The title of this review is a sick joke. But that's fine, because the title of this movie, so coyly cliche thriller in its moniker, is an even sicker joke. The more you watch the movie, the more you understand the horrible pun nestled within it. Mmm, I wouldn't have it any other way with De Palma!

De Palma is a polarizing director. He cut his teeth watching and emulating Hitchcock, but with a clearer eye toward the voyeuristic sadism that Hitchcock so artfully disguised (not to take anything away from Hitchcock). Characters in De Palma films are almost always looking at one another through binoculars, or watching each other on television, seeing themselves in a photograph -- De Palma likes to watch. And he'd like you to watch, too.

He often gets tagged as an empty stylist -- what with all his bravura tracking shots roaming around the set, split-screens, overhead cams, images spliced one on top of the other -- but I think of him as a stylist with something to say; he's not just throwing something up to see what sticks. It may be subjective on my part, but if I compare the music-video-splice visuals of, say, Tarsem Singh's "The Cell," with even one of De Palma's more maligned recent pictures, "Femme Fatale," I can see that all the fancy camerawork in the former is to make the viewer gasp at the spectacle, while the camerawork in the latter ratchets up the tension and forces the viewer to feel the boundaries of the screen as a physical presence -- you just know there's something waiting just out of frame ... or worse, perhaps not, perhaps it's being saved for later. De Palma also incorporates little moments when a character is being unguarded in those screen shifts. He tucks away clues of his characters' morals and motives without them having said a word.

"Dressed to Kill" is an homage to Hitchcock's "Psycho," but it's not merely a remake with the sex and blood quotient upped -- though it is that, too. The film features more twists and turns, more stylistic beauty, and more willing perversity than the original, with an emotional undercurrent that is surprisingly gentle and kind in the film's final moments. In other words, it's singularly De Palma.

So let's get this film rolling. It opens with middle-aged and gorgeous Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) taking advantage of herself in the shower. What De Palma hints at showing makes the scene hot for reasons beyond the steam pouring above the shower door. (at one point he shows Miller's finger traveling down toward her pubic hair, then he cuts away) Now this scene can be taken as softcore porn if you want, but it also shares an emotional point. Through the streaming, foggy shower door (another beautiful shot), we can see Miller's husband oblivious to his wife's pleasure. He's shaving and looking fixedly in the mirror. Disappointed that he hasn't noticed her, Miller continues to fantasize and masturbate.

This cuts to Miller in bed with her husband on top of her. She fakes an orgasm just to get him off her. You can tell already the kind of man he is -- he lightly slaps her cheek twice and nods before rolling off her, acknowledging her as you would a dog for performing a trained trick. She then wanders to the basement to talk to her son Peter, played by Keith Gordon, possibly so she can regain the feeling of actual love. A bespeckled teen-age nerd, Peter's working on his own computer circuit, an invention of his that can hold a binary number as large as 20 digits (keep in mind, this movie came out in 1980, so that number was once impressive). We see that Peter and his mother have a genuine affection for each other when she gently asks him what he'll call his circuit even though it's obvious she doesn't really understand it. She then goes out to meet with her psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), where she complains that she is not being satisfied by her husband. She tries to seduce the doctor by asking pointed questions of him, but when that fails, she heads to the museum.

The scene in the museum is charged. Miller sits pondering a painting of a woman looking out at her, both of them perplexed and unknowable. A man wanders up and sits down next to her. Miller tries to catch his eye, but he stands up and walks away. What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse, where you get the feeling Miller is navigating a labyrinth to meet up with a Minotaur. The camera follows her around the maze of the museum. There is no dialogue in this whole scene, and yet, you fully understand Miller's confusion, her desperation, her longing to sabotage her marriage by sleeping with this man, the thrill she gets at the idea. Without words, layers of meaning start shifting into focus. Tell me of any empty stylist who can do that.

She ends up sleeping with this man, of course, first reaching orgasm as he fiercely fondles her in a taxicab, then spending the afternoon at his place. She wakes up late in the evening to collect her things and leave. A plot spoiler is coming up, so don't read on if you don't want a major event ruined for you. This event, in fact, sets the rest of the movie, all of its subplots and ramifications, into motion. Okay, you've been warned.

