Dressed to Kill (1980)
The seed for Dressed to Kill was planted in 1974 when filmmaker Brian De Palma adapted Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel, “Cruising”, about an undercover cop searching underground gay clubs for a serial killer. De Palma changed the nature of the killer from a college student to a failed actor who films his murders with a video camera, an homage to Michael Powell’s 1960 film Peeping Tom. After the studio rejected this version, De Palma’s added another element, borrowing both from the formula of Psycho and from the 1975 novel, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”, where a woman leads a double life to explore her sexual awakening. De Palma added a character not found in “Cruising”, a bored housewife named Kate, who experiences erotic fantasies of being forcefully taken by a stranger. Kate later meets a stranger in a museum, and has a fling, discovering afterward that he has an STD. In the stranger’s apartment building elevator, she’s stabbed to death by the killer.
Ultimately, the studio gave up on De Palma and handed the project to William Friedkin, who started a fresh adaptation. After taking a studio assignment to direct 1978’s The Fury, De Palma repurposed his “Cruising” ideas to embark on a new screenplay about the danger of sex, Dressed to Kill. De Palma saw Dressed to Kill as his return to the films he made before taking on complicated, big-budget studio efforts. He felt The Fury misfired because it strayed too closely with Carrie, which also featured telekinesis. Variety should keep him, and the audience, from growing fatigued.
As he worked out the details for Dressed to Kill, De Palma took another studio gig. In 1978, Orion Pictures was eager to develop a project for John Travolta. Travolta expressed interest in a film adaptation of Robert Daley’s true crime book, “Prince of the City.” Orion paid $500,000 for the film rights, then secured De Palma, who directed Travolta in Carrie, to direct. As a script was being written by playwright David Rabe, De Palma took a temporary teaching gig for a screenwriting course at his alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College. As part of the course, he made the quirky comedy Home Movies, a low-budget effort reminiscent of his early experimental counterculture comedies.
De Palma also caught an episode of “The Phil Donahue Show” featuring Nancy Hunt, about her new book, “Mirror Image: The Odyssey of a Male-to-Female Transsexual”. He found the notion of one body fought over as if by two different people eerie yet fascinating. A Jekyll and Hyde with male and female personas as the murderer in a movie could be a wonderful twist for Dressed to Kill.
Dressed to Kill was conceived as De Palma’s return to Hitchcockian suspense vehicles he’d explored with 1972’s Sisters and 1976’s Obsession. These fueled his passion to thrill, chill, and terrify audiences through morally ambiguous characters, told through cinema techniques emphasizing style and structure over dialogue and exposition. He wanted to hone his visual storytelling skills into a filmmaking style that transcends the content. He wrote the screenplay quickly, keeping it short so he could explore lengthy, heavily storyboarded camera sequences. Kate’s psychiatrist would be revealed as her killer, a schizophrenic whose murderous female side dominates when he’s aroused as a male. De Palma chose a straight-razor for the murder weapons after reading an article that disfigurement was a woman’s greatest fear, while men feared castration, fitting in with the transsexual subtext due to the body shaving and organ removal necessary.
In the finished script, sexually unsatisfied housewife Kate grows overwhelmed with vivid, violent erotic fantasies. She explains and then makes a pass at her psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliott, unsuccessfully. Kate later has a fling with a stranger but her guilt manifests in her deepest fears coming true, culminating in her murder. Witness to the murder is high-class prostitute Liz Blake, who describes the perpetrator as a blonde woman in sunglasses with a straight-edge razor. Meanwhile, Elliott receives phone calls from his patient, Bobbi, a pre-op transsexual with homicidal tendencies, and Elliott’s stolen razor.
After waffling for over a year, Travolta declined “Prince of the City” for seeming too ordinary. De Palma sought Robert De Niro, who appeared in three of his early films, to replace Travolta. He agreed, if they could wait another year for him to finish his other commitments. De Palma offered Orion his Dressed to Kill project for him to direct while they waited. However, unbeknownst to De Palma, his agent, Sue Mengers, had negotiated for another interested client of hers, Sidney Lumet, to take over the Prince of the City director gig. De Palma didn’t even know he was replaced until he read it in Variety magazine in October 1979.
Miffed, De Palma dropped Mengers for another agent, then connected with successful film producer Ray Stark to get Dressed to Kill made. However, De Palma soon experienced creative differences with Stark that jeopardized the project when Stark insisted that the Liz Blake role be offered to Suzanne Somers. Trouble was that De Palma had written the role specifically for his actress wife, Nancy Allen. He’d infused her character with Allen’s independent, driven, and ambitious personality, and Somers offered none of those qualities. As a compromise, Stark suggested Melanie Griffith. De Palma was tempted because Griffith was the daughter of Tippi Hedren, a Hitchcock blonde who starred in The Birds and Marnie.
