Dressed To Kill
Maybe, back in 1980, Dressed To Kill got over via shock value.Almost 30 years later, in a world that’s more savvy about trans issues, the “twist,” such as it is, doesn’t do much to hide how derivative and dawdly the movie is.I kept thinking about the endless explication of Norman Bates’s condition at the end of Psycho; its excessive length and pedantry lets the air out of that movie’s balloon by degrees instead of finishing it with a pop.Never mind the relative sophistication of the audience on matters pathological three decades ago, or five; find a way to communicate the information that isn’t a social-hygiene film.
Dressed To Kill is Hitchcocky in the worst ways: overuse of symbolism in weather or landmark geography; fakey blood and/or wounds (Angie Dickinson looks like she got attacked by a Cosmo, not a razor); raised weapons filmed at “scary” angles that don’t line up correctly with the eventual target; interminable too-slow fleeing and/or too-loud sneaking; investing us in the female protagonist and then killing her; I could go on.
I enjoy both filmmakers a great deal when they get in a zone, but when their pacing is off, it is never a little off — it is way off.The first 45 minutes of DTK is not uninteresting as a period piece, but oh my hairy napping Jesus with the museum sequence.Just get her together with the guy already!We don’t need three separate set pieces consisting of Angie Dickinson hurrying through the galleries all frowny-face while the mystery man does a crappy Roy Scheider impression.Yeeeees, you know how to use a Steadicam.Congratulations.Move on.
And when she’s finally in the cab after three weeks, it’s very obvious that it’s a body double (not as obvious as in the opening shower scene, because that bosom is not a day over eighteen, but still), and the shot set-ups make no geometric sense — even if the cabbie doesn’t eject them for getting it on in his car in broad daylight, the physics according to your camera placement just cannot possibly work, unless she has a second vagina on her kneecap.And then she takes forever to get out of Myster(o)yMan’s apartment, too!The futzing with the notes!The staring at the letter from the Board of Health!Three shots of said letter, when one already got the job done!It’s a De Palma movie, I know her ass is getting killed, so get her damn clothes on, get the damn note written, and get her into the damn elevator to get her damn ass slashed up already!I ain’t got all day!
Michael Koresky of Reverse Shot digs the tease, and his argument is compelling…
The emotional back-and-forth, menacing and erotic at once[,] is drawn out to a breathless point — along with Carrie‘s unbearably extended prom-night pre-slaughter and Blow-Out‘s excruciatingly delayed final pursuit of Nancy Allen, it’s the perfect argument for the pleasures of attenuation.
…up to a point.The scenes in which Liz is fleeing from Psycho Blonde in the subway, clattering down stairs and along platforms in heels, get super-tense; I did sit up on the couch, finally, at that point, to tell her to kick off her shoes and sprint already.De Palma doesn’t maintain that pace consistently, though, and my problem with the Carrie comparison is twofold: 1) that sequence also goes on a little too long for my taste, although the payoff is good enough that the overstretching doesn’t hurt it (watching it again, I find that knowing for sure what’s going to happen ratchets the tension up instead of relieving it); and 2) De Palma does a bunch of things in Carrie that he does again in Dressed To Kill…and, if I recall correctly, in The Fury.The extended (not-sure-it’s-a) dream sequence at the end, the emblem of the dead hand (here, punished by the automatic door of the elevator; there, coming out of the grave)…he uses strong iconography, which is great, but then he can’t get away with using it again, but he tries anyway.
I see what Koresky is responding to, but it felt like an experiment to me, De Palma is drawing out the climax of a sequence based on a blueprint instead of minding the emotional logic of the scene — abstracting it.It’s an equation instead of intuition, and he lets it go too long; the payoff can’t hope to justify the buildup.
It’s not terrible, plus De Palma just does this sometimes, so I could polish my nails and wait for the score to tell me when to pay attention.But my primary entertainment derived from wondering what ever happened to Keith Gordon and Nancy Allen; they both showed up in what seemed like everything for a few years (Keith Gordon is the love interest from The Legend of Billie Jean, which, sadly, is totally how I recognized him…I know, I know).I guess once Allen stopped being Mrs. De Palma, that was kind of the end of that.And DTK a fun scuz-alogue of Manhattan from back when it was really a hole, especially at night.
