I've got a couple of movies that have been on my DVR for a bit coming up in quick succesion, so the first of them is getting a blog posting a bit further out from when it's airing than I would normally do for movies. That movie is the 1980 Brian De Palma film Dressed to Kill, which will be on TCM at 1:45 AM on Nov. 19, which is still Saturday evening out in the Pacific time zone.
Angie Dickinson, pushing 50, plays Kate Miller, a Manhattan wife on her second marriage to what must be a fairly successful man, considering the apartment they live in. Kate lost her first husband in Vietnam and left her a widow with a young son, Peter (Keith Gordon), who is now high school age and a science whiz. But both of them have figured out over the years that Stepdad isn't the World's Greatest Dad. Not that he's a bad person; in fact, we don't see all that much of him beyond him and Mom having sex that is very unsatisfying for her.
In fact, Kate feels so unsatisfied that, like a lot of bored upper-middle-class housewives, she's decided to get herself an analyst, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine). She pours out her problems to him, and he tries to remain a neutral observer since that's the ethical thing to do, even if it is difficult when she asks him if he's attracted to her.
After leaving her appointment with Dr. Elliott, she heads off to the art museum, where she has experiences that could be straight out of multiple Alfred Hitchcock movies like Vertigo and Topaz. Eventually, she drops one of her gloves, and a strange man picks it up. She finds the man in a taxi outside the museum, and they proceed to have sex in the taxi on the way to his apartment. Unfortunately, Kate discovers that the man has recently been diagnosed with a venereal disease, so she drops him like a hot potato, although she forgets her engagment ring.
This last bit is important because she has to go back to the apartment to retrieve it. On the elevator the second time is a woman in a really bad wig and sunglasses trying to look like the Karen Black character from Family Plot or something. This mysterious woman proceeds to take out a straight razor and stab Kate to death reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho. Unfortunately, when the elevator doors open, there's a professional escort standing outside the door with the man she's escorting.
That escort is Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), and she's in danger. She stupidly picks up the razor, leaving her fingerprints on it and making her a prime suspect for police detective Marino (Dennis Franz years before NYPD Blue). It's also got Dr. Elliott's prints on it; apparently it's one of his patients who stole the razor from his home office. And Dr. Elliott has a patient who would be a prime suspect, a "Bobbi" who is a man with gender dysphoria and would like gender reassignment surgery except that Dr. Elliott won't sign off on it.
Liz is in trouble as Bobbi knows she's a witness. Thankfully, Peter wants to know who killed his mother and, being that science whiz, is more than ready to start using 1980-vintage surveillance technology to try to find the killer. And Det. Marino would love to get his hands on Dr. Elliott's appointment book to find out more about Bobbi.
Dressed to Kill was apparently a controversial movie even back on its release in 1980, because of the way it portrayed trans people. The portrayal probably wasn't politically correct then, and certainly isn't correct now that they've hijacked the LGB coalition and are only allowed to be portrayed as more perfect than anybody else. Sorry, but the gays I know hate how the Ts are in their view arrogating accpetance of gays and lesbians to force everybody to celebrate the trans above everybody else. That, and how the self-styled "leaders" of the LGBT... coalition kowtow to this and try to force the coalition into an extremely narrow political box. Woe betide all those gays who just want to be left alone.
Never mind the political rant; Dressed to Kill also has the problem that director Brian De Palma seems as interested in his homage to Hitchcock and the stylistic decisions this forces him to make as he does in having a good plot. The movie is either much too slow at times (the whole museum scene) or giving us unneccessary stuff such as an entire coda at the end. I think I get what De Palma was trying to go for; he just doesn't really succeed at what he was trying to do.
Still, you should probably watch Dressed to Kill once just because of the homage and how controversial it was.
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