However, De Palma had already promised the part to Allen and wasn’t backing down. Sensing an impasse with Stark, De Palma’s approached his former agent-turned-collaborator, George Litto, who produced his prior Hitchcockian efforts (Obsession and Sisters). Litto didn’t have the clout of Stark to successfully negotiate with a major studio, but he brokered a deal with American International Pictures (who made Sisters) to buy the script out from Stark. AIP’s president Samuel Z. Arkoff was looking for higher-profile projects like this to gain legitimacy after years of exploitation features – legitimacy Arkoff would use to complete the sale company to Filmways shortly after. AIP/Filmways bestowed a budget of $6.5 million while giving De Palma full creative control and a $1 million salary.
De Palma motorcycled around New York, shooting Polaroids while his location manager inquired about availability. Locales chosen included the World Trade Center, the subway station at Times Square, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For interiors, they rented warehouse space in Manhattan.
For Dr. Elliott, De Palma relied on his own therapy sessions. He showed his psychiatrist the script for advice on authenticity. De Palma wrote for Elliott with Sean Connery in mind; he was ecstatic when Arkoff independently suggested Connery in the role. Connery was interested because it was a role that helped erode the James Bond typecast. However, Connery had a commitment to make Outland, so De Palma’s second choice, Michael Caine, got the nod. Caine was interested in diversifying his career after a string of flops. While he considered De Palma icy and aloof, he admired De Palma’s talent and felt he was in good hands.
For Kate, De Palma followed the Psycho blueprint used when Hitchcock cast Janet Leigh by requiring an established actress that usually didn’t appear in films like this. He also wanted someone audiences already liked so they’d carry sympathy through her indiscretions and get startled when she was killed early in the film. Like Norman Bates. De Palma’s murderer was a man dressed like a woman with a female split personality triggered to murder by male sexual desire.
De Palma’s top choice for Kate was Norwegian actress Liv Ullman. Ullman declined after reading the script, finding it too violent and the sex too kinky, fearing her children would eventually see it. Jill Clayburgh, who appeared in De Palma’s 1969 film, The Wedding Party, also declined. Finally, De Palma asked Angie Dickinson, who he’d met six months prior at the Montreal Film Festival. Dickinson was hesitant; the part was small and the sex/nudity might upset the fanbase she’d garnered after starring in TV’s “Police Woman”. She also wasn’t keen on playing an ordinary woman, fearing she’d become typecast into housewife and mother roles. Though De Palma persuaded her that Kate would be a glamorous housewife, that he’d use a body double for anything she felt uncomfortable with, and that the eroticism would be tasteful, it was Caine’s casting that convinced her to accept. Caine, who’d never been to a psychiatrist, relied on Dickinson’s therapy experience to guide him on how to behave.
48-year-old Dickinson was self-conscious about full-frontal nudity and despised being naked on the set. Kate’s torso close-ups during her shower masturbation and fantasy scene were of 26-year-old Penthouse Pet of the Year 1977, Victoria Lynn Johnson.
For prostitute Liz Blake, Nancy Allen channeled a model she once knew who aspired to become a mistress to wealthy men and live luxuriously. De Palma also had Allen read Nancy Friday’s, “Forbidden Flowers”, and “My Secret Garden” and Xavier Hollander’s “Happy Hooker” books about women’s kinky fantasies and the lives of high-class prostitutes. Allen wasn’t happy about receiving third billing when she had the most screen time. Even Caine agreed that Allen should be billed higher than him. However, her agent, again Sue Mengers, refused to advocate for her star status; she felt actors shouldn’t tell studios they’re stars, studios tell actors.
Peter Miller was originally written as a twelve-year-old but when De Palma struggled to find a competent child actor, so he was aged up to his teens. De Palma tried out his fifteen-year-old nephew Cameron, but he was too inexperienced an actor to pull off the role. They met with Matt Dillon, also fifteen, but he seemed too street-tough to play a vulnerable nerd. Allen, who performed readings with the younger actors, suggested eighteen-year-old Keith Gordon, who she had good chemistry with for Home Movies. Gordon’s age had the benefit of avoiding SAG child actor restrictions. He also had experience playing De Palma’s younger alter ego (in Home Movies) as an intelligent but lonely and misunderstood introvert fascinated with film, math, and technology.
Autobiographical elements creep into the production. The computer Peter invents is a replica of the differential analyzer De Palma made as a kid for the Philadelphia science fair. Also, De Palma’s parents split up after his mother accused his father of infidelity with a nurse, and became suicidal. De Palma followed his father around, tapping his phone and setting up a camera to surveil him at his office so his mother has evidence for the divorce case. Surveillance, infidelity, and a nurse all become important elements of the film.
