"SpNearly 12 years after its Blu-ray release, Arrow Films are bringing out Brian De Palma's occasionally ludicrous but frequently masterful DRESSED TO KILL on 4K UHD with archival extras ported over from both the Blu-ray and the US Kino Lorber release, plus some new ones as well.
Nice, likeable, middle-aged housewife Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) lives a dull, unfulfilled, middle-class New York life. She is married to Ted (Norman Evans in what must be one of the most thankless roles in cinema), who provides her with a boring sex life. She also has a teenaged son, Peter (Keith Gordon), who is something of an electronics whizz. One morning, after an appointment with her psychiatrist Dr Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) Kate pays a visit to a museum (it’s actually the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the inside). There she meets a man who takes her back to his place for a bit of afternoon bedroom shenanigans. Getting ready to leave, she finds a letter notifying the chap of having a venereal disease (with exclamation mark). Leaving the building she’s attacked in the elevator by a woman wielding a razor and her bleeding, dying body is discovered by call girl Liz (Nancy Allen) who becomes the killer’s next intended victim.
Most people know how DRESSED TO KILL pans out, but in case you don’t I’m not going to reveal any more, suffice to say that this is Hollywood cinema at its most stylish and operatic. When it was originally released DRESSED TO KILL came in for a lot of criticism for being overly misogynistic. In fact, if anything it’s men who get a rough portrayal in this movie. The male characters in the world of DRESSED TO KILL are either beer-swilling useless insensitives (poor old Ted), geeks (Peter), STD-infected lotharios (the chap from the museum) or the perpetrator of the murders. Women come out of this better than men, but at the end of the day, and in the world of the giallo the individual characters don’t matter as much as the overall style of the piece.
It’s a testament to de Palma’s skill as a film-maker that DRESSED TO A KILL is a film that doesn’t stand up to repeat viewings from a logical viewpoint (the film cheats all over the place, often so blatantly you can’t help but see De Palma with a cheeky grin while doing do) but nevertheless it’s a film you have to see several times to appreciate the sheer technical accomplishment of the piece, as well as the many subtleties that you may miss the first time around. Despite all its problems of narrative logic, and the way it does several things that can’t even be described as sleight of camera to distract, deceive and manipulate the viewer, DRESSED TO KILL has gained status as a deserve classic, mainly because De Palma’s style is so arresting and so mesmerising.
There are other factors too, however. The acting from Dickinson, Allen, and Keith Gordon is very good indeed, and pretty much lets us forgive Michael Caine who does feel a bit out of place in this (although who else would have been better in the role - another curious DRESSED TO KILL dichotomy). As mentioned above, the elevator murder remains an operatic triumph of direction, editing and music. Pino Donaggio’s work deserves special mention because it really is one of the best dramatic scores composed for a film of this type. Criticised by those with nothing better to do at the time as being a pale imitation of Bernard Herrmann’s score for PSYCHO, Donaggio’s music actually goes well beyond that. While the scraping strings of PSYCHO’s shower murder are imitated in the elevator scene, Donaggio underpins them with woodwind to create an effect that, if anything, feels even more violent and over the top, in keeping with the operatic nature of De Palma’s film.
I reviewed Arrow's 2013 Blu-ray release of DRESSED TO KILL and its extras, all of which have been ported over, back in 2013 so go here to read about them. Extras new to UK viewers on Arrow's 4K disc are two commentary tracks, one by critic Maitland McDonagh and another, newly recorded for Arrow, by podcasters Drusilla Adeline and Joshua Conkel. The McDonagh is a little drier and more academic while the Adeline and Conkel is much chattier and feels as if you're watching it with knowledgeable friends.
There are two new visual essays: BJ and Harmony Colangelo discuss the themes of duality in the film in terms of not just character but the way the film is shot and its narrative structure (11 minutes) , while Jessica Crets talks about De Palma's empathic treatment of his subject matter in a concise but well-worded piece (9 minutes).
Interviews from 2022 (and presumably prted over from Kino Lorber's Blu-ray) include Nancy Allen (18 minutes), Keith Gordon (14 minutes) and associate producer Fred Caruso (8 minutes).
Finally, the image on Arrow's transfer is a step up from the Blu-ray with dark scenes clearer and the colours on brighter scenes really popping (eg in the museum). The bottom line? If you love DRESSED TO KILL then you have to have this.
Brian De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL is out on 4K UHD from Arrow Films on Monday 3rd March 2025
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