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| Dressed to Kill | 
| Category: Movie
Buy New: $3.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  102 reviews
Sales Rank: 2681
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 105 minutes
ASIN: B000IZVPRY
Theatrical Release Date: July 24, 1980
Release Date: October 1, 2008 (New: This Week)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Classic dePalma thriller! February 28, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'll never forget my first viewing of this, many years ago. The notorious 'elevator scene' with Angie Dickinson in her stunning winter white suit...let's just the suit doesn't stay 'white' for long. There are some terrific DVD extras here, featurettes, trailers, marketing images for fans of the film and dePalma. As far as the film, it's a great piece of work, classic dePalma. The camera work in the extended museum scene in the front part of the film is outstanding. The weak link: Nancy Allen's one note performance, made all the more ridiculous by the idea that she was nominated for a Golden Globe for the role!
Genius, a masterwork February 13, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Chilling, mysterious Eroticthriller as it should be. Subtly built up to the climax, it is suspenseful every minute. In this DVD, you can also change to the Uncut, uncensored version. The scene in the museum is art: without any dialogue, you see so much about what is going on in the mind of the main character. Making of is gorgeous with comments of the whole main cast, director, etc. In the comparisons of the scenes in several versions you see how important and visually artistic the original version is.
Michael is Bitchin' November 11, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
After the titilation of the very steamy sex scene in the cab, expertly plyed by a no longer young Angie Dickinson, who did however stil have great legs, the pathos of a mind in the throes of gender alienation becomes the centerpiece of the film. The Caine madness drives this film with a whip and transforms the other actors into extras.
A Masterful & Truly Luscious Homage ! November 9, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Brian De Palma's "Dressed To Kill" is a stunningly beautiful homage to his most obviouse influence in meastro Alfred Hitchcock. True film junkies will find themselves picking there jaws up off the floor after witnessing the mezmorising Hitchcockian cinematogrophy that runs rampid throughout this masterful thriller. I will never fault a Director for displaying his biggest influences especially when they're of the likes of one of the four fathers of great cinema/film making. I can't say enough about this film so I'm just going to end this review now by saying that I truly am inlove with it.
Learning At The Feet Of Hitchcock November 3, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Alfred Hitchcock's style of filmmaking is the one that has probably been the most copied of any filmmaker ever in Hollywood, for the simple reason that he perfected the art of cinematic suspense. And perhaps no director has been more accused of allegedly blatantly imitating the Master than Brian DePalma. Such accusations are not completely accurate, however, and they don't tell the whole story. The film in DePalma's canon that is so often cited by critics as his being so blatantly imitative of the portly Englishman is the 1980 thriller DRESSED TO KILL.
The film places the great Angie Dickinson in the role of a frustrated single mother with sexual desires that she confides in to her psychiatrist (Michael Caine), desires that include one nightmarish sequence of her being strangled in her shower. She follows a mysterious man through a Manhattan art gallery; but when she returns home, a blonde psychopath brutally slashes her to death in her apartment complex's elevator.
In the interim, the police, including a very profane detective (Dennis Franz, of "NYPD Blue" fame), are looking into the crime and have somehow managed to finger a blonde hooker (Nancy Allen) who had been seen around Dickinson's residence. The problem is, however, that she isn't the real perpetrator (a very tried-and-true Hitchcock conceit, an innocent person accused of a crime they didn't commit); and she teams up with Dickinson's whiz-kid son (Keith Gordon) to find who really did it. All the evidence seems to point to another patient of Caine's with some sexual issues. The end results are positively spine-chilling.
By any stretch of the imagination, DRESSED TO KILL is quite obviously inspired by Hitchcock's PSYCHO, although there are also significant references to the Master's earlier classics VERTIGO and REAR WINDOW as well. The big difference, of course, is that, whereas Hitchcock was largely limited in what he could show onscreen because of the censorship restrictions in place prior to 1968 (which worked wonders in PSYCHO), DePalma didn't have those limitations, and was allowed to show more direct sex and violence, though it never really came all that close to pornography or the overblown blood-and-guts horrors of FRIDAY THE 13TH, which was also released in 1980. Dickinson is quite good in what was an atypical kind of film for her; and Caine, one of the great actors of our time, is equally fine. Pino Donnagio's score, not surprisingly, is very close in feel to what Bernard Herrmann provided for Hitchcock's masterworks.
Despite a somewhat cliched trick ending (repeating in some ways what DePalma did at the end of CARRIE, and John Boorman at the end of DELIVERANCE) and a very hammy acting job by Franz, DRESSED TO KILL is a very strong psychological horror/suspense film at a time when blood and guts were starting to flood the horror genre (though the year 1980 also gave us Kubrick's masterpiece THE SHINING, too). Films like this are even rarer nowadays in Hollywood than they were back then, and they need to be treasured.
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