Review – Dressed To Kill (1980)

Cast your mind back to the year 1980. Moviewise it was a great year. Among others we had classics like “The Blues Brothers”, “Airplane”, “The Elephant Man”, “Raging Bull” and “The Shining”. We also had a few stinkers including the megaflop “Can’t Stop The Music”, the Village Peoples one and only foray into the world of film, and the Olivia Newton John musical, “Xanadu”, which also bombed spectacularly, both of these films, i hasten to add, i personally loved.

Then we had the slasher genre which really came into it’s own during the early 80s. The finest examples of this included the original “Friday The 13th”, “He Knows Your Alone”, “Prom Night”, “Terror Train” and of course the Brian De Palma shocker “Dressed To Kill”.

Angie Dickinson plays Kate Miller, a bored, sexually frustrated housewife living in New York City. She spends her days visiting various museums and art galleries, whilst filling in the rest of the time talking to her therapist, Dr Robert Elliott, played by Michael Caine. She complains to him about her husbands lack of performance in the bedroom, talks about her violent sexual fantasies, whilst also, at one point, making a pass at him. During one of her visits to a high class art gallery she meets a stranger, and ends up back at his apartment for an adulterous encounter, which began in the back of the taxicab from the museum. On her way out, in the elavator shes brutally hacked to death by a tall, mysterious blonde woman, wielding a cutthroat razor. The brutal murder is partially witnessed by Liz, a high class call girl, played by the stunning Nancy Allen. This sets everything up very nicely for the final two thirds of the movie, which is mainly a deadly game of cat and mouse between Liz and the killer. Alongside Dickinson, Caine and Allen we have Dennis Franz, a regular cast member in De Palma’s movies, as a grizzled New York detective and Keith Gordon, as Angie Dickinson’s son, who along with Liz tries to solve the case of his mothers brutal murder.

The parallels between this movie and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, are glaringly obvious, not least of which is the main character being killed off in the first third of the film, and of course the manner of her death. De Palma also gives a few well pointed nods to one of his own previous shockers, “Carrie”, which also begins with a very lurid shower scene, and of course concludes with a truly shocking ending. I also have to mention the score by Pino Donnagio. It’s atmospheric, totally brilliant, and perfectly compliments the movie itself. De Palma, has freely admitted, he’s more than happy with his work being compared to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, as the master of suspense had a huge influence on two of his early movies “Sisters” and “Obsession”, and of course “Dressed To Kill” and “Body Double”. Like Hitchcock he also had many battles, not only with the British censors, but also with the U.S ratings board, and nowhere was this more obvious than with “Dressed To Kill. He had to cut and chop several scenes, and lines of dialogue, to gain an “R” rating in the States, the U.S equivalent of a British “X” certificate. Those cuts were mainly to the shower scene at the start of the film, the slaughter of Angie Dickinson in the elevator, and the final encounter between Nancy Allen and the killer. I’m happy to say that most of those cuts, have now been reinstated for the latest “Criterion” and “Arrow” releases of the film on home entertainment media.

“Dressed To Kill” is, in my humble opinion De Palma’s finest hour, his masterpiece, and the work of a director at the top of his game. It’s slick, stylish, lurid and as grisly as it gets. For me this is the perfect thriller, it just doesn’t get any better than this. I’ve seen it many times and i never tire of it. It’s not a date movie and it’s certainly not a film to watch with your mother, but if you like your thrillers brutal, brimmed full of suspense, super sexy, and with a real sting in the tail, then you could do much worse than take a look at “Dressed To Kill”. It absolutely will not disappoint…..