plot of Dressed to Kill is overthinking it. That’s how I see it as a kind of abstracted version of a thriller, rather than actually a thriller, which I suppose makes it a “thriller” with ironic baggage. But it can also be enjoyed as a thriller pure and simple. It’s a lot of fun, basically, except 40 years later the transsexual device lands all wrong, and too often cringing and wincing are involved in looking at it. It’s a shame because it is otherwise one of De Palma’s best, as a student of Hitchcock and cinema.
Shoutout to the supporting players who are set up like classic character actors. Nancy Allen is Liz Blake, a sex worker who gets mixed up in the sorry episode when she is the one to discover and report Kate Miller’s body. Allen is actually more than a supporting player—she might have more screen time than anyone else here. She’s also a favorite of De Palma, appearing in many of his other pictures, including Body Double and Blow Out. She may come off now more as a cheesy ‘80s figure but her cheerful demeanor does a lot to hold things together in this wild mess. Dennis Franz as a hard-bitten detective on the case is also a ridiculous good time as he leans very hard into the stereotype of a swaggering New York cop desperately trying to make up for his short stature and lack of looks.
But the main reason to drop in and check on Dressed to Kill remains how good De Palma can be at the pure art of making movies. Long, long patches of this—most of the first hour—could be a silent picture, with sparing use of intertitles. He indulges long takes with a fluid, probing camera (many of them delighted with the novelty of the steadicam). The museum sequence is a little masterpiece of setup and editing. When he needs to jam a lot of exposition into a crucial plot pivot, he uses a split screen, but it’s still so lucid we can track both threads at once. He injects a boy detective, Kate’s son Peter (Keith Gordon), who is also an inventor genius—really, he looks and feels like a character out of a Spielberg movie. In his Hardy Boys tenacity, Peter’s cameras and listening devices add more to the audiovisual texture of the picture. Dressed to Kill is completely worth looking at at least once, especially if you’re on board with the larger De Palma project. Just be prepared to wince at some of the stuff you will be expected to believe or find unobjectionable.
Even if you don’t object to the transphobia in Dressed to Kill, which you should, there has always been a parallel matter of plausibility. Dressed to Kill asks us to accept that Kate never sees through Elliott’s disguise, even when she’s having sex with him in a taxicab and later a hotel room. She doesn’t recognize his face or voice or ever suspect anything? It’s her psychiatrist. She sees him several times a week and listens to his probing questions. You would think at least she would recognize his voice.
But there you go. Thinking at all about the plot of Dressed to Kill is overthinking it. That’s how I see it as a kind of abstracted version of a thriller, rather than actually a thriller, which I suppose makes it a “thriller” with ironic baggage. But it can also be enjoyed as a thriller pure and simple. It’s a lot of fun, basically, except 40 years later the transsexual device lands all wrong, and too often cringing and wincing are involved in looking at it. It’s a shame because it is otherwise one of De Palma’s best, as a student of Hitchcock and cinema.
Shoutout to the supporting players who are set up like classic character actors. Nancy Allen is Liz Blake, a sex worker who gets mixed up in the sorry episode when she is the one to discover and report Kate Miller’s body. Allen is actually more than a supporting player—she might have more screen time than anyone else here. She’s also a favorite of De Palma, appearing in many of his other pictures, including Body Double and Blow Out. She may come off now more as a cheesy ‘80s figure but her cheerful demeanor does a lot to hold things together in this wild mess. Dennis Franz as a hard-bitten detective on the case is also a ridiculous good time as he leans very hard into the stereotype of a swaggering New York cop desperately trying to make up for his short stature and lack of looks.
But the main reason to drop in and check on Dressed to Kill remains how good De Palma can be at the pure art of making movies. Long, long patches of this—most of the first hour—could be a silent picture, with sparing use of intertitles. He indulges long takes with a fluid, probing camera (many of them delighted with the novelty of the steadicam). The museum sequence is a little masterpiece of setup and editing. When he needs to jam a lot of exposition into a crucial plot pivot, he uses a split screen, but it’s still so lucid we can track both threads at once. He injects a boy detective, Kate’s son Peter (Keith Gordon), who is also an inventor genius—really, he looks and feels like a character out of a Spielberg movie. In his Hardy Boys tenacity, Peter’s cameras and listening devices add more to the audiovisual texture of the picture. Dressed to Kill is completely worth looking at at least once, especially if you’re on board with the larger De Palma project. Just be prepared to wince at some of the stuff you will be expected to believe or find unobjectionable.
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