Dressed to Kill is a 1980 American thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma, and starring Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen. It depicts the events leading up to the brutal murder of New York City housewife Kate Miller (Dickinson) before following Liz Blake (Allen), a prostitute who witnesses the crime, and her attempts to solve it with the help of the victim's son Peter (Keith Gordon). It contains several direct references to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho.
While acknowledging similarities to Alfred Hitchcock films (particularly Psycho), De Palma claimed to get the idea from watching The Phil Donahue Show. The film was shot in New York City and Philadelphia, and Pino Donaggio composed the score.
Released in July 1980, Dressed to Kill was a box office success in the United States, grossing over $31 million against a production budget of $6.5 million. The film polarized critics, but has since gained a cult following.
Plot Sexually frustrated housewife Kate Miller is attending therapy sessions with New York City psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott. During an appointment, Kate attempts to seduce him, but Elliott rejects her advances, stating his unwillingness to jeopardize his happy marriage. Kate has planned to spend the day with her teenage son Peter, an inventor, but he has to cancel as he has reached a critical point in his research for his entry to the city's science fair. Thus, Kate goes alone to a museum where she unexpectedly flirts with mysterious stranger Warren Lockman. Kate and Warren stalk each other through the museum until they finally wind up outside, where Kate joins him in a taxi, where he embraces and pleasures her. They go to his apartment and have sex.
Hours later, Kate awakens and decides to discreetly leave while Warren is asleep. Kate sits at his desk to leave him a note and finds a document from the Health Department indicating that Warren has contracted both syphilis and gonorrhea. Shocked and fear-stricken, she leaves the apartment, but having hastily forgotten her wedding ring on the nightstand, she returns to retrieve it. The elevator doors open on the figure of a tall, blonde woman in dark sunglasses wielding a straight razor, who violently slashes Kate to death in the elevator. Upon discovering the body, Liz Blake, a high-priced call girl, notices the killer in the elevator's convex mirror, and subsequently becomes both the prime suspect and the killer's next target.
Dr. Elliott receives a bizarre message on his answering machine from Bobbi, a transgender patient. Bobbi taunts the psychiatrist for ending their therapy sessions, apparently because Elliott refuses to sign the necessary papers for Bobbi to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Elliott tries to convince Dr. Levy, the patient's new doctor, that Bobbi is endangering herself and others.
Police Detective Marino doubts Liz's story, partly because of her profession, so Liz partners with a revenge-minded Peter to find the killer, using a series of his homemade listening devices and time-lapse cameras to track patients leaving Elliott's office. They catch Bobbi on camera, and soon a tall blonde in sunglasses starts stalking Liz, subsequently making several attempts on her life. Peter thwarts one of them in the New York City Subway by spraying Bobbi with homemade Mace.
The pair scheme to learn Bobbi's birth name by infiltrating Dr. Elliott's office. Liz baits Dr. Elliott by stripping to lingerie and flirting with him, distracting him long enough to briefly exit and look through his appointment book. Peter is watching through the window when a blonde pulls him away. When Liz returns, a razor-wielding blonde confronts her; the blonde outside shoots and wounds the blonde inside, knocking the wig off and revealing the razor-wielding blonde as Dr. Elliott/Bobbi. The blonde who shot Bobbi is actually female police officer Betty Luce, revealing herself to be the blonde who has been trailing Liz.
Elliott is arrested and committed to a mental institution. Dr. Levy later explains to Liz that Elliott wanted to be a woman, but his male side would not allow him to proceed with the operation. Whenever a woman sexually aroused Elliott, Bobbi, representing the unstable, female side of the doctor's personality, became threatened to the point that she finally became murderous. When Dr. Levy realized this through his last conversation with Elliott, he called the police, who went to work and eventually apprehended Elliott. Elliott escapes from the asylum after strangling a nurse, stalks Liz to Peter's house, and slashes her throat. She wakes up screaming and Peter rushes to her side, letting her realize it was merely a nightmare.
Cast
Production Development While acknowledging similarities to Alfred Hitchcock films (particularly Psycho), Brian De Palma claimed that he got the idea of the murderer from watching a transsexual on The Phil Donahue Show (the show made an appearance in the film).
Pre-production Sean Connery was considered for Robert Elliott, but because of his previous commitments, Michael Caine ended up accepting the role. De Palma originally wanted Liv Ullmann to play Kate Miller, but she declined. He then offered the role to Angie Dickinson, who accepted the part. Nancy Allen was drawn to Liz's character, when her husband De Palma began developing the script, but kept it to herself, thinking that he would reject her. It was only when she was filming Steven Spielberg's 1941 that she got a telephone call from De Palma telling her to take a look at Liz. She accepted the role immediately. Originally, a "straight and aggressive" character, Liz developed a sense of humor after Allen provided input. Matt Dillon and Cameron De Palma (Brian De Palma's nephew) were also in contention for the role of Peter Miller. Keith Gordon ended up gaining the part. Paul Mazursky being busy shooting a film prevented him from playing Detective Marino, which was eventually played by Dennis Franz. Susanna Clemm, who played the policewoman as well as the role of Bobbi, and De Palma "worked out a pair of glasses that had a nose in it that matched Caine's."
