By Todd Garbarini
Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) is one of the
director’s best and most entertaining works. It also appears to be ahead of its
time in some ways while simultaneously paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), something Mr. De Palma
also did to great effect with his excellent 1973 Staten Island-lensed thriller Sisters, a film that Stephen King loved
so much that he championed Mr. De Palma to make his own novel Carrie into the 1976 film of the same
name. His 1976 romantic thriller Obsession
was also inspired by the Master of Suspense, specifically Vertigo (1958).
Filmed in the autumn of 1979 and
released on Friday, July 25, 1980, Dressed
to Kill pits Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) as a woman who is bored and
sexually frustrated in the Big Apple as she looks to spice up her unexciting afternoons.
Her teenage son Peter (Keith Gordon, who would play Arnie in John Carpenter’s Christine in 1984
before becoming a film director) is a computer geek at a time when being a
computer geek meant being male and having zero sex appeal (he has built a
computer that carries binary numbers; he is also adept with booby traps and
other forms of technology). Kate is under the psychiatric care of Dr. Robert
Elliott (Michael Caine) for her frustrations and attempts to seduce him during
a session but is rebuffed.
An afternoon trip to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York results in the film’s most talked about
scene wherein she is “picked up” by a stranger who never says a word, and
playfully entices her in an extended and wordless “chase” in the museum which ends
with illicit sex in the backseat of a taxi and climaxes (no pun intended, of
course) with the quickest female orgasm in cinema history. Kate ends up
spending the evening with her mystery man in his swanky Front Street apartment,
only to discover surreptitiously that he has a venereal disease. This leads her
to rush off in haste and be unceremoniously dispatched by a razor-wielding nut
job in a carefully orchestrated elevator murder sequence that is intercut with
the introduction of Liz Blake, a call girl played by Nancy Allen, who witnesses
the murder.
Kate’s son is obviously shattered by
his mother’s death, although we only see his stepfather very briefly – at the
start of the film during a “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” sex scene with Kate,
through the shower as he shaves, and later after Kate’s murder when Peter is at
the police station. Detective Marino (played brilliantly by Dennis Franz) tries
his best to get what info he can out of Liz and Dr. Elliott, but Peter teams up
with Liz to find the killer themselves who appears to be a man dressed as a
woman, with long blonde hair and dark sunglasses. The obvious tip of the hat to Psycho, complete with Ms. Dickinson’s
death scene a third of the way through the film (making her a modern-day Janet
Leigh), should give a clue to the killer’s real identity.
There is a great deal of sexual
tension and graphic violence in Dressed
to Kill, so much so that when the film was released 43 years ago it was
initially given an X rating by the MPAA. Jack Valenti, who was president of the
MPAA at the time, had stated prior to the film’s release that the political
climate in the U.S. had been shifting to the right which in turn meant more
conservative attitudes toward sex and violence (those of us who lived through
the Meese Report days know this all too well). Interestingly Zombie (1979), the Italian Lucio Fulci gross-out film, was released
the same day as Mr. De Palma’s film, unrated and with a similar caveat that appeared on the poster of
George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
two years earlier since newspapers would not run ads for X-rated films. So, violence was certainly still acceptable
on the big screen, as long as it was rated accordingly. Some of the dialogue in
the film was also sexual in nature and had to be altered, but the cuts that
were made for the theatrical version have all been reinstated on the latest
home video releases of the film. Currently, wherein XXX-rated hardcore pornography
is just a computer mouse-click away, just about anything in Dressed to Kill seems tame in
comparison.
Mr. De Palma has consistently
received critical flak for “ripping off” Alfred Hitchcock, but this time he
manages to create and sustain a visual style all his own. Even Vincent Canby
liked the film, which is saying a lot! Had Bernard Herrmann still been alive
(the great musical collaborator of Mr. Hitchcock), he no doubt would have been
commissioned to write the score, having already delivered two excellent scores
for Mr. De Palma’s Sisters (1973) and
Obsession (1976), the latter of which
is sumptuous and gorgeous, clearly one of his best. His successor proved to be
quite formidable. Pino Donnagio, who wrote brilliant music for Don’t Look Now (1973) and Tourist Trap (1979), delivers another
great piece here, and has gone on to work with Mr. De Palma on many other
films.
Dressed to Kill has been released in many formats
since its theatrical release. Warner Home Video released it on VHS in the big
clamshell box at least twice; Image Entertainment released a somewhat
letterboxed laserdisc; and MGM/UA released it on both DVD and Blu-ray in a
special edition, as did The Criterion Collection. Now, Kino Lorber has added
this title to their ever-expanding and impressive roster of classic titles. This new edition is loaded with new
and exclusive extras while porting over some from the aforementioned MGM/UA releases:
Disc
One is Dressed to Kill in 4K UHD. This is hands-down the best that the
film has ever looked. I recall purchasing the Image Entertainment letterboxed
laserdisc in 1990 and being very disappointed in the transfer. I would not have
guessed that I would have to wait 33 years to see this vast improvement.
