Census Bloodbath: Fashion Victim

Year: 1980

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes 

MPAA Rating: R

The slasher genre in 1980 was full of belated riffs on Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal slashterpiece Psycho, from the sleazy motel settings of Silent Scream and The Unseen to the All-American killers of Fade to Black and Schizoid. Hell, Don’t Go in the House is literally about a mother-obsessed killer who takes orders from her corpse and murders women in his secluded home. But if you want to see a Hitch rip-off done right, look no further than his premier acolyte Brian De Palma.

De Palma’s 1980 feature Dressed to Kill almost doesn’t count as a slasher movie. The body count is anemic, and if the investigation into a single murder qualified a film as a slasher, we’d be stuck reviewing hundreds of crappy whodunits and nobody wants that. But Dressed to Kill is so eagerly, flamboyantly translating Psycho for the modern era that there’s no way it could be excluded. If you haven’t seen Psycho, tread no further, because the spoilers are instant and abundant.

Anthony Perkins was an alien the whole time!

From the first-act murder of the apparent main character to the transvestite villain to the Dr. Explain-o character who arrives at the end to dump a heaping pile of exposition for the slower members of the audience, Dressed to Kill doesn’t just pay homage to Hitchcock’s film. It mugs it, beats it to a pulp, and rummages through the pockets of its broken, bleeding form, feverishly searching for another fix of suspense. It’s tarted up with certain, more 80’s-oriented details, blood, and nudity, but it’s a bald-faced, brazen act of copycatting.

When frustrated housewife Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) is slashed to death by an enraged transvestite, the only witness and prime suspect is high-end escort Liz Blake (Nancy Allen). In order to clear her name, Liz teams up with Kate’s son Peter (Keith Gordon) to solve the murder. They start by investigating the records of her therapist Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who ahs been receiving threatening phone calls from a transsexual ex-patient of his but has hidden this fact from the police.

He’s the doctor Kate deserves, but not the one she needs right now.

Fortunately, one good thing Dressed to Kill has going for it is that of the very few contemporary directors with the chops to remix Hitchcock, De Palma is one of the best. He brings enough of his own personality and aesthetic to the table that it frequently doesn't feel like a trite imitation, which is really something of a miracle.

De Palma’s chilly, precise style is more or less the defining feature of Dressed to Kill, a film that’s intrinsically about surfaces and how they reflect and refract reality. The fractured identity of the killer is represented by the use of deliberately placed mirrors in the corners of shots, giving us a distorted second angle of the character in the frame. On top of that, we get a bunch of gooey cinematic gloss that glides right off the screen, from the director’s signature split-screen effect (which he only utilizes once, though frequently some element in a single frame like a wall or a doorway will also act as an in-shot splitting device) to an elegantly-timed series of smash cuts.

Dressed to Kill finds a cinematic master at the top of his game, so much so that you almost don’t notice the tawdry, shallow nature of the plot. I really don’t want to launch into a political diatribe and I won’t, except to say that the transsexual antagonist is a blatant case of vilifying the Other that lacks the relative sensitivity and/or lampshading that makes it slightly easier to swallow a film like Silence of the Lambs. But even beyond that, Nancy Allen is a protagonist with very little agency, being yanked through a plot that could have easily gone on without her. A plot which also ends ten minutes too late, going all-in on a tacky shock gag that lessens the film’s impact and drains every last drop of energy the film has accumulated.

But Nancy Allen gets naked, so apparently this scene’s presence is justified.

Dressed to Kill certainly boasts its share of suspense, especially in the central setpiece of Kate’s murder in an elevator. The deliberate pacing and gorgeous cinematography are reminiscent of the best of the Italian giallo, and this approach works wonders once more in a scene set in the flickering, claustrophobic interior of a subway train.

Occasionally, this pacing will hit a snag and drag on a bit too long, like in the part-stalking, part-seduction sequence set in a museum (this scene is also littered with completely inscrutable, unmotivated actions that dilute whatever emotion its attempting to convey), but for the most part Dressed to Kill is a tightly-wound thriller working with clockwork precision.

It’s far from a perfect film, and I’m not tempted to retroactively add it to my Best of 1980 list, but it is nonetheless a movie without peer in its station within the rise of the slasher. This kind of glamorous, upscale approach to the subgenre would become quite common in the early 90’s (Sleeping with the Enemy, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct), but at the time the idea of a slasher rising from the gutter of grindhouse cheapies was a far-off dream.

Dressed to Kill is a contradiction: ahead of its time and tragically retrograde, classy and tactless, a cheap rip-off and an aesthetic triumph. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s definitely unique, and that’s always worth something,

Killer: Bobbi [(Michael Caine)]

Final Girl: Liz (Nancy Allen)

Best Kill: It’s not like there’s really a choice here, but the elevator slashing is quite gorgeous.

Sign of the Times: Kate’s conquest has a newfangled digital clock that’s s elaborate it looks like a nuclear device.

Scariest Moment: Liz is chased through the subway by a gang, leading her right into the arms of the killer.

Weirdest Moment: Kate tries to convince her son that the general Napoleon invented the baked good napoleon.

Champion Dialogue: “You’ve got a lot better motivation than I do: your ass.”