Miller walks onto the elevator, feeling both elated at achieving her goal, and disgusted at discovering, when going through the man's desk to find a piece of notepaper, that he suffers from both syphilis and gonorrhea. (this movie brims with sick, ironic humor) But this revelation will soon prove trivial, as a blond woman in dark glasses has been waiting for Miller to exit the apartment. She has a straight-edge razor (which always shines in a nearly supernatural blue-white light when it is shown), and she has unfinished business. She gets on the elevator with Miller, and starts slashing her.

The elevator opens at the next stop, and a businessman and his escort (Nancy Allen), find Miller crawling on the floor of the elevator, bleeding and trying to form words, a look of horror and confusion on her face. The businessman shouts and runs off into his room, not wanting to get involved. Allen's character, Liz, (a gorgeous younger woman who turns out to be a high-priced hooker) reaches in to touch Miller's hand, and notices in the elevator's convex mirror that somebody is hiding in the corner. Liz shrieks, picks up the razor off the floor, (which the blond woman has dropped) and runs for the stairs. When she gets to the bottom floor and runs outside, Miller's bloody arm protrudes from the elevator, the door opening and closing against her corpse.

So what started as a desperate housewife story now turns into a murder-mystery. Into which Liz, Peter, and a detective played by Dennis Franz are plunged. Around this time, the film also picks up its other theme, that of transsexuality and sex-change operations. I can't talk any more about the film's plot without giving it away, so instead, I will close with a few indelible scenes from the film, that showcase both De Palma's skill behind the camera, and the actors in front of it.

* A split-screen early on where on the left side Dr. Elliott is listening to messages on his machine; while on the right side Liz is speaking to her escort service about finding the businessman who bolted when Miller was discovered in the elevator. At one point, Dr. Elliott sits in his chair listening to a grim, threatening message from one of his patients, while Liz juggles between two phones and two conversations. The spliced words falling from both sides of the screen weave into their own muddled sense of motion.

* A sequence on a New York subway, where Liz asks for help from a police officer when she stumbles into a bad part of the terminal (and several gang members want to rape her). He can't see the gang, because they have entered the train already (and, in a blink, the blond woman gets on at the other end of the train while both are looking the other way). You can feel the tension build to a painful pitch as the officer and Liz sit in the train car, not speaking. We hear only the sounds of the train. Every once and a while the lights going out. The officer leaves at his stop, and at that point, both the gang members and the blond woman start to converge on Liz.

* Another sequence, later in the film, where Liz has broken into Dr. Elliott's office to try and retrieve files for Dennis Franz's Detective Marino. She tries to seduce the doctor, but in a much more aggressive way than Miller did, engaging in frank inneundos and, when that doesn't work, stripping to her underwear and commenting "Judging by that bulge in your pants, I don't think you're so married." All the while, Peter watches the scene through binoculars, until the entire screen is seen through the double lenses, rain and lightning pouring down and obscuring as much as its showing.

* A nightmarish sequence where we travel through the blue-green living tomb of an insane asylum, all silhouettes and white shapes, which transmutes, after a murder, into the second shower scene of the movie, Liz washing herself until she notices white shoes waiting near the bathroom door, the doorknob sparking with the same fierce light as the razor did earlier.

Obviously, if you don't like psychological horror, you won't enjoy this film. But speaking as someone who has seen his share of junk horror -- from the formulaic Friday the 13th to the pure gore quotient of films that don't deserve to be named -- it's eye-opening when somebody gets the elements right, and threads it into a story where you actually feel for the characters. In poorly made thrillers, you end up with characters who are put there simply to die. In this film, you are given characters whom you can understand, some whom you may even root for, making the violence (if and when it comes) that much more horrific. See, De Palma understands that it's easy to kill a mouse in a trap, and that's where a lot of horror films start and end. It's much harder to kill a person in a trap, especially if that person is resourceful and real. There's a big dollop of humanism ladled on top of what would, in other hands, be a genre exercise. This film is a beautiful, freaky treat.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age