Dressed to Kill

1980 Directed by Brian De Palma

A mysterious, tall, blonde woman wearing sunglasses murders one of a psychiatrist's patients, and now she's after the prostitute who witnessed it.

Michael Caine Angie Dickinson Nancy Allen Keith Gordon Dennis Franz David Margulies Ken Baker Susanna Clemm Brandon Maggart Amalie Collier Mary Davenport Anneka Di Lorenzo Norman Evans Robbie L. McDermott William Finley

Alternative Titles

Одежда для убийства, Одет для убийства

thriller mystery

105 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Sally Jane Black 26

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

If you've been following along, you can probably guess what I hated about this. De Palma's style is great. He's got this slick, noirish feel that makes good use to shadow and reflection and odd angles to drive the intensity of any given scene, but almost right away, I predicted his big twist. And, of course, the twist left a sour taste in my mouth. All the Hitchcockian references, all the gloriously bloody murders, all the weird inventions by the hapless kid that could make this a great film seem wasted by the transphobic plotline.
The list of films that commit this sin is a long one. [SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR OTHER FILMS--I CAN'T SAY WHICH ONES WITHOUT SPOILING THINGS ABOUT…
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 11

93/100
The opening of Dressed to Kill, with its soft-core seduction and luscious yet calculated imagery, is Brian De Palma grasping his fundamental characteristics and shrinking them into a singular sequence of delight and horror. A woman, standing naked in the shower, is watching her husband shave behind the foggy glass, and as dreams morph into fantasies and nightmares, we as an audience witness an entire history of a relationship through sensual gestures and primal fixations.
It is this woman, played by Angie Dickinson, who De Palma takes not as his main subject but as a flirtatious prisoner of sorts. Cutting from the opening sequence, we see Kate having sex with her husband in an unromantic and unsatisfying fashion, and…
Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★½ 12

The only remake of Psycho I accept!
I'm starting to really enjoy De Palma's work. He's like at a 10/10 at all times and it's so fun to watch. It's like if Hitchcock directed an exploitation movie. He combines high-brow and low-brow similar to the way Tarantino does. The plot wasn't always airtight, but it was so well directed it didn't even matter. He throws things in the frame (a vagina in a painting while she's getting horny for the museum goer, or religious imagery), that are obvious but fun to catch. The constant zooms and closeups make everything feel big as well, adding to the suspense.
I'm still anxious after watching this! The feeling that something is always around…
Review by sydney ★★★★ 4

I like the acknowledgment of how tough it is to be a gal, the sympathetic look into an older woman's desires, the touched-upon-but-not-fully-developed issues of victim blaming, the confusions of masculinity and femininity. That all this is done from such a ~sexy~ male point of view is...questionable, as is, obviously, the implications of the ending. But the gender politics should be dissected by someone smarter and more knowledgeable than me.
Leave all of that out of the equation, and you still have a beautiful thriller that pulls off being campy AND scary AND exciting AND emotional all at once. Elegant exploitation.
De Palma had a Hitchcock marathon, watched a few 70's Argento films, drank a bottle of whiskey, passed out...and this film is us watching his dreams. The "rip off or homage?" debate is valid, but I like to think that he saw the sexuality just begging to be let out in Hitchcock's films, and decided to set it free.
Review by brat pitt ★★★ 2

the thing about de palma is that his camerawork is SOOOO GOOOOD but his treatment of women is SOOOO BAAAAAAD :(
Review by Scott Tobias ★★★★½

Problematic fav.
Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 2

for better (and in some cases worse) de palma takes Psycho into the realm of giallo, pushing it to its trashiest, most fetishistic possible extreme. literally opens and closes on a perverse remix of the famous shower scene—one played as explicit sexual fantasy, the other trauma. the museum scene to the elevator kill is among his finest visual suspense sequences, the shot of allen catching a brief glimpse of the wide-angle mirror is one of the straight up scariest shots i've ever seen.
full discussion on episode 130 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.
Review by Tony the Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★★½ 6

Wow. Y’all this one was a toughie for Tony (I know, I’m ADORABLE). I had to sit on it for a good day before rating it.
On the one hand, this is probably the best giallo I’ve seen outside of Italy. Definitely the most gialloesque non-Italian giallo. There were so many scenes that if I had just walked into the room without knowing what I was watching I would’ve been like “oh! Martino? Argento?” On the other hand, it is just appallingly transphobic. Like to the point that it was a little nauseating. The killer is transgender and the reason they kill is because they’re disgusted with themselves for being transgender?? GTFO with that shit. Like I actually think I…
Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★

What if Psycho but way more perverted and problematic? Love it.
Review by Grooveman ★★★★★ 5

More epic trash from De Palma. His shot compositions are so ridiculously awesome I could watch any of his films on repeat and never need to watch anything else.
Review by Aaron ★★★★ 17

Part of Hoop-Tober 2016
“Look, I know what dirty is, and this is dirty.”
Werner Herzog has often spoken of what he calls “ecstatic truth”—the ability of literature, music, and film to reach a deep, profound, poetic level of truth beyond mere factual reality. A recitation of facts can be informative, but it is not necessarily illuminating—it is “the truth of accountants,” superficially accurate but devoid of mystery and character and complexity. Ecstatic truth probes beyond that to levels of abstraction and imagination, reaching the elusive, ineffable parts of the psyche and the soul that make us human. An encyclopedia entry on fear may yield scientific detail on autonomic responses, but it can’t hold a candle to a viewing of…
Review by kailey ★★★½ 19

brian de palma be like: cool shit, camera angles, dumb shit, sex!!!!, more cool shit, tension, sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!, pseudo-Freudian shit, confusing shit, more dumb shit, sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
add a bowl of steaming hitchcock, a pinch of red, and (unfortunately) some problematic and outdated stereotypes about trans-people. stir.

