Dressed to Kill (1980) * * *

 

Directed by:  Brian DePalma

Starring:  Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz

Alfred Hitchcock died a few months before Dressed to Kill's release in 1980.  Brian DePalma's thriller borrows from, pays homage to, and even steals a few tricks from Hitch's arsenal to create a savvy, suspenseful thriller.   There's blood, but not much, and DePalma is more intrigued by the idea of waiting for a bomb to go off instead of just rushing to see it explode.   Who knows?  Maybe Hitchcock would've gotten around to making a movie just like Dressed to Kill had he lived.   

DePalma focuses the first thirty minutes of Dressed to Kill on Kate (Dickinson), a sexy blonde who has joyless sex with her husband and an insatiable lust.  She attends a therapy session with Dr. Elliott (Caine), who exhibits a cool, analytical detachment from Kate, but we can clearly tell he is attracted to her.  Kate then visits a museum, where she catches the eye of a handsome stranger whom she follows around and hopes to ensnare.  When she thinks she's lost sight of him, she finds him in a taxi and the two have passionate intercourse in the back seat.   Their tryst extends further to his apartment, and when she wakes up to find she's out too late and doesn't even know the man's name, she finds he has syphilis from a medical document in his desk drawer.  She no doubt feels guilty, and the possibility of having contracted a venereal disease means the encounter will follow and haunt her.  

However, when Kate boards the elevator, she finds her wedding ring is still in the apartment, but before she go back to retrieve it, a mysterious blonde stabs her to death.   A high-price prostitute named Liz (Allen) stumbles across Kate's body and for a while even becomes the prime suspect because she is a hooker.   Dr. Elliott, meanwhile, listens to recordings on his answering machine from a transvestite patient who wants to have a sex-change operation.  The man is promising to kill others until the doctor approves his surgery, which Dr. Elliott has been reluctant to do.   You'll see why later, or maybe you won't. 

While the identity of the killer is apparent early, even if the movie tries to hide this fact, DePalma borrows from Psycho:  The icy blonde who is killed early in the film when we think the movie will be about her, a shower scene (even if it is a nightmare), and then the psychiatrist who explains why the killer was driven to murder and all of the feelings which accompanied that.  I liked Allen's offbeat performance of the woman in danger who can hold her own by using her wits and her sexiness to get out of a potentially deadly situation or two.  Keith Gordon also stars as Kate's son Peter, a techno whiz looking to find out who killed his mother.  He and Liz strike up a friendship which may or not blossom one day into a romance.  

DePalma called himself "The Master of the Macabre", but judging by the diversity of his work, he is a master, period.  There is no doubt he loves those who influenced his work, but he would soon become a great director in his own right with a few tricks up his sleeve of his own.  DePalma is not shy about going big and going for broke.  He isn't interested in timidity and even his failures draw a fascination.  Dressed to Kill isn't necessarily original.  It was made as a tribute to the recently deceased Hitchcock, and there are holes in the plot which you would drive yourself mad thinking about, but as a suspenseful thriller, it works very well.