Dressed to Kill

What we have here is a movie that’s too blatant in what it’s ripping off.  Brian de Palma loves Hitchcock, like a whole fuckin’ lot.  So many of his films are Hitchcock-esque that they don’t come off as adoring tributes but rather wide eyed fan boy knock offs.  If you read my Carrie review you know that I don’t care for de Palma that much.  He has some excellent technical chops but his story telling skills are pretty bad for the most part.  The Untouchables and Scarface are cool but they’re also probably the least de Palma-y pictures he’s made.  It felt like he wasn’t trying as hard with those ones and they came off better.  There seemed to be more focus on character and plot than on camera movements. 

But that’s enough digression.  Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson (Rio Bravo)) has some emotional problems.  She’s not terribly happy with her life and decides on a whim to pick up a guy in an art museum.  The thing is this stranger is kind of a weirdo who lures her all over the gallery using her stolen glove as bait.  This piece of work eventually gets Kate into a cab where they make out and he goes down on her.  That’s one smooth operator.  He didn’t even have to say a word.

After they do the dirty Kate leaves in the middle of the night only to get fucking murdered in the elevator.  A high priced hooker named Liz (Nancy Allen (Robocops peoples)) is the only witness and she has to find out who the killer is before she gets put six feet under herself.  Oh, and Kate’s boy genius son (Keith Gordon (Christine)) helps out too.  Wait, hold on.  Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine (On Deadly Ground)) is mixed up in this too because it’s his patient that’s the killer (you’re told that early on so that’s not a spoiler).

Ok, from here on out there’s gonna be spoilers so you’ve been warned.  If you’re a concerned moviegoer then skip to where it says it’s safe to read again.

Mostly this is a Psycho knock off.  Since there are a lot of similarities it would get a little exhausting to go through them all.  So here are the main ones: Dr. Elliott is a guy with a split personality that takes the form of a vengeful woman who kills, he uses a weapon with a blade, the seemingly main character gets killed off in the first half hour and the first half hour doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the movie.  There are even a couple of shower scenes (including one where Kate (the Janet Leigh equivalent here) gets attacked).  On top of this there are nods to at least two other Hitchcock films that I spotted, Rear Window (Keith Gordon uses binoculars to keep an eye on what’s happening inside Dr. Elliott’s house from across the street) and North by Northwest (Liz picks up the murder weapon by the handle as soon as the killer drops it leaving Liz’s fingerprints all over it).

With the numerous blatant direct lifts I can’t really get behind this movie.  This is beyond “influenced by Psycho” and almost into remake territory.  I’ll admit it wasn’t obvious while I was watching but once I picked up on one thing it then led to another and then another and so on until I realized the entire goddamn thing was a Psycho-fest. 

There is one great (and maybe original) idea here though.  Right before Kate leaves the stranger’s apartment during the night she looks for some paper so she can leave him a note.  While she’s rummaging through a drawer she sees that the guy has been tested positive for a venereal disease.  That actually kinda blew my mind.  It came out of nowhere and was a helluva plot twist.  It wasn’t poetic justice exactly because Kate isn’t a bad person or anything but I couldn’t help but think “well, you did pick up a total stranger that’s kinda creepy so I don’t feel that sorry for you.”  It was really interesting how this person who just wants a little pleasure gets punished for it in such a mean way.  A whole movie could be made on the premise that the first half hour of this thing sets up (and I’m sure one already exists, do you guys know what it is?).

(It’s safe to read from here on if you skipped the spoiler section)

Anywho, this may not be the most apparent sexy thriller but there are several sexual themes taking place.  You have the whole transsexual thing with a guy that murders folks out of frustration over his sexual identity.  You not only have a prostitute as the protagonist but she ends up using sex as a means to set a trap for the finale.  And there’s Kate who desperately wants people to find her attractive, plus she gets off on banging total strangers.  So this picture is actually filled with both sex and thrills which happen to be the two components needed for one of these type of deals.

It’s not very good though.  If you’re a student of sexy thrillers then this is probably one you’re gonna want to check out, simply because the genre isn’t that big.  However, the film is sloppily handled.  It’s really very clear who the killer is as soon as the first body hits the floor.  Back in 1980 the twist ending may have been sorta novel but they did it twenty years earlier with that other movie I won’t mention in case you skipped the spoilers.  It’s just too much of a bad rip off for me to enjoy it all that much.    

Sex Scenes: One and a half.  The half is for the cab scene but the movie does open with Kate…kinda masturbating?...in the shower.  Whatever.

After Sex Scenes: One.

Strange Cameos: Dennis Franz plays…wait for it…a cop.  The man was born to play them I guess.  He’s one of the (sort of) bright spots in this.  He plays such a hammy bastard with a leather jacket, gold chain, shirt that’s half unbuttoned and he even sports his trademark mustache.  I love his take no bullshit attitude though.  He’s exactly the same character from Die Hard 2 (does he play the same annoyed asshole cop in everything?  Actually, he did play an annoyed asshole pawn broker in the fucking fantastic American Buffalo…I guess that’s a little different).

David Margulies (Kim Basinger’s art gallery friend from 9 ½ Weeks…ok, ok and the mayor of NYC from Ghostbusters) plays a psychiatric doctor.