OK, I went into Dressed to Kill very aware that it has aged poorly in its treatment of the transgendered. Times constantly change, and something that was considered socially acceptable to put into movies don’t always stay that way. If anything, Dressed to Kill has the distinction of being a movie with problematic elements that came out in my lifetime, allowing me to see how much what is considered socially acceptable by many people in the general public has changed over just my own time on this Earth.
However, when I started the movie on HBO Max, there was actually a short introduction by a Turner Classics Movie host saying there was something to this movie on the subject of the costuming before acknowledging the problematic elements. So, it’s not like this is a secret.
OK, I want to take this review and do it a bit differently. It’s a 40 year old movie, so I don’t feel too bad how, for once, I am going to go into extensive spoilers for the movie. If you don’t want to read about the movie’s twist, then stop here. This is basically director Brian De Palma’s tribute to Psycho, and he isn’t subtle about hiding the common plot points.
Essentially, the movie appears to be about Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), a middle-aged married women with an unsatisfying sex life. She routinely sees psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliot (Michael Caine), but on an impulse, she picks up a stranger at the art museum where she works. The two have sex, but before she can start to feel too guilty about what she’s done on multiple levels, she is attacked by a tall woman with a straight razor and left to bleed to death in an elevator. By this point, the movie has been running for about a half hour to forty-five minutes, so like Janet Leigh in Psycho, the movie wasn’t really about her. Instead, the movie is about prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen). Liz is the one who found Kate’s body, and she was seen holding the razor, making her a prime suspect in the killing.
OK, I said I would talk the twist, and I meant it. Like in the Hitchcock classic, the killer is not a woman but a man, namely Dr. Elliot. As explained by another psychiatrist, Elliot was a trans woman, one whose masculine and feminine side at war with each other, leading to violent outbursts against women the masculine side found arousing. I mean, this is the 80s. De Palma, unlike Hitchcock, could show a hell of a lot more for both his leading actresses during shower scenes. But here in 2022, there’s a lot more generally known and understood about trans people, and the whole idea that the masculine and feminine sides are somehow at war in someone’s mind is obviously wrong. De Palma was looking to do his own take on Norman Bates, and he was apparently inspired in part by a segment on Phil Donahue’s talk show (included in the background of one scene), but yeah, that aspect is problematic.
But what about the movie itself? I do try to judge movies based on their overall quality and try to if not overlook problematic aspects of the past, at least I try to chalk them up to the times and move on. I’d probably be a lot harder on this movie if it came out right now, but it didn’t. However, the movie it tight, tense, and well-scripted (problematic trans elements aside). Liz Blake is a smart protagonist who needs to keep an eye out on mysterious stalkers and the cop (Dennis Franz) who clearly doesn’t believe in her innocence. The movie even does a good job of making it look like Caine isn’t the guilty party. The final scene, a nightmare, was a bit much, but overall, it was a tight thriller, even if Hitchcock easily did it better.
Grade: B-
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