Recent reviews

Review by Harry ★★★★

This film has aged very poorly, and De Palma is predictably obsessed with sex and gore, but as a Philly native I require everyone to recognize the brilliance of the art museum scene
Review by Marc Kloszewski ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I rewatch this every now and then. This is from DePalma's more sophisticated period, more personal, perhaps. That's not to say that it's sort of full of shit, too, but this is a quirky movie that is of interest because (like Psycho) it has that crazy surprise, but lots of other peculiar twists, and it kind of meanders in a curious but pleasant way. Not sure everyone would feel that way.
For instance, the wordless scene in the gallery draws attention to itself because DePalma insists on it being wordless, even though it's not entirely believable. And the cruel joke of Angie Dickinson finding the stranger she's slept with has VD before she's murdered in the elevator, I guess that…
Review by Charles90 ★★★½

Kinda dumb, but has some unbelievable moments. Fun watch if you’re a Brian De Palma fan.
Review by Ajax Green ★★ 3

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A daytrading prostitute is blackmailed by NYPD BLUE.
Almost every scene in Brian De Palma's follow-up to his legendary "Carrie" made me say "sheesh" out loud. The movie opens with dull classical music and a long masturbation scene starring Angie "Police Woman" Dickinson in the shower (I've long known about the problem of "dirty boobs" and how long they take to get clean in the shower so I sympathize with Angie here but also SHEESH). Angie is clearly frustrated and tries to pick up a guy who wears sunglasses in a museum. How are you going to see the art (or Angie's butt) with sunglasses on? She follows him around the museum for a really long time (SHEESH) and then…
Review by AirSabe ★★★★

The first time I watched Dressed to Kill, it was obviously a shocking experience so I was curious to see how I felt about it now that I knew what it was all about. There were times when I felt De Palma pulling the strings and setting everything up but for the most part, this is still an incredibly well-crafted film. De Palma seems to revel in throwing these characters into uncomfortable and interesting sexual situations and this certainly makes for an unique experience. De Palma is brilliant behind the camera as always (the standout scene being that brilliant, wordless sequence in the museum where every glance and movement has a purpose that is clearly communicated to us). The visuals…
Review by isaac_dell ★★★★

I really enjoyed Dress to Kill. DePalma’s camera moves are off the charts and that museum scene IS all it’s hyped up to be. It’s a fun thriller that still holds up as genuinely gripping. I thought the erotic parts were great and I feel like its also so rare that we see the sexual wants and frustrations of a middle aged woman on screen, especially where the woman is in pursuit. While that is kinda “progressive,” there is a lot that hasn’t aged well here. At the end where the doctor essentially describes being trans as having multiple personality disorder, I cringed pretty hard..... and the subway scene where Nancy Allen gets chased by a group of black men was…
Review by Leo Heringer ★½ 1

a prova de que vc pode saber como segurar uma câmera e o que fazer com ela ,, e ainda assim ser estúpido;;;
Review by Aaron Bartuska ★★★½

I can't tell if this was problematic or just De Palma's way of calling light to society's treatment of transexuals in the late 70's/early 80's... so I'll have to assume it was a little of both?
Review by alanladdismydad ★★★

An entertaining, trashy, style-over-substance thriller, as expected from De Palma. Say what you will but the man knows how to build tension. The museum and elevator scenes are well crafted even if the former is a bit overlong. Angie Dickinson’s character has a talent for misplacing personal belongings.
Interesting use of split screens which were later used to better effect in Blow Out (a superior film). Dressed to Kill hasn’t aged particularly well, the plot is fairly poor and predictable, and Michael Caine delivers a wooden performance (although he isn’t given much to work with). Dennis Franz is Dennis Franz.
Review by Degge ★★★

6'7/10
Al principio me pareció que iba a ser un truñaco gordo pero bueno al final bien pero joder la transfobia man.
Parece como que intenta arreglo con las explicaciones de esa escena del final donde "normalizan" la transexualidad, pero luego el resto de la película apunta en una dirección completamente diferente.
<a href="http://A review of Dressed to Kill by Sally Jane Black on Letterboxd boxd.it/32jOv">Recomiendo esta crítica, que lo va a explicar todo mucho mejor que yo, y sus comentarios son muy interesantes también.
Review by Andrew Marco ★★★½

What did Brian De Palma have against Nancy Allen?
Review by MattPayton ★★★★

This is why I avoid museums and therapy.