Dressed to Kill

Year: 1980

Genre: Horror

Directed: Brian De Palma

Stars: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Marguilies, Ken Baker, Susanna Clemm, Brandon Maggart, Amalie Collier, Norman Evans

Production: Filmways Pictures

There's no doubt that director Brian De Palma has made an indelible mark on filmmaking as an art-form. His expansive filmography spans six decades and includes some of the most lavish and inspired horror films, the most feverishly opulent crime thrillers and in the case of Scarface (1983) one of the few remakes that is leaps and bounds better than the original. He's become such a legendary figure that esteemed contemporary director Noah Baumbach has released a documentary on De Palma's life's work aptly titled: De Palma (2015). Yet despite some truly inspiring work, De Palma's oeuvre is not without its faults, most of which are very much present in Dressed to Kill.

The story concerns itself with the troubles of Doctor Robert Elliott (Caine) who is being stalked by a mysterious killer. Using the good doctor's razor, the killer victimizes the women in Elliott's life including middle-aged patient Kate Miller (Dickinson) and evening escort Liz Blake (Allen). The story is largely told from the perspective of these two women, who along with Detective Marino (Franz) and camera wunderkind Peter (Gordon) attempt to get to the bottom of it all.

While in the day, the film was controversial and critically lauded for its dive into sexual proclivities, by today's standards, the film is an exercise in mischievously lechery. The camera leers at the women of the film with an emphasis on eroticism and seems to take delight in objectification. This is despite the fact that we're constantly pulled into either Kate or Liz's head-space. Both seem to approach their sexuality as a means to an ends; one a textbook nymphomaniac while the other works as a high-priced call girl. Yet both are undercut (literally) by the doctor, the detective, the killer; basically every important male character in the film. It's a weird game of sexual politics that is meant to evoke and heighten the suspense but only succeeds in making the audience feel unclean.

My macabre game is stronger than yours...

Of course, that may be the point of the film. By forcing the audience to explore the dimensions of their own voyeurism, presumably they feel the shock and impact of Dressed to Kill final reveal. Such a technique has been used successfully by Hitchcock, David Lynch, David Fincher and even by De Palma himself in films like Obsession (1976) and Body Double (1984). Yet if you can't divorce yourself from modern mores, you may find yourself bewildered by the the film's more exploitative elements that go beyond titillation. The fact that the film exists primarily for the sake of shock value certainly takes away from some admittedly artful suspense building.

The other element plaguing Dressed to Kill is its unbearably 80's aesthetic. Dressed to Kill is stuck somewhere between the loud palette of Scarface and the empty consumerist sleekness of Valley Girl (1983); and that's despite the fact that the grimy streets of crime-ridden New York City are front and center. Every time the city injects the frame with any kind of personality (which NYC does in nearly every film), Brian De Palma fights it with an attention-grabbing camera technique that emphasizes story details with the force of a bullhorn. I'm sure, just like the sexuality, De Palma's techniques were revolutionary but by today's standards, their distracting at best.

While certainly not a terrible film, Dressed to Kill is weighted down by distracting visual elements, uncomfortably outdated notions of sexuality and a story that doesn't provide enough juice among its pulp. What's meant to be subtle is overt and what's overt should have been more subtle.

Final Grade: D+