Prompted by the new documentary on De Palma, I finally sat down and watched this film. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was: It's really nothing but a tarted-up giallo, the sort of thing Mario Bava or Dario Argento might have made, only with a 20-times-bigger budget and at least one bigger star.
Like the Italian giallos, it has a complicated, thoroughly preposterous comic-book-Hitchcock plot, the same salaciousness, the same lurid violence, the same air of unreality.
However, where Argento films tend to have jarringly inappropriate electronic rock scores, this one has an equally inappropriate lush romantic score that reminded me of a high-priced supper club.
Granted, context is everything. If "Dressed to Kill" were the work of some little-known Italian genre specialist, I'm sure I'd be praising it right now. I like giallos. Lurid and preposterous? Not a problem.
But for a well-regarded (if controversial) Hollywood box-office hit, the film seems stupid, fakey, and somewhat distasteful. Even with a body double, you'd think Angie Dickinson would have been embarrassed by it.
I actually found myself looking away at times -- not because of the excessive (and really pretty gratuitous) blood and nudity, but because of the horribly stilted acting by Dickinson and, even worse, by Nancy Allen. I guess it's been said a million times, but wow, the latter certainly was lucky to have been married to De Palma. It's hard to imagine any other way she'd ever have been cast. (Nice lady, I'm sure. Pleasant enough in "Strange Invaders.")
The film is currently 35 years old, and it feels it. The plot seems crude. The action scenes, sometimes in slow motion, feel stagey and unreal. The police-procedural aspects and the scenes involving psychotherapy also seem unreal (though that sort of thing is par for the course in giallos).
What also felt dated -- and, God knows, politically incorrect by today's standards -- was the treatment of blacks and transsexuals, though I must admit this seemed downright refreshing.
P.S. I once had a long conversation with a film-school student who'd just won some sort of college-level directing award, and I remember asking him whom he regarded as the most overrated director then working. Without much of a pause, he said, "Brian De Palma" -- which I thought was a pretty good answer.
Still, I do very much enjoy "Phantom of the Paradise" and "Carlito's Way."
Like the Italian giallos, it has a complicated, thoroughly preposterous comic-book-Hitchcock plot, the same salaciousness, the same lurid violence, the same air of unreality.
However, where Argento films tend to have jarringly inappropriate electronic rock scores, this one has an equally inappropriate lush romantic score that reminded me of a high-priced supper club.
Granted, context is everything. If "Dressed to Kill" were the work of some little-known Italian genre specialist, I'm sure I'd be praising it right now. I like giallos. Lurid and preposterous? Not a problem.
But for a well-regarded (if controversial) Hollywood box-office hit, the film seems stupid, fakey, and somewhat distasteful. Even with a body double, you'd think Angie Dickinson would have been embarrassed by it.
I actually found myself looking away at times -- not because of the excessive (and really pretty gratuitous) blood and nudity, but because of the horribly stilted acting by Dickinson and, even worse, by Nancy Allen. I guess it's been said a million times, but wow, the latter certainly was lucky to have been married to De Palma. It's hard to imagine any other way she'd ever have been cast. (Nice lady, I'm sure. Pleasant enough in "Strange Invaders.")
The film is currently 35 years old, and it feels it. The plot seems crude. The action scenes, sometimes in slow motion, feel stagey and unreal. The police-procedural aspects and the scenes involving psychotherapy also seem unreal (though that sort of thing is par for the course in giallos).
What also felt dated -- and, God knows, politically incorrect by today's standards -- was the treatment of blacks and transsexuals, though I must admit this seemed downright refreshing.
P.S. I once had a long conversation with a film-school student who'd just won some sort of college-level directing award, and I remember asking him whom he regarded as the most overrated director then working. Without much of a pause, he said, "Brian De Palma" -- which I thought was a pretty good answer.
Still, I do very much enjoy "Phantom of the Paradise" and "Carlito's Way."