Body Count: 2

1. Kate Miller is slashed to death with a straight razor.
2. Nurse is choked to death.

TL;DR: Dressed to Kill is a beautiful piece of filmmaking, but the plot is a downright shambles with a tasteless core.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1075

Census Flashback: Sequels Nobody Asked For

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Cars 3, a sequel absolutely nobody asked for, this week I’ll be revisiting the Bates Motel with 1983’s entirely unwarranted Psycho II.

Year: 1983

Director: Richard Franklin

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Meg Tilly 

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Making a sequel to Psycho 22 years after the fact was a monumentally terrible idea. But miraculously, that was the only bad idea made in the process of creating Psycho II. An astoundingly qualified crew was assembled to bring the Bates Motel back to life: actors Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles returning, Child’s Play and Fright Night director Tom Holland manning the screenplay, and Richard Franklin in the director’s seat. Franklin you may recall from the earlier Census Bloodbath entry Road Games, a terrific roadside thriller that proved him such a potent disciple of Hitchcock that hiring him was a no-brainer. With this team supporting the film, at least it would have been watchable no matter what. A little bit surprisingly, it's even more than that.

Hold onto your wigs.

So, Psycho II pretty much picks up where we left off. It’s 22 years later and Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has been declared sane and released from the institution where he’s been held since his murder spree in 1960. As he tries to get his life back together, he takes in a wayward teenage girl named Mary (Meg Tilly), whose presence in his home sends him (and us) some painful reminders of the beautiful, deceased Marion Crane. As if we needed reminding, considering that her murder is crudely cut and pasted into the first five minutes of the film as if this were a cheap Friday the 13th sequel or something.

Anyway, people who cross Norman start to turn up dead, causing him no small amount of distress. Is he back to his murderous ways, or is someone else framing him? And exactly what is Lila Loomis née Crane (Vera Miles) doing skulking around town after all this time?

I mean, other than marrying her dead sister’s boyfriend like a badass.

Psycho II had quite the legacy to live up to. Not only was it the long-delayed sequel to a Hitchcock classic, it was being released smack dab in the middle of the slasher boom, the genre its forebear helped to create. That’s a lot of pressure. Psycho II is like the kid of the CEO attempting to take up the mantle of the company. It had to prove itself worthy in a massive pool of imitators. And mostly, it did exactly that.

Where Psycho II succeeds is that it doesn’t try to fit in with the slasher crowd. Sure, there’s a little more nudity, a little more blood, and one or two teens in the mix, but the film isn’t focused on the murder spree. It is very much about the aftermath of a broken mind attempting to mend itself, and as such it’s even different from Psycho itself. This is the best place to be, as free from expectation as humanly possible, and it spins quite a yarn out of it.

There’s so much yarn, in fact, that it can be fashioned into at least two different Mrs. Bates wigs, because buckle in folks: Psycho II has a lot of moving parts. The film has so many twists and turns that you’re constantly second guessing yourself, but not too many that it flies off the rails. It’s the perfect kind of melodrama, keeping you on your toes and glued to the screen. The plot is such a bucking bronco that the now-traditional “authority figure clunkily explains it all” scene gets the entire thing hilariously wrong.

As if I wasn’t already on this movie’s side.

Richard Franklin doesn’t get to have as much visual fun as he did on Road Games, but he still finds some cool imagery to play with, especially during the death scenes. Nothing could possibly live up to Psycho’s shower scene, but Franklin stages his murders with brutal flair, utilizing the modern effects without over-relying on them. His kills are full of motion and they’re unrelenting, letting you chew on every stage of the far-from-brief mayhem.

Another benefit of being a Psycho film is that it attracted a pretty solid, venerable cast. You won’t see Robert Loggia skulking around in no Sleepaway Camp sequel. There’s not a single dud in the cast, though it takes Perkins a minute to warm up into his old character. They ground the crazy story in a welcome, almost stately reality that does wonders for the film’s tension.

All this is what allows the film’s gonzo ending to work so well. Although it’s a slow burn to the finish line, Psycho II reaches a shrieking crescendo that feels like Bernard Hermann’s manic score come to life (incidentally, the classic Psycho theme appears in the flashback scene only – the rest of the film has to make do with a subdued and tedious Jerry Goldsmith jobbie). It’s a fun film, bringing Psycho into the 80’s without diluting its inimitable spirit.

Killer: Who could possibly keep track?

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: Vera Miles with a knife sticking from her gob. You don’t see that every day.

Sign of the Times: There’s a cameo from a Ms. Pac Man machine.

Scariest Moment: Mary looks through the bathroom peephole and sees an eye on the other side.

Weirdest Moment: A revelation late into the film about Norman’s family tree comes completely out of left field.

Champion Dialogue: “I don’t kill people anymore, remember?”

Body Count: 6

1. Mr. Toomey is stabbed to death.
2. Basement Boy is stabbed to death.
3. Lila Loomis is stabbed through the mouth.
4. Dr. Raymond is stabbed in the chest.
5. Mary is shot.
6. Miss Spool is hit in the head with a shovel.

TL;DR: Psycho II is a surprisingly worthy sequel to an unimpeachable classic.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1012
Reviews In This Series
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Psycho II (Franklin, 1983)
Psycho III (Perkins, 1986)
Psycho IV: The Beginning (Garris, 1990)