It isn’t only because one of the first shots of (the unrated director’s cut of) Dressed to Kill is of Angie Dickinson’s body double lathering her private parts that the cackling spirit of Pauline Kael is resurrected whenever anyone wants to score a few cheap points at the expense of Brian De Palma’s reputation. It’s also because Kael was one of the only contemporary critics who accurately described what wavelengths De Palma’s movies were working on.
For instance, Kael was one of the few who actually used the term “comedy” to describe the obviously riotous Dressed to Kill, which anyone who really listens closely to that Black cleaning woman’s (Amalie Collier) screams after the film’s centerpiece elevator scene could tell you is absolutely accurate. Dressed to Kill is the quintessential erotic horror-comedy of the grindhouse heyday; the film’s luxurious, almost eerily plastique elegance just barely disguises its unapologetic presentation of fetish iconography. It’s a pearled sex toy next to the rough lays that mark the genre, and like all sex toys, it’s remarkably focused on servicing the solitary consumer.
Because fetishizing requires the dislocation and amplification of objects from their surroundings, a quick rundown of the formal dildos and vibrating bullets on De Palma’s kink counter: creamy, coordinated couture, complete with sonically active jewelry and heels; razor fixation (reminiscent of Dario Argento, though predating the astonishing moment when blaze meets bulb in Tenebre); manhole steam illuminated by porn shops’ marquee lights; the sighs of a masturbating woman merging with the prurient bloom of Pino Donaggio’s best score (even if you get the sense that De Palma probably wanted something closer to his and Alfred Hitchcock’s former collaborator Bernard Herrmann’s score from Taxi Driver); the choreography of the Phil Donohue split-screen, with exactingly timed parallel turns; a room-filling gadget that only carries and holds up to 20 binary digits inside a film that functions primarily like a machine; “What’s the going rate on running red lights?”; a jerry-rigged time-lapse camera hidden in a shoebox; a sex worker comfortable strutting along Wall Street and launching over subway turnstiles; the way the cross-dressing psycho’s name, Bobbi, is spelled; the fact that Dressed to Kill the only one of De Palma’s “red period” films whose color palette is overwhelmingly blue.
Dressed to Kill certainly belongs in the rich company of Noo Yawk, Rotten Apple, post-disco, post-feminist, post-Stonewall, post-Son of Sam urban-nightmare films that seemed to emerge from the faded balconies of the slightly more upscale grindhouse venues on and around 42nd Street. Though the current cultural climate around gender identity has turned De Palma’s film into a far more politically disreputable property, Dressed to Kill’s funk of hedonism is only as pungent as a perfume sample in a department store’s monthly catalog.
The film glides in stark contrast to the thick grime of its shrieking cinematic sisters: Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45, William Lustig’s Maniac, and William Friedkin’s Cruising. The latter film was a project De Palma himself wanted to make initially and had written a screenplay for as early as 1974. He ultimately passed the project over to Friedkin, who crafted a provocative, troubling masterpiece of his own to complement De Palma’s much-protested hit. That’s probably just as well, since De Palma’s original script reportedly spent far more time creating an erotic fantasy life for a character who had little to do with Cruising’s central plot about the psychosexual role-playing kinship between undercover cops and fisting-happy sex pigs.
No, what we have here is the work of a director who saw the charred aftermath of the sexual revolution’s late-’70s bust and thought, “I should cast my wife as a hooker again. A real Park Avenue whore.” Who, instead of taking a gritty, hard-on look at the twisted bi-curious ground shared by Ms. 45 or Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, inflates paperback-pulp psychology into something only abstractly resembling a plot, all the better to demonstrate that filmmaking is an inherently visual storytelling. Who is justifiably confident enough in his craft that he can limit himself to two schools of dialogue: soap-operatic exposition and silence. Who, to paraphrase Kael, could turn a seamy museum pick-up into an accelerated, 10-minute Dangerous Liaisons.
The pleasures of the screwball Dressed to Kill (emphasis on both “screw” and “ball”) flat-out do not translate to print, but for what it’s worth, it’s the most perfectly directed film ever, provided that you, like this critic, bust into orgasmic laughter when Jerry Greenberg’s double-shuffling editing makes it seem like the only threat that Nancy Allen’s Liz Blake and a wooden Samm-Art Williams’s subway cop can see boarding the subway train is a 250-pound bag lady.
Image/Sound
Kino Lorber’s 4K UHD transfer of Dressed to Kill comes straight from a 4K scan of the original camera negative. And with all the extras, aside from a commentary track, being housed on a separate Blu-ray disc, every byte of space on the 4K disc goes toward maximizing the image detail of the film. For as sharp and rich in detail as this transfer is, though, it retains all the surface pleasures of the film’s intentionally gauzy, soft-focus aesthetic. Colors are decidedly more vibrant than they are on the Criterion Collection’s 2016 Blu-ray, in everything from Nancy Allen’s golden curls to her iconic purple dress. The disc comes with the option for the original lossless 2.0 mono audio and 5.1 surround sound, which features a well-balanced mix that lends a resounding depth to Pino Donoggio’s lush, giallo-esque score.
Extras
Kino’s veritable feast of extras kicks off with an audio commentary by critic and author Maitland McDonagh, who provides an astute and detailed analysis of the film’s elaborate, psychologically motivated visual style. McDonagh consistently makes the argument that Brian De Palma’s many flourishes contain multitudes, while delving into the controversies that the film sparked upon its release. The next most substantial extra is the 45-minute documentary “The Making of Dressed to Kill,” which, among other things, gets into the genesis of the film and how The Phil Donahue interview of a transgender woman, Nancy Hunt, inspired De Palma to reshape his unmade screenplay of Cruising into Dressed to Kill. (Another documentary, “Slashing Dressed to Kill,” also from 2001, covers the story behind the film’s R, NC-17, and X-rated cuts, pairing well with a separate feature that shows numerous side-by-side comparisons.)
Among the glut of interviews included as extras are three new ones with Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon, and associate producer Fred C. Caruso. Caruso’s is a bust, as he seems interested in little more than touting his various credits and insisting upon the importance of dialogue when discussing a film where that may be its least important feature. By contrast, Allen and Gordon provide interesting insights into De Palma’s working process, both on the script level and during production. There’s also a brief tribute to the film by Gordon, who displays a deep affection for De Palma and credits him for teaching him everything he knows about filmmaking.
All the remaining interviews are archival, including several more with Allen and Gordon from 2012 and 1980. The interviews with Angie Dickinson and producer George Litto are interesting, particularly the former, in which the actress opens up about the vulnerability she felt on set and her fondness for De Palma, who was always looking out for her. Also included are audio-only interviews with Dickinson and Caine, the latter of whom gives great insight into the differences between working on a typical film and one where the visual grammar requires an intense precision of movement. The package is rounded out with trailers and radio and TV spots.
Overall
With a stunning new transfer and bounty of extras, this 4K UHD release is the best home video release to date of Brian De Palma’s exquisitely directed and gloriously trashy slasher.
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