Now that I've seen Hereditary and pretty much declared it my best horror film of 2018, I've found myself slightly depressed. Part of the reason is that I know it's going to be downhill from this point for the rest of the year, and I can already see an Unfriended sequel and that Purge prequel approaching to make my July harder than it should be. So it's time to look at some genre classics, starting off with Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill.
Kate Miller is a sexually frustrated housewife in New York. After discussing some of the problems in her marriage with her psychiatrist, Dr Elliott - and flirting a little bit with him - she goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, she has a chance encounter with a stranger that leads to the two of them going back to his apartment for an afternoon of anonymous sex. Her enjoyment of this is marred, however, when she discovers that her new lover has an STI; to make matters worse she then forgets her wedding ring in his apartment and, when she goes back to get it, she is attacked and murdered in the lift by a blonde woman wearing sunglasses and wielding a straight razor. The only witness to this is a prostitute, Liz Blake, but as no-one else sees the murderous woman Liz ends up being considered a suspect. With the help of Kate's son Peter, Liz sets out to discover proof of the blonde woman's existence and identity. Meanwhile, Dr Elliott suspects that a former patient of his, a transsexual named Bobbi, may be behind Kate's murder and also tries to meet up with her...
Here's where I get to show off some of my fancy Film Studies learnings, because if there's one thing that de Palma is known for, it's his mise-en-scène. French for "placing on stage", it refers to telling a story through the design aspects of a film (or theatre) scene, where pretty much everything shown is important to the film overall. It can refer to a single shot or scene, or several scenes placed throughout a film. In the case of Dressed to Kill, there are several key examples of mise-en-scène - the most notable being the almost cat-and-mouse-esque game that Kate and her anonymous lover play at the museum. It runs for nine minutes, and there is no dialogue spoken throughout. That alone is an impressive achievement in filmmaking, even without the delicate storytelling woven throughout it. Later on, we watch Liz Blake being chased through a subway station and train by not only the killer, but a group of street thugs who've taken a dislike to her, and again every detail is important. Overall, even if everything else in the film was terrible, the cinematography is a joy to behold.
When it was released, Dressed to Kill also got the attention of the National Organisation for Women, who picketed the film for being (in their eyes) misogynistic. Their protest ended up boosting ticket sales for the film - and, as with most protests over films of this nature, it was never the film that was misogynistic, just the killer, and (say it with me now) the killer's view in a film is not necessarily the film's view. Of course, the fact that the killer is a male-to-female transsexual is a problem all its own, but in 1980 transsexuality was far less understood and accepted than it is today, and despite such things as saying that transsexuals "think" they've been born in the wrong body, the film seems to at least be trying to present things as neutrally as possible. That being said, Kate Miller does fall squarely into the category of the victim who enjoys some sexual freedom and then is killed for it, from watching her masturbation in the shower at the start of the film to her anonymous sex later in the day (and that and her rape fantasy in the shower are two of the most common sexual fantasies of women - yes, I've read my fair share of Nancy Friday as well), and later on Liz risks suffering the same fate for her open sexuality.
Comparisons to other films are inevitable - Dressed to Kill opens in the same way that a previous film of de Palma's, Carrie, and I'd swear that the score is very similar as well. And of course there's the other film, whose name I'm not mentioning in an attempt to avoid spoilers, but even in the plot beats it becomes very clear as you're watching it. When the director of the other film was told that Dressed to Kill was intended as a "homage" to his film, however, he replied, "You mean fromage." Ouch. Apart from that dissenting opinion, however, Dressed to Kill is a beautifully stylish and tense film, and thankfully the relative obviousness of where the plot is going doesn't marr it overall.
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