Brian De Palma Thriller Dressed to Kill Available to Stream for Free

Hidden amongst the film noirs and pulpy slashers on free streaming platforms like Tubi and Pluto TV, there is an erotic thriller starring Michael Caine that functions as a homage-borderline-remake of an all-time great horror classic waiting to be rediscovered. Although overshadowed by the bigger movies from the director—whom Quentin Tarantino once described as “one of the finest directors of his generation”—it features a twist so provocative that it is a wonder it has not become as well known as Fight Club or Shutter Island.

I have long been a fan of Brian De Palma, the luminary alongside Lucas, Spielberg, and Scorsese. Although more recently faded from view, Brian De Palma is responsible for a filmography that rivals any of his fellow Movie Brats: Carrie, The Untouchables, Scarface, Carlito’s Way, and Blow Out, all completed within a 20-year span. Quentin Tarantino has praised him repeatedly over the years, in part because of his more underdog status. While promoting his book, Cinema Speculation, Tarantino explained:

“Everyone loves Spielberg and Scorsese, there was no question of me joining the club of the most popular guys, that’s not my style! Part of my love for De Palma came from the possibility of getting into trouble defending him, sometimes to the point of coming to blows.”

I will admit, my deeper Movie Brat watching has typically landed on the core trio, while my Brian De Palma experience focused on those landmark pictures. As such, I assumed Tarantino’s admiration was about the swagger and the style. I took the claims of Brian De Palma being a Hitchcockian inheritor to be one of method, not quite as literal to the point of co-authorship. Yet that changed with one of his B-movie thrillers.

Dressed to Kill is an overlooked masterpiece

Dressed to Kill would have been called elevated horror if that term existed in 1980. It is a high-end slasher about a high-end call girl played by Nancy Allen. She becomes the target of a scalpel-wielding blonde, heavily suggested to be Bobbi, a transsexual patient of psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott, who is played by Michael Caine. Brian De Palma’s opening gambit is to bury the premise, spending the first forty minutes following middle-aged Kate Miller, played by Angie Dickinson, as another of Dr. Robert Elliott’s patients before she is attacked in an elevator.

Dressed to Kill is streaming for free on YouTube, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Fandango.

Brian De Palma uses his favorite tricks to class up the material. His trademark split diopter, a shot where both sides show near and far in perfect focus with a dividing line in the center, is used for both chills and laughter.

Characters are literally framed: building on a nine-minute wordless scene in an art gallery, the film repeatedly presents the characters in physical and constructed frames.

If you have not seen Dressed to Kill and want to experience its twists for yourself, I recommend jumping over to Prime Video and watching the movie. If you are more impatient, the actual reveal scene is available to watch.

So, yes. It is Psycho. If the repeated shower scenes, end-of-first-act murder that flips the story onto the head of a new protagonist, and psychiatrist explanation dump at the end do not clue you in already, the finale reveals that Dr. Robert Elliott is Bobbi, the killer. I was genuinely stunned, if only because I am amazed I had not heard of the film where Michael Caine dresses as a female killer.

The trans narrative is, as it was in Alfred Hitchcock’s original, a bit of a misnomer. We are dealing with a psychosexual dissociative identity disorder: the repressed other side of a man becomes violent when he gets aroused. Viewed 46 years later and 66 years after Psycho, Dressed to Kill features a trans panic approach that is undeniably dated, although both directors seemed to understand the difference between sexual identity and mental illness.

There are two key evolutions in how Brian De Palma approaches the underlying twist. First, instead of holding the star in a dress for the end, Dressed to Kill establishes the notion the killer could be a man in drag from the moment of the murder, and features multiple sequences attempting to explain the distinction between being trans and dissociative identity disorder.

Second, the sexual drive of its killer is fronted. Psycho was incredibly transgressive for its time, pushing the limits of what violence could be presented on screen, but as with Alfred Hitchcock’s other explorations of sexual obsessions, those elements had to be paired with repression. Dressed to Kill opens with Angie Dickinson naked in the shower and positions its heroine as an escort. Sex is front and center, charging every step.

On The Video Archives podcast, Tarantino called this sort of movie a paraphrase remake, one where enough beats are similar that the enjoyment is heightened through the filter of knowing the hyper-specific tropes. This was the eye-opening element of the film: Brian De Palma was not just using Alfred Hitchcock’s toolkit, he was actively remixing it.

Since watching Dressed to Kill, I have dug deep into the lesser lauded thrillers in his filmography. Sisters, streaming on HBO Max, is Rear Window. Obsession is Vertigo. Body Double is both Rear Window and Vertigo.

It is clear now that Brian De Palma was in conversation with Alfred Hitchcock as much as he was influenced by him. Movies like Dressed to Kill, dated as the sexual politics may be, show how a director can connect to the past while making something firmly for the now.

Dressed to Kill is streaming for free on YouTube, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Fandango.

Source: Polygon