Either I'm gullible or this flick was surprising. Either way, it was a fun ride. If I'm gullible, good. I love surprises. Especially in movies.
DRESSED TO KILL is the second Brian De Palma flick I've seen this October, after CARRIE. You can see the similarities right away. Within seconds of each film, the viewer is plunged into the horrifying world of naked women in showers. Steamy, soapy and self-caressy. But wait. In CARRIE something terrible happened just after Carrie was done lovingly soaping up her chest. Does that mean -- AHHHHH!!!!!
But wait. It was just a dream. Phew.
Moving on:
It's tough to talk about DRESSED TO KILL without giving away some of the secrets. How do I put it? Let's say this: there are several directors who are great at misdirection. They make you look one way, then they sneak something in when you least expect it. The master of this was Alfred Hitchcock. A contemporary master is Christopher Nolan. And, in between those dudes, we have Brian De Palma. I guess it's fitting Michael Caine starred in both De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL and Nolan's THE PRESTIGE -- two flicks dedicated to tricking the audience.
Michael Caine stars as psychologist to bored middle-aged housewife, Angie Dickinson, who doesn't have a great sex life and dreams of the possibilities of an extra-marital affair. She also has a genius son (Keith Gordon) who spends his time inventing super-computers in his bedroom.
There's a one-afternoon stand. A murder. A witness (Nancy Allen as a young prostitute who is in the wrong place at the wrong time). A cop (young Dennis Franz -- I just pretended he was young Detective Andy Sipowicz the whole time). A transsexual (dressed to kill).
I mentioned Hitchcock before as a fellow master of misdirection. Off the top of my head, I'd say Hitchcock's greatest exercise of misdirection is PSYCHO. There's an unexpected murder out of nowhere, and just when you think you know which character you're supposed to sympathize with, Hitchock shifts gears and thrusts a new character into the foreground. Seems like once every half hour we've got a new main character, and just as often, the background characters seem to change the roles we expect them to play.
It's the same way with DRESSED TO KILL. The film is constructed in such a way that it consists of maybe four or five blocks of scenes, and each block features its own main character, who interacts with all the other characters differently. The characters keep growing and evolving. For instance: the genius son goes from computer nerd to amateur detective to vigilante. And it all seems to make sense.
But, like PSYCHO, DRESSED TO KILL does kind of stumble in the last few minutes. First, we get a little too much exposition wrapping the story up. Then, like CARRIE, De Palma reaches for heights he doesn't really need to reach to, and goes a little over the top in the last ten minutes or so. Again, the stuff that came before is strong enough that the end doesn't ruin things, and in DRESSED TO KILL the last shot (again, highly reminiscent of CARRIE) actually kind of redeems the flights of fancy.
Oh, and did I mention as a bonus, the flick is occasionally funny? Well, it is.
Perhaps the greates sequence is an early one featuring the slow, wordless flirtation and seduction between Angie Dickinson's character and a mysterious gentleman as they follow each other around a museum. The music score (by Pino Donaggio of CARRIE fame -- another over-the-top score that works against all odds) builds and builds as the suspense does the same. The camera floats, twists, and turns down the corridors of the museum. Will they hook up? Won't they? We're so wrapped up that when the pay off comes about ten minutes later, it's totally out of left field. We think the movie is about one thing, but guess what? It's about something else.
That's misdirection.
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