When friend and apartment building neighbor Paul Mazursky was too busy with his film Willie & Phil to play Detective Marino, De Palma hired Dennis Franz, who played a cop in The Fury.
De Palma’s first choice of cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, was tied up with Heaven’s Gate, so he moved to Ralph Bode, who photographed with sumptuous soft-lens shimmering. The Steadicam work enhances its dreamlike qualities and the split diopter economizes the narrative timing. De Palma hired Carrie composer Pino Donaggio for the sensual, emotional, feminine, and erotic score that turns abrasive when things get terrifying.
Museum interiors were filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art when New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art became unavailable, while no other local museums would allow the shoot. The museum-seduction idea was a notion De Palma had since taking an Art History course at Columbia University trying to pick up girls. The scene was originally scripted to feature a voiceover offering Kate’s inner monologue, but De Palma removed it during editing in favor of Donaggio’s score.
For the taxi seduction, they used two taxis, one split in half for close-ups in the back seat. The other cab was a real one in operation. Bystanders caught glimpses of the simulated lovemaking as they rode around downtown. The camera was hidden, so onlookers shouted, “Right on, Police Woman!” After the filming, a sign was placed within the cab, reading, “Angie Dickinson was seduced here.”
Because De Palma found Dickinson’s delivery sounded silly, Kate’s orgasmic moans were dubbed by actress and longtime De Palma friend, Rutanya Alda, as a favor. The post-coital venereal disease discovery idea came from an incident in De Palma’s past. He visited an old girlfriend who’d received a medical report listing her among the sexual partners of someone who’d been recently diagnosed with VD.
De Palma’s intended the film to open with a man shaving his body hair with a straight razor, until he gets to his pubic hair, then castrates himself. Two men were used to represent one – shaver and shavee – but it proved too awkward to shoot, mostly because the razor didn’t cut hair neatly in one swoop without shaving cream (especially pubic hair), so he opened with Kate’s shower fantasy.
In the original ending, rather than Liz observing the killer’s reflection in the mirror, she opened the medicine cabinet and the killer’s arm reached out from within to slash her throat, whereupon she wakes in bed with a client, rather than Peter coming from another room to console her after the nightmare. De Palma considered a double-false ending where Liz is shown killed again and then wakes up, this time for real.
Due to the potently graphic sex and violence, the MPAA gave De Palma’s cut an X rating, a severe hindrance to its marketability. After three re-submissions, the edgiest material was trimmed, mostly nudity rather than graphic violence. De Palma called their reasoning absurd, quipping that if someone hacks off a breast in a film, that’s an R rating, but if someone kisses a breast, that’s an X. The movie was released uncut in overseas theaters.
Dressed to Kill drew protests from women’s groups due to elements they found sexist, exploitative, and degrading in its depiction of violence against women. Dickinson defended the film by suggesting that violence against women is actual and denying it exists does more harm than showing it. Violent people will commit violent acts regardless of seeing them in a movie. Although it gave the film great publicity, De Palma was personally upset at being singled out when there were slasher films ten times more graphic receiving no protests. He felt penalized for making audiences care about the victims. As an example, some consider Psycho‘s shower sequence the most violent moment in cinema history, despite the knife never penetrating. The British release also drew protests because the Yorkshire Ripper, who’d murdered nine women at the time of the film’s release, was at large. They pulled it from certain theaters in the vicinity of the killings fearing it would trigger more murders.
De Palma had never thrown a punch in his life but gravitated toward violence in his art. He regarded it as beautiful, sensuous, and poetic, and believed that observing violence on the screen reduced a viewer’s compulsion for real violence. De Palma felt there was no correlation between actual violence and film violence. If a person gets slashed, it should be shown so audiences to feel the pain; sanitized violence no longer impacts the audience. Women are often his victims, but he dismissed claims of misogyny, claiming that the women-in-jeopardy formula works. Audiences were much more frightened in seeing a woman in a negligee holding a candelabra than some tough guy holding a flashlight.
Although Caine didn’t perform the elevator murder, he still received blowback from women’s groups. He admitted its gruesomeness was shocking and asked De Palma why he went so graphic. De Palma defended it, stating that it was the only murder in the film, so he wanted audiences to hold it in their memory so they’d feel fear for the remainder of the film. Years after their marriage ended, Allen acknowledged De Palma enjoyed building women to tear them apart. De Palma felt that audiences secretly desired to see Liz killed by Bobbi for her promiscuity, tapping into a societal stigma that the slaughter of sexually open women is justifiable. De Palma defends using the trope of sex and guilt, not because he believes it, but because it works with audiences.