Disc
Two is a standard Blu-ray that contains the following supplements:
Strictly Business runs 17:26 Nancy Allen talks about how the script came about and how an
executive saw Suzanne Somers in her role! I would have loved to have seen that,
with Mr. Roper (Norman Fell) as the killer.
Killer Frames with
Fred Caruso runs 8:13 and is a look at the work of associate producer and
production manager Fred Caruso who worked on Midnight Cowboy (1969), Husbands
(1970), The Godfather (1972), and later on Blow Out (1981) and
several other films for Mr. DePalma.
An Imitation of Life with Keith Gordon runs 14:15 and is an engaging
discussion about how Mr. Gordon got cast in the film and played Angie
Dickinson’s son who was originally envisioned as a sexually unaware ten-year-old.
Mr. Gordon decided to play it as an older teenager who has been up all night,
tired, etc. and to his credit, Mr. DePalma agreed. He also discusses how he saw
them shooting the murder scene and it looking ridiculous, but the way that it
was edited made all the difference.
Symphony of Fear, 2012 Interview with Gordon Litto by Fiction Factory runs 17:36 and
the producer talks about how he saw Brian DePalma’s Sisters and began
his professional relationship with the director.
Dressed in White, 2012 Interview with Angie Dickinson by Fiction Factory runs 29:53 and is
an onscreen interview. Brian DePalma contacted her while she was promoting Claude
Pinoteau’s Jigsaw in Canada in 1979. She talks about Michael Caine’s
hilarious sense of humor; the celebrated museum sequence took four days to
shoot; the subtlety of Bobbi’s first appearance onscreen (something that I
missed over and over again); the difficulties of shooting the cab sequence; the
elevator set; and suggesting to Ann Roth the costume designer that she wear a
white coat.
Dressed in Purple, 2012 Interview with Nancy Allen by Fiction Factory runs 23:04. Ms.
Allen discusses starring in Carrie following her early onscreen cameo
opposite Jack Nicholson towards the end of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973);
the sensual movement of a camera being similar to a dance; working again with
Keith Gordon (they had previously collaborated on Brian DePalma’s Home
Movies the previous year); Ann Roth’s costuming on her; the editing of
Jerry Greenberg, the Oscar-winning cutter on William Friedkin’s The French
Connection (1971); the uncomfortable lingerie outfit; and auditioning for
Dario Argento’s Inferno in New York in 1979 and not wanting to shoot
underwater (that role went to Irene Miracle)
Lessons in Filmmaking, 2012 Interview with Keith Gordon by Fiction Factory runs 30:46. Mr.
Gordon discusses his experiences on the film and how it was an excellent course
in film school with a master filmmaker. He watched the elevator murder sequence
being shot and thinking how silly it looked, only to be blown away by the way
it was cut together in the final film.
The Making of Dressed to Kill runs 43:51 and is a 2001 documentary shot in standard definition which
includes recollections from the cast and crew.
Slashing Dressed to Kill runs 9:49 and is a 2001 look (shot
in standard definition) at the changes that needed to be made to the film in
1980 in order to secure an R-rating.
Unrated/R-Rated/TV-Rated Comparison from 2001 that is exactly what the
title implies.
An Appreciation by Keith Gordon runs 6:05 and is a 2001 featurette (shot in standard
definition) wherein Mr. Gordon talks about the impressions that Kate’s
character has as she is in the celebrated museum sequence and the subliminal
images in the film.
1980 Audio Interview with Michael Caine runs 4:50, and he
discusses how much he loves shooting in New York and his-then recent move to
California.
1980 Audio Interview
with Angie Dickinson runs 3:30 and she talks about how the film
should receive a double “R” rating because of its sexual content. Fun stuff!
1980 Audio Interview with Nancy Allen runs 14:30 and she
speaks at length of how much she prefers to work on smaller films with lower budgets
than big, budgeted films, such as Steven Spielberg’s 1941, as the crew
was too numerous in size for her to remember who worked on the film.
Dressed to Kill Radio Spots
Dressed to Kill TV Spots
Dressed to Kill Teaser Trailer and Theatrical Trailer
Trailers
for Play Misty for Me, And Soon the Darkness, Eyes of Laura
Mars, Happy Birthday to Me, and Not for Publication round out
the package.
Click here to order from Amazon