IHR induction #44: "Dressed to Kill" (1980, Brian De Palma)

Time for your humble host to share an opinion that's almost completely gutless, since there's plenty of people who feel the same way and even people who disagree almost universally pitch in that it's not far from being truth - I think that Alfred Hitchcock is the single greatest film director...ever. Sure, there's directors who have made it their prime directive to bring home as much Oscar hardware as possible (not looking at you at all, Darren Aronofsky), while Hitch doesn't have any statues in his cupboard ("Rebecca"'s Best Picture award went to the film's producer), his filmography reads like the history of Hollywood - over six decades, there's just very little that the guy did not do, churning out classic after classic and showing an unprecedented, influential flair for shooting his films along the way. More on that later.

It comes as no surprise, then, that there have been plenty of movies that paid direct and/or indirect tribute to Hitchcock. In fact, there are two gentlemen who owe pretty much their entire career on imitating him, both of whom came to prominence in the early '70s. There's Dario Argento, an Italian film-maker who took the mystery aspect of many of the Hitchcock plots and slathered on previously unseen levels of gore to popularize a style of horror movie known as the giallo thriller. And then there's Brian De Palma, the director of several very popular films in the '70s and '80s that feature camera work and themes which were not slightly underivative of the Master's work.

While films that predate it on his filmography (most notably "Sisters," "Carrie" and "The Fury") have some very familiar cinematography tricks, "Dressed to Kill" was De Palma's full-fledged ode to the man who inspired his career, emulating the visual style as well as plot elements and direct scene references from Hitchcock's films. As both an homage and an original work, it's a dynamite movie, unfortunately not as remembered today as it should be, but still held in high circles by horror fans and film scholars alike as a good scary film and a tribute piece.

[/masturbatory introduction]

THE MOVIE!!

First things first, this movie has some cast. Angie Dickinson is the first person we see in this film. Or rather, Angie Dickinson's body double slathering her naked body up with soap, setting in motion the Psycho-like theme connecting sex with death that runs throughout the entire movie. Dickinson portrays a bored housewife who serves as this movie's Janet Leigh; she is given loads of screen time in the early goings of the movie, with the script giving us a lurid episode in her daily life. She visits her psychologist Robert Elliott (played by Michael Caine in one of the finest performances of his distinguished career), going into detail about her sexual frustration. The following scenes pay off the angle, as she is stalked by a man in an art gallery and later gropes him in the back seat of a taxi cab.

So how does the first act of the movie comes to a close? She sneaks out of random stranger's apartment in the dead of night, and is summarily slashed the f*** up in the apartment building's elevator. Oh yeah, spoiler alert.

This scene, by the way, is an absolute masterpiece. It's genuinely unexpected, it's graphic, and it's got that indefinable creepy factor added to as high-priced prostitute Liz (Nancy Allen, in a Golden Globe-nominated performance, and looking quite hot in her young days, I must say) finds herself unwittingly tied to the death. During the murder scene, there's this one particular shot that works very well, as Liz almost - again, I say, agonizingly, ALMOST - enters the elevator, while the killer, plastic face and all, stands above the dead body of Dickinson, perched behind the door, ready to strike at Liz. Awesome stuff, and still one of my favorite scenes in all of horrordom.

An important cog in the plot of "Dressed to Kill" arises in the form of Caine's Dr. Elliott, who earlier had received a threatening phone call from a former patient named "Bobbi" who desired a sex change operation. It seems that said patient is now mightily pissed at Elliot, as the good doctor refused to endorse the operation, resulting in a wannabe transgendered individual with a severe murderous streak for the women in Elliott's life, as well as Liz, the witness to his brutal crime in the elevator.

Up until this point, "Dressed to Kill" didn't have many likable characters, but from this point on, we get several. The movie becomes a very high stakes game of cat and mouse between the killer and a small group of people attempting to track him/her down. Liz becomes the star and the focal point of the character development, but the movie's true heart comes in the form of Peter (Keith Gordon), Dickinson's college-aged son who takes it upon himself to track down the murderer. Liz and Peter join forces due to the police predictably being none too believing of the various accusations that this smart-mouthed hooker is making regarding the murder case. Along the way, there's another meeting with the killer in a subway (and that scene, just like the elevator sequence, is absolutely riveting), and eventually, a big finale in Elliott's office where all becomes clear. A finale, I hasten to point out, that features this lovely image...

"Dressed to Kill" is a movie with outstanding directorial and acting work, but my favorite thing about it is the character arc that Nancy Allen's Liz goes through. Years before "Saw" and the like-styled movies made "forced attrition" a genre unto itself, "Dressed to Kill" featured a much more subtle version of the storyline. Throughout much of the movie, Liz is a very unrepentant character, and while we're never given a beat-you-over-the-head conversion scene, the audience leaves the film with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that the incidents - and the close friendship with Peter - have changed her for the better. And the ending scene? Horrific, powerful, and absolutely perfect.

Compared to other movies inducted into the IHR, I have a relatively short history with this particular film. A few years back, I was looking for nothing other than a good time waster on a Friday night while browsing the video store; a few hours later, I had a movie that comes damn close to being on my top ten horror films of all time list. The characters are well-defined and memorable (in addition to all the names mentioned above, there's Dennis Franz doing his trademark foul-mouthed cop role to perfection as the antagonistic investigator who refuses to believe our main characters), but it's the overall experience of viewing "Dressed to Kill" that rings the most true. Visually, it's an absolute feast, but is also disconcerting and disqueting to watch...just like the best Hitchcock movies.