It starts with a shower. Not a quick rinse before work, but a long, voyeuristic, and arguably gratuitous sequence that tells you exactly what kind of movie you’ve stepped into. If you’ve seen Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, you know that shower. It’s the moment Angie Dickinson—playing a sexually frustrated housewife named Kate Miller—becomes more than just a character; she becomes a vessel for De Palma’s obsession with Alfred Hitchcock.
Some people call it a masterpiece. Others call it a cheap rip-off of Psycho.
Honestly? It’s probably both.
Released in 1980, Dressed to Kill wasn’t just a hit; it was a lightning rod for controversy. Women’s groups protested it. Critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert went to war over its merits. Even now, decades later, the film remains a thorny, brilliant, and deeply problematic piece of American cinema that refuses to be ignored. It’s a slasher film with the wardrobe of a high-end fashion magazine, a psychological thriller that cares more about camera angles than logic, and a cultural artifact that shows just how much the "Master of Macabre" was willing to gamble on a single idea.
The Hitchcock Obsession and the Art of the Steal
Brian De Palma has never been shy about his influences. He doesn't just borrow from Hitchcock; he raids the vault. In Dressed to Kill, the DNA of Psycho and Vertigo is so thick you can practically smell it.
You have the blonde protagonist who exits the story far earlier than expected. You have the shower scene. You have the cross-dressing killer. You even have the voyeuristic son, Peter (played by a young Keith Gordon), who feels like a stand-in for De Palma himself. But here’s the thing: De Palma isn't just copying. He’s "remixing" before that was even a word.
Take the museum sequence. It’s a nearly ten-minute dialogue-free scene where Kate pursues—and is pursued by—a mysterious stranger through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s purely cinematic. No words, just Pino Donaggio’s lush, haunting score and De Palma’s fluid camera work. It’s a masterclass in tension. It’s basically a silent movie dropped into the middle of a gritty 80s thriller.
Most directors wouldn't have the guts to slow a movie down like that. De Palma does it because he trusts the visual language of cinema more than he trusts a script. He’s obsessed with the act of looking. Seeing. Watching. Being watched.
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The Controversies: Misogyny, Transphobia, and the X-Rating
We have to talk about the elephant in the room. You can't discuss Dressed to Kill without acknowledging that it makes a lot of people angry.
When the film was released, the newly formed Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) picketed theaters. They argued that the film glamorized sexual violence. And looking at the elevator scene—arguably one of the most brutal murders in cinema history—it’s easy to see why. De Palma films the violence with a slow-motion elegance that feels almost celebratory. It's beautiful and horrific at the same time. That’s the De Palma paradox. He makes the grotesque look gorgeous.
Then there’s the portrayal of the killer.
The film utilizes the "transvestite killer" trope that was already becoming a cliché by 1980. Today, the twist involving Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) and his "Bobbi" persona is frequently cited as transphobic. It conflates gender identity with mental illness and homicidal tendencies. Critics like Robin Wood have written extensively about how the film feeds into the era's anxieties about gender fluidity.
Is De Palma a bigot? Or is he just a provocateur playing with the tropes of the giallo genre?
The answer is messy. De Palma’s movies are often about the fragility of the male ego and the terror of the "other." He’s tapping into primal fears, but in doing so, he often leans on stereotypes that haven't aged well. Michael Caine, for his part, gives a performance that is both campy and genuinely unsettling, but it’s a role he’s rarely asked about in modern interviews.
Technical Wizardry: The Split-Screen and the Steadicam
De Palma is a nerd for gear. He loves gadgets.
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In Dressed to Kill, he uses the split-screen technique to show two things happening at once, creating a sense of omnipresence. You’re watching the victim and the killer simultaneously. It’s a trick he’d used before in Sisters and Carrie, but here it feels more polished. It forces the audience to become an active participant in the suspense. You see the danger coming before the character does. It’s agonizing.
And the Steadicam? This was 1980. The technology was still relatively new. De Palma used it to create those long, flowing takes through the hallways of the psychiatrist’s office and the museum. It gives the movie a dreamlike, almost liquid quality.
The film looks expensive. It looks lush.
Compare this to the "slasher" movies coming out at the same time, like Friday the 13th. Those movies were gritty, low-budget, and functional. Dressed to Kill was different. It was a "slasher" for adults who went to the opera. It had a pedigree. It had Nancy Allen (De Palma’s then-wife) playing a high-class call girl who becomes the film's unlikely hero.
Why We’re Still Talking About It in 2026
Fashion is cyclical, and so is film. We are currently seeing a massive resurgence in "elevated horror" and "erotic thrillers." Directors like Emerald Fennell or Ti West are clearly looking at the De Palma playbook.
They want that mixture of high-art aesthetics and low-brow thrills.
Dressed to Kill works because it’s unapologetic. It doesn't try to be "realistic." New York City in this movie looks like a neon-lit fever dream, not a real place. The dialogue is sometimes stilted, the plot holes are large enough to drive a cab through, and the ending is a total "gotcha" moment that leaves you feeling a bit cheated.
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But you don't watch De Palma for logic.
You watch him for the thrill of the sequence. You watch him for the way he uses a mirror to tell you something about a character's fractured psyche. You watch him for the audacity.
Most modern thrillers are too scared to be this weird. They’re focus-grouped to death. They want to be liked. De Palma didn't care if you liked him; he wanted to provoke you. He wanted to make you look away and then force you to look back.
Actionable Insights for the Cinephile
If you’re planning to revisit this classic or watch it for the first time, here is how to actually get the most out of the experience:
- Watch the Criterion Collection 4K Restoration: Don't settle for a compressed streaming version. The color palette—specifically the soft pastels and the deep, bloody reds—needs the high bitrate to pop. The lighting in the elevator scene is specifically designed to mimic the clinical coldness of a hospital, which contrasts with the warmth of the museum.
- Compare it to Psycho: Watch them back-to-back. Look at how De Palma subverts Hitchcock's pacing. Where Hitchcock is surgical, De Palma is operatic.
- Listen to the Score: Pino Donaggio’s music is doing 50% of the heavy lifting. It shifts from romantic strings to jagged, screeching synths in a way that signals the movie's shift from a drama about a bored housewife to a nightmare.
- Ignore the Logic: Don't ask how the killer gets in and out of places so easily. Don't ask why the police are so incompetent. Accept the film as a "dream logic" narrative.
Dressed to Kill is a masterpiece of style over substance, but when the style is this good, substance feels overrated. It’s a reminder that movies used to be dangerous, tactile, and deeply strange. It’s a film that demands to be seen on a big screen, in the dark, where you can feel the tension in the room.
Next time you're scrolling through a sea of bland, interchangeable thrillers on a streaming service, remember Bobbi. Remember the museum. Remember that Brian De Palma once dared to make a movie that was both a love letter to the past and a middle finger to the present.
To truly understand the evolution of the modern thriller, you have to go back to the source. Start by analyzing the "shower scene" tropes across the 1980s slasher boom—you'll find that De Palma’s influence is more pervasive than most directors are willing to admit. Track the use of the "Final Girl" archetype in the film, specifically how Nancy Allen’s Liz Blake breaks the mold by being a street-smart professional rather than an innocent teenager. This shift in the archetype paved the way for more complex female leads in the decade that followed.