Dressed to Kill Review- By Michael J. Carlisle

Title: Dressed to Kill
Year: 1980
Director: Brian De Palma
Country: US
Language: English

One would be hard-pressed to discuss Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill without starting with Alfred Hitchcock Psycho, a film which made a tremendous impact on the film industry. Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece has become a reference point for many film historians who now see American Cinema as divided between "Before Psycho" and "After Psycho". Hitchcock's picture did the previously unthinkable, such as killing off its heroine and thereby taking its star actor offscreen at the end of act 1; leaving us only a homicidal maniac to identify with for the rest of the film. Later film-makers, like Brian De Palma, would be tremendously impacted by the man and it would show in their works. Dressed to Kill is Psycho reborn.

De Palma's film is about a mysterious blonde woman  who kills one of a psychiatrist's (Michael Caine) patients (Angie Dickinson), and then goes after the high-class call girl (Nancy Allen) who witnessed the murder.

As it was being released in theatres across the nation, ads for Dressed to Kill claimed that De Palma was the new "Master of Suspense". It's 35 years later and while that statement hasn't held any ground, the man's films are still as relevant as they are suspenseful. Ralf Bode’s sensuous, soft-lens camera work and Pino Donaggio’s ecstatic, romantic score make the picture quite a voyeuristic experience. Unlike Hitchcock, De Palma's film is overtly sexual rather than implicit. A rarity in Cinema, especially for the 80's, we are encouraged to align with a female character's perspective.

There are a few problems with Dressed to Kill however; imitation can be flattering, but it also ruins a "twist" ending. The psychologist scene was easily the worst part of Psycho, because no viewer wants to be hand-fed the plot, but De Palma decides to keep it in. Though for the time Dressed to Kill might have been PC, it can come off as transphobic nowadays. The director walks a fine line between ingenious and insulting. Perhaps the film is actually innovative; De Palma could be exploiting our society's irrational fear of transgender people & mocking fundamentalists in the wake of the AIDS crisis when LGBTT persecution was considered a norm.

Like Hitchcock, De Palma is a maestro regarding the technical aspect of filmmaking. The roving but precise camera, the razor-sharp cutting, the slow motion, the overwhelming music and the haunting atmosphere make it impossible to turn away from. It captures the essence of what horror filmmaking should be and makes us forget about the implausibility of the plot. 3.5/5