De Palma also grew defensive at the label: Hitchcock imitator. He admitted learning from Hitchcock’s films and feeling a spiritual bond with his cinematic techniques and subject matter. However, De Palma argued that there was no trademark on cinematic techniques and fumed that his unique idiosyncrasies were being ignored. Hitchcock made nearly fifty suspense thrillers; it was impossible to make a thriller without doing something he’d done before. Even Hitchcock couldn’t escape regurgitation.
Critics continued to overlook his personal touches. He longed for his films to be labeled “Depalmaian” more than “Hitchcockian”. Hitchcock was elegant and refined, even in his edgier films, whereas De Palma preferred eroticism, grit, and harsh language. De Palma saw no reason to hold back titillating, shocking, and scaring audiences with effective methods. Hitchcock didn’t do split-screen action and slow-motion to raise the tension. No one else was taking on women’s erotic fantasies in thrillers, or mixing them with the surreal style of Luis Bunuel. De Palma explored blurred lines, between male and female, between reality and dreams. The action exists on a subconscious level, exploring intuition over logic, where even he didn’t fully understand what it meant.
John Landis, who lunched with Alfred Hitchcock often toward the end of his life, related Hitch’s annoyance with De Palma’s films being referred to as “Hitchcockian.” He called it stealing while Landis said it’s homage. Hitch responded, “You mean fromage?” Hitchcock was right; De Palma borrowed Hitchcockian techniques hoping to make a name for himself as the “Master of the Macabre” and “Merchant of Menace.”. De Palma argued that using tried-and-true methods was required to direct in the thriller genre.
One knock on Dressed to Kill as a mystery is that the killer’s identity is easily identifiable. There are frequent shots of Dr. Elliott looking in the mirror and not enough red herrings. His name is Robert, and the killer identifies as Bobbi.
Not that De Palma didn’t try to throw viewers off the scent. William Finley provided the American-accented voice of Bobbi on the answering machine. Tall German actress Susanna Clemm was Caine’s body double as Bobbi until the reveal, sporting a false nose and body padding. Clemm also plays the police officer that shoots Bobbi in the climax. This worked out well for the production, because Clemm was far less costly, working for scale, while Caine wasn’t happy about dressing as Bobbi for the final reveal. He’d never been in drag and was worried he might like it and become a transvestite. He shaved multiple times a day to wear the tights, his wig was too silly, the lipstick smeared his cigars, and he was clumsy in high-heeled shoes. Instead of ladies’ panties, Caine kept on his male underwear to protect him from losing his masculinity. Caine’s agent, also Mengers, informed him that he looked so awful as a woman that he’d never succeed at leading a double life. Caine kept his nurse’s outfit from the shoot; when his wife Shakira unpacked his suitcase, she feared he’d been unfaithful, letting some mistress’s clothes get mixed in with his. However, upon close inspection, she felt relief, knowing Michael would never be with a woman built like that.
Despite its controversies, Dressed to Kill was a box office success, earning over $31 million in the US before becoming an international success in Europe. Critics either loved Dressed to Kill or loathed it. Hitchcock’s death just preceding the film’s release certainly didn’t help its reputation, especially when advertisements dared to proclaim De Palma as the new “Master of Suspense”. There was also a backlash forming against the many cheap, sleazy, and misogynistic slasher films coming out around the same time. After this De Palma was either a wunderkind or a rip-off artist in the minds of many critics. The mixed feelings extended to the cast, as Nancy Allen received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year while also getting a Razzie nom for Worst Actress, along with Caine for Worst Actor and De Palma for Worst Director.
While it falls short of the genius of Hitchcock, De Palma shows an understanding of how virtuoso camera movements and music arrest the viewer’s attention. As a story, it’s farfetched, predictable, and unoriginal, but it still commands your attention from a tantalizing beginning to its coyly twisting end. The Psycho allusions are obvious but De Palma finds his own style that is intense and viscerally engaging. De Palma isn’t one for extensive character development or narrative cohesion; his mission is to play with audience expectations. Suspenseful and shocking, De Palma lures you in for the big scare, not afraid of graphic sex and violence to attract and repulse you into his lurid web of sensationalistic frights.
Dressed to Kill is a potent mix of Hitchcockian elegant and schlock exploitation, making up for its lack of classiness with a mastery of cinematic technique that shows De Palma is a genuine talent beyond a plagiarizer of ideas. It’s sick, slick, bloody, and hilarious all at the same time — a truly memorable thriller that mesmerizes so adeptly, that you’ll feel a hangover shortly after by how effortlessly De Palma has entertained without bothering with any attempts at logic or cohesion.
- MGM and Hyde Park announced a direct-to-DVD in 2007 with Rick Alexander scripting but nothing came of it.
Qwipster’s rating: A-
MPAA Rated: R for strong violence, strong sexuality, nudity, and language (an unrated version exists with more nudity)
Running Time: 105 min.
Cast: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Margulies, Ken Baker
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenplay: Brian De Palma