Dressed To Kill (1980)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer-2:04
Rating
Year Of Production	1980
Running Time	100:14
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Brian De Palma
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Angie Dickinson Nancy Allen Michael Caine Keith Gordon Dennis Franz David Margulies
Case	?
RPI	$31.95	Music	Pino Donaggio

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Auto Pan & Scan Encoded	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired French Italian Spanish Dutch	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Dressed to Kill is a movie with a number of different styles. It's a study of sexual psychology, a murder mystery, even a slasher flick. It's described by some as Brian de Palma's biggest tribute to Hitchcock (there's lots of evidence to back up such a claim).

    It begins as something close to soft-core porn (complete with soft-core music) - a lengthy study of a woman in heavy eye makeup (!) having a shower, lingering on her breasts, the rest of her body, the soap - very classic stuff. It's amusing that she seems to be trying to attract the attention of the man shaving at the bathroom basin. It's also impressive that this is Angie Dickinson, who was 49 at the time this was filmed (yeah, I know, they used a body double for a lot of it, but not all). But the tone changes as the scene goes on: we get the distinct impression that this is not a woman who feels sexually fulfilled.

    Then we meet her son Peter (Keith Gordon). He's working on an electronic project that we're supposed to be impressed by. Sadly, the circuit in question turns out to be a 20 bit binary adder, and this boy claims to have invented it - at this time binary adders were distinctly old-hat, and nothing to be excited about (sorry, but this is an area I know about).

    Next we see her at her therapist's. Her therapist is the suave Dr Elliott (Michael Caine). We learn more about her yearning for sexual fulfilment, which seems to be the root of her unhappiness.

    She visits an art gallery after the therapist. She's looking at art cursorily, and making notes in her diary about food planning. She gets intrigued by a man, follows him, makes a silent approach, is rebuffed, then teased, then the teasing develops into something of a chase through the gallery - all without words (this is rather fun). Eventually she goes off with the man and has anonymous sex. She wakes up, startled and somewhat shocked and embarrassed at what she's done while carried away by her libido. She leaves his apartment a little hurriedly.

    It's at this point that the movie turns, without warning, into something else altogether...

    There is a moment when it seems that de Palma was trying to tell us, clumsily, that one of the characters is being punished for being promiscuous - that jars with the rest of the film. Or maybe that was meant as a comic touch - I honestly don't know. I'd love a director's commentary to clarify that point, if nothing else.

    Have a good look at Detective Marino, by the way - it's Dennis Franz with rather more hair, and gold chains - does he ever play anything other than a cop?

    If you're aware of the controversy that surrounds this film, then you might want to know which version this is. This is the R-rated cut, not the "TV" cut, and not the unrated cut.

    Oh, by the way, don't watch the trailer before you watch the movie - it makes a point of telling you other films made by this director. If you happen to know a particular one of these, then it will give away the denouement, which you won't want (I think it's a bit lame that he used the same cheap trick in both movies).

Video

    This film is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced. This is the original theatrical aspect ratio, and that's important for this film - de Palma has used the whole frame, and anything less would have distorted his composition.

    The image is reasonably sharp on close-ups, but fairly soft otherwise. There's acceptable shadow detail, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is bright and vivid. There are some over-hot whites, but there's no colour bleed. I suspect the colour has been turned up a touch high, but it's not enough to really distort the picture - it may be inherent in the source material, though, because it varies a little from scene to scene.

    There are quite a few tiny film artefacts, but they really are tiny - the most noticeable of the small artefacts was a couple of short hairs at the bottom of frame all through a long take as Angie Dickinson approaches the taxi. There are a couple of frames at 19:47 with what look like hairs most of the way across frame, but you must watch closely to see them at normal speed. There's a fair bit of aliasing, and some moire (have a look at 44:07 on the check jacket), but it never reaches annoying levels. There's some background MPEG shimmer, too. There's a fair bit of grain (some of it film grain, but more of it probably due to over-compression) -  that's perhaps the worst part of this transfer.

    There are subtitles in six languages. I watched the English subtitles, which are captions. They are quite accurate, well-timed, and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. No layer change, but this is probably why the movie looks to have been compressed rather more than would be ideal.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is available in five languages. I only listened to the English, which is a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    The dialogue is clear and easily understood - it is well separated from the score. There are no audio sync glitches.

    The score was the work of Pino Donaggio. It is excellent, accenting the action without trampling it. Once or twice it makes a subtle comment on the action - that's effective.

    This soundtrack has excellent surround sound - subtle, but effective, ambient sound, and the score wrapping gently out from the surrounds. The subwoofer doesn't get a whole lot to do, but it does reinforce the bottom end of the score.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, but easy to operate.

Theatrical Trailer (2:04)

    Don't watch this before you watch the movie - it has the potential to ruin the end of the film, and other parts, too. It's very soft and grainy.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The Region 1 version of this was released last year. It is a Special Edition, and deserves the title.

    The Region 1 version of this disc is missing:

• German, Italian and Spanish soundtracks
• English, German, Italian, and Dutch subtitles

    The Region 4 version of this disc is missing:

• unrated version of the movie - the director's intended cut
• Making of a Thriller documentary (43:50)
• version comparison between unrated, R-rated, and Network versions (5:15)
• Slashing Dressed to Kill featurette about censoring the movie (9:50)
• An Appreciation by Keith Gordon featurette (6:05)
• Photo gallery (6:14)
• Advertising gallery (47 images)
• "booklet" (4 pages)
• original English mono soundtrack

    Quite a difference! Add in the fact that the R1 is a far better transfer (sharper and more detailed), and the comparison becomes quite unfair. I cannot recommend the R4 over the R1 unless you can only understand German or Italian (hmm - how are you reading this?), or you need subtitles (the R1 is lacking English subtitles).

    Dressed To Kill is an effective thriller, on a fair DVD.

    The video quality is reasonable.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extra is rudimentary.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall