Dressed to Kill

.
I've seen this movie several times over the years. Last night I watched it again for the first time in about 12 years. It's funny how some movies don't age well, and this is a perfect example.

I wanted to watch this after I saw Death Proof a night earlier and got to thinking about the influence of De Palma's movie on Tarantino. Watching them back-to-back was interesting. I'll get to this again later, but first I'll review Dressed to Kill on it's own.

This is a strange film. It starts out as a film about Angie Dickinson's character, and her extra-marital exploits. The pacing is deliberate and dialog is used sparingly (Tarantino, pay attention). The cinematography is lurid and effective, although it seems very badly dated even just 28 years later - hey, that sounds like a name for an upcoming sequel to a zombie movie...back to the review - There's a very "80's" feel to the movie, but it is not cool. It just feels like a weird moment, unlike some classics from the past that remain timeless, like Psycho. Of course, De Palma owes everything to Hitchcock and Dressed to Kill is an homage to Psycho, but unlike its source it doesn't hold up well over the years.

Much has been written about the influence of Hitchcock on De Palma, so there's no need for me to comment further on that. I can't add anything new to that. Where Dressed to Kill fails is a complicated issue. At first glance that acting stands out as atrociously inept. After thinking about it, I began to think that maybe it was intentional. The acting (especially Nancy Allen's) is just so amatuerish that it doesn't seem possible in a big budget movie. Dennis Franz plays a cop, and his portrayal veers way beyond characature and into almost farce. It's bad, from every jabbing inflection to the terrible forced accent to the halloween-costume wardrobe choices. Simply bad. Even Michael Caine, who's never been accused of being a great actor, seems to have played his role with a campish frenzy. At times he's so laid back it seems like he's not interested and a moment later he's cartoonishly animated in his emoting. Weird. The only actor who plays it well is the youngest, Keith Gordon. This may have been considered good acting in 1980, but it really sucks now.

Another aspect of the movie that gets a lot of attention is the famous museum scene. Again, this may have been fascinating to the general public in 1980, but now it looks very contrived and indulgent. It doesn't fit at all with anything else in the movie and it takes far too much time to develop. The rest of the movie is fairly tight, with scenes that are taut and focused. The museum scene, for all its notoriety, is quite heavy-handed, especially the overly dramatic music. I found it unintentionally funny, and disruptive whenever De Palma used those stupid split screens. The use of that in the museum was lazy. I think the split screen technique in general is a lazy one, but for a director like De Palma who puts so much stock in style, it seems particularly trite.

Despite my general feelings towards Dressed to Kill, there are some scenes that I think are quite well done. In particular, the scene in the elevator when Nancy Allen is reaching out towards the dying Dickinson, unaware of the killer inside the doorway. There are some great shots on that scene. Allen's awful acting detracts from the potential, but visually it's extremely tight. Another scene that I liked a lot is at the end, in the asylum. After the nurse is killed, there's a long, slow pan up and away that reveals the hooting inmates staring down on her body. The angles, the lighting and the music all work greatly with the surrealism of that scene. That to me is the defining imagery of the movie, not the pointless museum scene.

The other big problem I had with Dressed to Kill is the uneven direction. Is it a surreal piece on urban horror, is it an erotic bit of voyeurism, or is it a police procedural? At times it's all of these, but it never maintains focus. The first half of the movie is voyeuristic softcore porn, and then it changes completely and becomes a slasher film. Then it becomes a cop drama with car chases and stalking. Intertwined are these surreal bits that are without doubt the most interesting elements, but there should have been more of this and less of the typical Hollywood crime stuff. It's almost like De Palma was trying to make something unique, but kept having to restrain himself because of the studios.

Brian De Palma has earned a reputation as an influential director, for good or bad. After seeing these two movies, it's clear to me that De Palma influenced Tarantino in some bad ways. I'm not going to pretend that I'm some sort of expert on cinema - there are many people far more knowledgeable and educated on the medium than I. However, I am a movie enthusiast so my thoughts on the subject are worth something. The influence on Tarantino seems to be purely stylish, but in a very superficial way. Both directors use a saturated palette, which tends to give the movies a surreal quality. I like that about both of their styles. De Palma has a heavy hand with lighting, reflections, and angles - there's not much subtlety, and this seems to be an influence on Tarantino as well.

I wanted to like Dressed to Kill more than I do. There are some really great moments, but overall it's too unfocused. It would be interesting to see what De Palma would do if he were making this movie now, in an era with less restrictions on the director. For all the fuss that was made over this movie when it came out, it's now tame compared to your average TV cop show which really says a lot about how outdated the movie feels.