Directed by Brian De Palma
After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.
Одет для убийства, Одежда для убийства, Одетый для убийствa, Kledd for mord, แต่งตัวไปฆ่า, 剃刀邊緣, يرتدي ليقتل, در لباسی خیرهکننده, يرتدى ليقتل, Одягнений для вбивства, Προετοιμασία για έγκλημα, Vestida per matar, Vestito per uccidere, Обучена да убива, Бритва, Обучена да убије, Tappava tunnustus, I nattens mörker, W przebraniu mordercy, Vistî par masàr, לבוש לרצח, 殺しのドレス, 드레스드 투 킬, Pulsions, Vestida para matar, 剃刀边缘, Gyilkossághoz öltözve, Oblečen na zabíjení, Προετοιμασία για Έγκλημα, Îmbrăcată pentru a ucide, Ölüme Kuşanmak, Vestida para Matar, Жажда за убийство, Oblečený na zabíjanie, Klædt på til mord, Vestida para Matar (Dressed to Kill), เชือดสยองหมอโรคจิต, Sát Thủ Bí Ẩn
PortugalM/16 
Belgium18 
Denmark15 
MexicoC 
Norway18 
Romania18+ 
USAR 
UK18 
AustraliaR 18+ 
Netherlands16 
FinlandK-18 
Germany16 
JapanR18+ 
France16 
Brazil 
South Korea18 PortugalM/16 USAR Brazil14 
Greece USAR Netherlands16 Netherlands16 
Sweden15 Netherlands16 Australia Belgium Brazil Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Japan Mexico Netherlands Norway Portugal Romania South Korea Sweden UK USA 
My favorite part of this movie is that Michael Caine's therapist character is repeatedly propositioned for sex by his female clients who all ask him "don't you want to fuck me doc?" and his response is always "absolutely!"
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
A hooker and a geek join forces to end transphobia once and for all but they only make it worse.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
What if Psycho but way more perverted and problematic? Love it.
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 of 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…
Ooohhhh my name is Brian De Palma did you know I know what a split diopter is
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…
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.
dear brian de palma,
let's link and build King. too soon for a remake? jason weinberg is my manager--do you know each other? he takes care of melanie griffith, whom you worked with on 'the bonfire of the vanities.' i think you'd just Adore me--as an actress, i mean! after all, i am a brunette
love,
hari
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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 an explicit sexual fantasy, the other as 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 in his catalog of them.
i think we can all agree with what went wrong here
but we can all agree that it looked fabulous!!!
rewatching the met scene as we speak....
Problematic fav.
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.
