Brian De Palma isn’t afraid to open with a slow-mo shower scene. And God bless him. Four years prior we met Carrie in a locker room shower suddenly experiencing the horrors of a girl’s first period. We quickly learned of her character’s isolation when the soft music was broken by the shrieks of her cruel classmates hurling maxi pads at her. It’s an interesting way to introduce a lead. In Dressed to Kill, we first see Kate Miller (played by Angie Dickinson and her bodacious body double) in the throws of rubbing one out in the shower while looking onto a completely uninterested husband. She’s a sexually frustrated housewife who spends her afternoons with her stiff therapist Dr. Elliott (Michael Cane), taking in museums, and on this occasion, engaging in anonymous sex in the back of a taxi cab. Busy Tuesday! This encounter puts her in the wrong place-wrong time cross hairs of a cold blooded killer.
The lone witness, a prostitute named Liz (Nancy Allen or Chris from Carrie) becomes the next target of the mysterious slasher who will stop at nothing to keep her quiet. It’s the kind of Hitchcock-esque fare that gets De Palma in trouble, But I’m not mad at it in the same way that I can love and appreciate someone like Tarantino. Michael Cane and a characteristically crass Dennis Franz round out the players in this cat and mouse game. Dressed to Kill is far from De Palma’s best (see: Carrie, Blow Out, Phantom of the Paradise, or Sisters) but if it you happen to come across it one late night on Cinemax, don’t turn the channel.
