| Dressed to Kill | | Cast : | Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson | | Director : | Brian De Palma | | Studio : | Mgm/Ua Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | June 23, 1980 | | DVD Released Date : | May 06, 2003 | | Language : | Unknown (Dubbed), English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 04, 2005 | | Summary | 3.85 STARS: A very good Hitchcockian styled thriller/hybrid horror flick. | Content
 | Brian De Palma's "Dressed to Kill" is a very good suspense thriller/horror movie. The similarities between "Dressed to Kill" and Alfred Hitchcock's psycho are clear and well defined. "Dressed to Kill" starts out with a sexually unsatisfied middle aged woman who sees a psychiatrist played by Michael Caine. The woman struggles with her sexual worth and displays a reckless attitude in a chance encounter with some stranger at a museum.
De Palma, like Hitchcock, uses classic cinematic misdirection to fool the audience into perhaps thinking that the middle aged woman is the main character and her emotional problems are central to the movie's plot. So, what De Palma sets up to be as a drama and maybe even a love story turns into something darker and horrifying. Out of the blue comes a brutal murder that shocks the audience and changes the focus and expectations of the audience into what could have been a drama focused on a middle aged woman dealing with problems regarding her sexuality to a suspense thriller which is styled like a hybrid horror movie. The result is a very effective movie which truly shocks the consciousness of the audience and creates a terrific little mystery for the audience to put together.
The question in this movie becomes who is the murderer and what was the motive...De Palma hypnotizes the audience into a psychological thriller delving into the horrifying world of the unconscious mind, classic psychosis and multiple personality disorder. Indeed, De Palma borrows heavily from Hitchcock with overtones of "Psycho" and other Hitchcock films to create an interesting movie that is able to stand on its own merits despite strong reliance on Hitchcockian techniques and style. Still, "Dressed to Kill" has that clearly dream like De Palma signature to it which is classic De Palma. The movie moves along with a murder mystery and De Palma provides the audience with another horrifying surprise or two to make "Dressed to Kill" into a clearly enjoyable horror movie viewing experience.
While not a classic nor a pure horror movie, "Dressed to Kill" is a must own hybrid horror movie that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys Hitchcockian styled suspense thrillers with an element of horror to it...you won't be disappointed. "Dressed to Kill" is almost a FOUR STAR movie in my opinion, but if you have read any of my reviews, you will know that 3.85 STARS is an excellent grade coming from this reviewer. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | De Palma's mastery of the craft | Content
| 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). |
| Rating | | | Date | May 25, 2005 | | Summary | Good DePalma Thriller | Content
| Jaded as many may aspire to be, I think all the panning in the world isn't going to negate the fact that Brian DePalma is talented. He leans towards bad taste with gratuitous female nudity and gore (as in Italian giallos), but he makes it up by his wonderful stylish compositions, camerawork and usually solid characters. His homages to Hitchcock are obvious, but he does succeed in creating his own unique type of film, using classical/classy soundtracks (like Hitchcock) to add mood and injecting metaphors, imagery, color and wonderful cat-and-mouse sequences to keep things entertaining. Here Pino Donaggio's score adds enormously to the striking visuals.
Angie Dickinson is Kate Miller, the frustrated housewife, who has an ill-fated affair with a mysterious man she meets at an art museum (a great sequence). Michael Caine is her psychiatrist, Dr. Elliot, and when Miller is brutally murdered in an elevator (the murderer resembles Karen Black's character in "Family Plot"), Miller's computer nerd son Peter (Keith Gordon) teams with Liz (Nancy Allen), the prostitute who was a witness of sorts, to track down the killer.
This film is loads of fun, in spite of some squeamish scenes and a few implausibilities. The amateur sleuths are enjoyable, the voyeurism, the use of color, sequences told completely by visuals, and an element of camp with the split screen sequences are all delicious. Angie Dickinson makes an attractive and likeable heroine (dispatched within the first half hour) and the cast is fun. Interestingly, this film was graced with some good extras (one never knows which films will get 'em and which won't) like the documentary about the making of "Dressed to Kill." In that extra, Angie Dickinson, in particular, comes off as a good-natured and unpretentious kind of gal. It particularly tickled me when she said that when making movies, you always feel "like a jerk" since you're doing what someone else tells you to do and saying lines that someone else has written, so she was glad to have contributed one moment: writing "pick up turkey" on a notepad in the museum. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 18, 2005 | | Summary | dressed to thrill italian style | Content
| I think this is one of the best american thrillers ever. Yes i said it. It captures perfectly the atmosphere of the 1980s slasher craze, but De Palma bathes his film in a beautiful light which makes everything look smooth and sensual. Much in contrast to many other cheap looking slasher films of this period De palma has always been compared to Hitchcock, and it is obvious in parts of the construction of this film, but what a lot of reviewers miss is his obvious debt to the Italian thrillers of the 60s and 70s. Like Mario Bava and Dario Argento. with fluid camera movements, straight from Bavas Blood an Black Lace and black clad killers like that of Argentos The Bird With the Crystal Plumage 1971. Dressed to Kill is very stylish and is ajoy to watch. Great actors ,great music, sets camera action slash slash slash. Tenebrae by Dario Argento has some similarities to this film. So De Palma and Argento obviously have a close eye on each other. Ciao for now. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 10, 2005 | | Summary | Murder never goes out of fashion. | Content
| First of all, kudos to MGM/UA for a great disc that gives a lot of bang for buck. As on the 'Carrie' disc, they have gone out of their way in the extras department. And this is the first really satisfying visual presentation I have seen, restoring the film's lucious widescreen cinematography to its uncut version - which was around on VHS for a lot of years, but mutilated by the extreme cropping.
A lot has been said about this film's relationship to 'Psycho'. With it's bookend shower scenes and borrowed structure, it is clear that DePalma wants us to know who he is referencing.
But the style comes straight from Italy, and the actual experience is much closer to watching a giallo than a Hitchcock picture. The slinky stalking camerawork, heightened atmosphere, perverse visual fetishism, copious sex and bloodletting... This movie owes at least as much to Mario Bava (and probably Argento) as it does to Hitchcock. Bava's seminal giallo (inspired by 'Psycho') 'Blood and Black Lace' established all of these elements back in the sixties - but the influence of the Italian thrillers didn't hit American movies until the late seventies/early eighties with 'Eyes of Laura Mars', 'Halloween', 'Alien' and 'Friday the 13th'. All of these movies have direct ties to Italian thrillers and horror films - and I think we can add 'Dressed to Kill' to the list.
For my money, this is the best of that bunch, although I wouldn't sniff at 'Alien' or 'Halloween' - solid enough pictures to be sure. But 'Dressed to Kill' captures the intoxicating feel of the best gialli and localizes it. Its also a lot wittier than the others - and head and shoulders above the timid Hollywood 'thrillers' of today, that are afraid of alienating anyone in the audience by actually thrilling them.
DePalma has no such qualms - a flash here, a goose there, the dialogue is littered with little surprises... This one is elegant and juicy.
Don't bother with the cajones-free R rated version. The disc thankfully gives us a choice between that 'gotta-have-it-to-get-into-Blockbuster' cut and the down-and-dirty real deal.
A helluva movie. |
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