But in spite of Michael Caine’s best efforts, the tempo is weird, and the story itself has aged badly; I wouldn’t bother, unless you consider yourself a Dennis Franz completist.
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock Angie Dickinson Brian De Palma city living Dennis Franz Keith Gordon Michael Caine movies Nancy Allen Norman Bates Reverse Shot Roy Scheider
Gotta disagree about the museum sequence; the knowing, smooth-surfaced arty-ness of that is my main memory (a pleasurable one) of the movie. That, and the unexpectedness of the opening sequence.
And isn’t killing off our protagonist, once we’ve become invested, one of the prime moves in the suspense director’s playbook? (Of course Hitchcock got there first in PSYCHO, but it’s still available for others to use.
But I don’t doubt that I’d agree with most of the other points about tempo and such. I haven’t seen it from beginning to end since it was first in theaters. For the best combo of De Palma and Franz, I’d go a year later, to BLOW OUT.
By the way, Keith Gordon’s big movie moment probably was his protagonist role in CHRISTINE 3 years later. (And I’d already noticed him a year before DTK, as the young Roy Scheider — i.e., Bob Fosse — who gets abused by the strippers in ALL THAT JAZZ.) Apparently he’s mostly a director now (4 episodes of DEXTER for instance).
“the love interest from The Legend of Billie Jean”
hee. I love that movie. It’s such a great example of the that mid-eighties movie. The imdb synopsis is awesome! “A Texas teenager cuts her hair short and becomes an outlaw martyr with her brother and friends.” WTF?!
We have the song “Invincible” on one of our 80s mixes for the iPod and there is nothing funnier than our 4 year old singing “We will be invincible!” Complete with angsty intonation on the “invincible”. HI-larious. :)
that museum sequence is a favorite of my film professor’s. it is quite technically adept, but agreed about the lengthy/boring part.
I took some film and media studies courses in college, and during one of them, we spent several classes discussing how several of De Palma’s movies were Hitchcock ripoffs, DTK being one of the more obvious. Since then, I’ve never been able to enjoy De Palma’s stuff; it’s always come off looking like the Big Lots version of a better, older film.
@tulip: Hey, fahr is fahr!
Two things of which you will never convince me:
Brian De Palma is a good director.
Brian De Palma likes women.
The way he lifts from directors from Hitchcock to Eisenstein just shows he has no creative vision unless it’s to show in loving detail the gruesome murder of a woman.
Keith Gordon surpassed him right off the bat with *The Chocolate War* and *A Midnight Clear.* I was disappointed he ended up settling into episodic television.
Yeah, come to think of it, I haven’t actually seen Nancy Allen in anything since RoboCop, although IMDb indicates she’s worked a bit since then. It’s unfortunate that when I hear her name, the first thing I think of is that silly Terror in the Aisles, which was to horror films what a clip-show filler episode is to sitcoms. Her and Donald Pleasence’s narration is good for a few unintentional laughs — they do a good job of keeping straight faces while delivering what are supposed to be probing insights into fear and suspense. I wish I could quote just one of them. And then there’s the wraparound sequence with the fake moviegoers played by people with names like Asparagus, Rice, and Cooke. Mmm.
I think the eclipse of DePalma’s reputation is largely justified (he was never as good as his most ardent fans thought, IMO), but he had his moments. Casualties of War was underappreciated among the later, less overtly Hitchcockian films, which bottomed out with Body Double.
@Sars: hee! Now I have to go find a copy and watch it!
“I wouldn’t bother, unless you consider yourself a Dennis Franz completist.” OMG you are brilliant!
I never got the animosity towards De Palma. Don’t get me wrong, he’s made films I don’t like, but their seems to be a kind of “dogpile” that many critics are a little too fond of, some of which is unfair. Blow Out is probably my favorite of his, but Dressed to Kill hasn’t aged that well.