Dressed to Kill **** (1980, Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen) – Classic Movie Review 2189

Writer-director Brian De Palma’s all-stops-out 1980 thriller stars Angie Dickinson as Kate Miller, a sexually troubled housewife who goes to psychiatrist Doctor Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) for help as one of his patients.

De Palma is once again gleefully ripping off the work of Alfred Hitchcock  – with Vertigo and Psycho as the most obvious influences – in the name of homage, but appropriating it into his own Gothic style with a total command of, and delight in, the medium of cinema.

In the exploitative, often absurd, but hugely entertaining story, there is a killer on the loose, chasing after Dickinson and then pursuing high-class streetwalker Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), who tries to turn the tables on him.

De Palma certainly knows how to whip up this fetid material into a fast-paced, masterful chiller in operatic vein, a mood helped no end by Ralf Bode’s exciting cinematography and the driving Pino Donaggio score.

Caine is most effective, stepping into the role of the psychiatrist when his friend Sean Connery said ‘no doing that’ to De Palma.

There’s nudity, violence and some offensive content.

Also in the cast are Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz (as Detective Marino), David Margulies and Brandon Maggart.

Nancy Allen she set the standard for bitch-goddess teenagers as Chris Hargensen in De Palma’s Carrie (1976). They married in 1979 and divorced in 1984.  She also appeared in De Palma’s Home Movies (1980) and Blow Out (1981).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2189

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