Review of Dressed to Kill (1980) by Miguel A — 14 Mar 2015

Brian DePalma has an obvious love for Hitchcock. And it's obvious because he had been unofficially remaking the man and cribbing his style all throughout the 70's/80s. And this movie may be the most obvious Hitchcock influenced, and by influenced I mean straight up based on.

This is basically Psycho, but with all the weird sexual stuff the center of the movie and dialed up to 11. From structure and plot to motivation, this is all his riff on Psycho. And it's a pretty solid flick, with the weird DePalma-isms making it a worthwhile watch.

It's got his technical acumen, really great looking compositions and production design. It's a big movie, not subtle at all. It opens with Angie Dickinson pretty much jerking it in the shower in a dream sequence.

It's DePalma, one couldn't expect any less. But it all works as a heightened reworking of Psycho. Now, it isn't exactly perfect. Some of the acting doesn't gel to the DePalma style. Dickenson mainly makes it a bit harder to connect, but when you got Caine, Allen, Arnie from Christine (Gordon), and Dennis Franz it's fine.

The plot is a little jittery and 80s style chopped. It goes from a slow burn to rushing immensely to the end. But even that is ok, not great, until an ending scene where you have some of the surviving people in a circle explaining the plot to us because it goes by so quickly.

Now, if you can handle the DePalma style and want to see a new take on Psycho, this is a good little flick. It's no Blow Out or Scarface, but it's a worthwhile little flick.