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Dressed to
Kill (1980)
 
Review
Brian De Palma perfected his recurring
Hitchcock homage with this psychological thriller with a hint of
black comedy, starring Angie Dickinson as a sexually frustrated
housewife, Michael Caine as her understanding therapist, Keith
Gordon as her tech whiz son, and Nancy Allen as a high-end escort
girl who gets tangled up with them all. This picture is playful in
the most cinematic sense of the word, elevated by its Hitchcockian
style and confidence. De Palma defies and redefines genre
conventions as he takes us on a narrative tour de force of sleazy
eroticism and exquisite cat-and-mouse games. There's so much going
on here, both on the surface and beneath it, that you're kept
constantly second-guessing. Just as American cinema bid farewell to
the 1970s, the decade of the endless car chases, Brian De Palma
welcomed us to the 1980s with a new form of balletic, spine-tingling
foot chases to replace the former. The two such which can be
found in Dressed to Kill, one in a museum and one in the
subway, perfectly demonstrate De Palma's talent as a filmmaker and
underscore much of what this delightful thriller is all about – a
mischievous interaction between the hunter and the hunted; between
a filmmaker and his audience.
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