Filming
Dressed to Kill was shot primarily in New York City, though the art gallery scene was filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. De Palma scouted the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in hopes shooting the museum scene there, but when the museum officials objected to the script, he chose to film it in Philadelphia. The film was shot between October 1979 and January 1980.
The naked body in the opening scene, taking place in a shower, was not that of Dickinson, but of 1977 Penthouse Pet of the Year model Victoria Lynn Johnson. There was a conflict between Dickinson and Ann Roth, the film's costume designer. Roth wanted Dickinson to wear a gray suit in reference to Kim Novak in Vertigo, but Dickinson wanted to wear white, saying that "they're not going to expect blood to go on a white coat." Dickinson eventually won the argument. De Palma has referred to the elevator killing as the best murder scene he has ever done.
Allen got the idea of Liz playing the stock market after she ran across Xaviera Hollander's book The Happy Hooker. During her research, a psychiatrist told her about one of his call girl patients "who came into his office wearing a fur coat with nothing on underneath." That's where Allen got the idea to wear a black garter belt under her coat in the seduction scene.
Originally, during Peter Miller's introductory scene, he was supposed to run around the room, but Gordon managed to convince De Palma that since Peter was up all night, he would not have "that kind of energy." Clemm portrayed Bobbi up until the reveal, at which point Caine portrayed the character in costume.
Scoring De Palma settled on Pino Donaggio to score the film, wanting a sensual and erotic score, and emotional, sensuous, feminine, abrasive and disturbing sounds.
Censorship Two versions of the film exist in North America, an R-rated version and an unrated version. The unrated version is around 30 seconds longer and shows more pubic hair in the shower scene, more blood in the elevator scene (including a close-up shot of the killer slitting Kate's throat), and more explicit dialogue from Liz Blake during the scene in Elliott's office. These scenes were trimmed when the MPAA originally gave the film an X rating.
Themes Scott Tobias noticed that "there are doubles everywhere in the film: two women, two gloves, two shower scenes, two blondes following Liz around, split-screens and split diopter shots. And there's no duality that matters more than Dr Elliott and Bobbi, one a clinical therapist who bottles his impulses, the other who springs into action whenever the doctor feels aroused." Pauline Kael pointed out the screen-within-the-screen scene "when the image is divided between Dr. Elliott at his place and Liz at hers; for her, Phil Donahue on the TV is just a background noise, while the doctor, watching the same show, is giving it close attention." J. Hoberman further pointed out how the film is "framed by two reveries imagined in the same bed — one a lascivious daydream, the other a scary nightmare."
Release Box office Dressed to Kill premiered in Los Angeles and New York City on July 25, 1980. The film grossed $3,416,000 in its opening weekend from 591 theatres and improved its gross the following weekend with $3,640,000 from 596 theatres. It grossed a total of $31.9 million at the U.S. box office against a production budget of $6.5 million, and was the 21st highest-grossing film of the year. The film earned theatrical rentals of $15 million in the United States and Canada. Please note figures are for rentals in US and Canada
Home media , the film is owned by Amazon MGM Studios via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer label (successor to Orion Pictures, who bought Filmways and American International Pictures in 1982). The film saw a 1984 VHS release by Warner Home Video, and later another VHS release by Goodtimes under licence from Orion. In 2001, MGM released the film in a special edition DVD. In September 2011, MGM released both R-rated and unrated versions on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Criterion Collection released separate deluxe Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film on September 8, 2015. On October 25, 2022, Kino Lorber issued the film for the first time in 4K UHD Blu-ray format.
Reception Critical response Dressed to Kill divided critics; some called it a masterpiece, while others dismissed it altogether.
David Denby of New York magazine proclaimed the film "the first great American movie of the '80s". Gene Siskel gave it three stars out of four, writing that there were scenes "that are as exciting and as stylish as any ever put on film. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the film is a whodunit, and its mystery is so easy to solve that we merely end up watching the film's visual pyrotechnics at a distance, never getting all that involved." Vincent Canby called the film "witty, romantic," and "very funny, which helps to defuse the effect of the graphically photographed violence. In addition, the film is, in its own inside-out way, peculiarly moral." He placed the movie in his end-of-year Ten Best Films of 1980 list. His review also added that "The performers are excellent, especially Miss Dickinson."