Dressed to Kill (1980)

(Google Play Streaming, December 2019) It’s perfectly understandable for anyone to approach Brian de Palma’s movies with a guilty-pleasure mindset—even the better ones. Throughout his career, de Palma has repeatedly aimed for excess, and shocking the rubes was part of the point. Dressed to Kill is no exception, what with its familiar blend of de Palma themes (violence, eroticism, doubles, voyeurism, gender-bending and aberrant psychology) that would make the film recognizable as his work even under a pseudonym. The opening of the film still has the power to shock, as it begins by following one character and, after a moment of explosive violence, switches perspectives to follow another. Michael Caine turns in one of his strangest roles here as a psychologist involved in murder, with Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen co-starring. The plot barely makes sense—this is one of those “psychological thrillers” with tropes that aren’t impossible, but have never happened. But as with other de Palma movies, the point here are the bloody images, the suspense sequences, the atmosphere of dread where anything can happen and the troubling twists along the way. Dressed to Kill is certainly not a respectable film—borrowing liberally from slashers, giallo and noir, it’s clearly a genre film that revels in including as many provocative elements as it can. But it works, and still lead to several “I can’t believe this film is going there…” comments.