Dressed to Kill – De Palma’s classic thriller now in HD!

by Chuck Duncan

Hitchcock ripoff or homage? Decide for yourself as Brian De Palma's classic 'Dressed to Kill' comes to Blu-ray ... and find out just what De Palma thinks about the Hitchcock comparison!

Since the early 80s, horror movies have been dominated by “slasher flicks” more than monster movies. May of 1980 saw the release of Friday the 13th and gave birth to the masked, supernatural killing machine Jason Voorhees (even though Jason wasn’t more than a bad dream in the original movie). Hot on the heels of this down and dirty, low-budget bloodfest came something slightly more upscale from director Brian De Palma — Dressed to Kill.

Dressed to Kill tells the story of a frustrated housewife who has an affair and pays the price for her indiscretion, and follows as her son and a witness to the crime try to put all the pieces together and figure out who the blonde woman with the straight razor in the elevator was. The victim, played by Angie Dickinson (just coming off of her successful run as TV’s Police Woman), had been seeing a psychiatrist (Michael Caine) who tries to help the police put together a profile of the killer, while her son (Keith Gordon) and the witness, a high class hooker (Nancy Allen), join forces once they believe the psychiatrist knows more than he’s letting on. De Palma really delves into the psychology of the characters, and uses his unique visual style to tell us volumes about Dickinson’s character without a line of dialogue, particularly in the museum sequence. De Palma’s use of split screen throughout the film also lets us peer into the action from different perspectives. It’s quite an effective thriller, and shocking for the time for its frank depiction of sexuality, the nudity (which is much stronger in the Director’s Cut) and language (a lot of which had to be trimmed and altered to even get an R rating), and the killing of the film’s big star 25 minutes into the story.

It was that one plot point that, unfortunately, made critics slam De Palma for producing a sexed-up, Hitchcock ripoff — and there’s no denying the film resembles Psycho in many ways. Thanks to the new high def medium, we can now enjoy De Palma’s classic in a version that looks probably better than it ever has, and in the way that De Palma always intended. On MGM’s recently released Blu-ray, the quality of the image is stunning considering the age of the film. The image is sharp enough to see pores in the actors’ skin, but it also still retains the sometimes soft and hazy look of the original film stock (a lot of films of this period have that same soft look because of the film stock). The disk’s 5.1 DTS audio is flawless, keeping all of the dialogue front and center while letting Pino Donaggio‘s Herrmann-esque score fill the surround speakers (there’s also a French mono track). If there’s one drawback to the disk, it’s the fact that there is no main menu. The movie starts up when you insert the disk and you have to access the settings and bonus material from the pop-up menu as the film is running. It’s a minor complaint for an otherwise stellar presentation.

In addition to the movie, the disk contains a nice collection of extras (all from a 2001 20h anniversary release, apparently, and not in true HD). The bonus material includes:

The Making of Dressed to Kill – Which gives us an in-depth look — 20 years later (or 10 years ago!) — at all the elements that went into making the movie, some some interesting tidbits of information like Angie Dickinson’s reaction to the script on first reading, the use of the body double (who is never identified), changing the son from a 10-year-old to a teen, how much of De Palma was in the son character (and who he based Caine’s character on), a look at the museum sequence, and some revelations about the mysterious killer. Included in the interviews are De Palma, Dickinson, Gordon, Allen, Dennis Franz (who began developing his Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue cop characters with this role) and producer George Litto. Sadly, Michael Caine is nowhere to be found.
A Film Comparison: The 3 Version of Dressed to Kill – This is a short presentation of various scenes from the movie with the Unrated and R-rated versions side by side (interesting to see the different cuts and editing) and the TV version with most of the blood, nudity and language removed or replaced.
Slashing Dressed to Kill — De Palma and the cast look back at the edits made to get the R rating, and the controversy raised by women’s groups before the movie even opened. De Palma also addresses the Hitchcock comparison.
Dressed to Kill: An Appreciation by Keith Gordon — The actor (and now director) discusses De Palma’s visual style and technique and how that influenced his career path.
Animated Photogallery — A slide show of production and behind-the-scenes stills set to Pino Donaggio’s score.
Original Trailer — Which, surprisingly, spoils Dickinson’s character’s death.

If you love Dressed to Kill, this new Blu-ray is certainly worth the investment even with it’s minor shortcomings. The extras maybe ten years old and it lacks a main menu, but the audio-visual quality of the movie itself makes it worth the investment.

This review is based on a complimentary copy, provided to CliqueClack, solely for the purpose of this review.