Dressed to kill
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Dressed to kill |
| Original title | Dressed to kill |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1980 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Brian De Palma |
| script | Brian De Palma |
| production | George Litto |
| music | Pino Donaggio |
| camera | Ralf Bode |
| cut | Gerald B. Greenberg |
| occupation | |
| |
Dressed to Kill is an American psychological thriller from director Brian De Palma from 1980. De Palma proves with this movie his idol Alfred Hitchcock his reverence .
action
The sexually frustrated housewife and mother Kate Miller studied in New York her psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott to talk to him about their unfulfilled love life. Soon after, she meets an unknown man on a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Then she follows the man and sleeps with him in his apartment. When leaving the house, she is brutally murdered in the elevator with a razor. The prostitute Liz Blake accidentally witnesses the murder: She sees a blonde woman fleeing the scene.
The police don't believe her and suspect Liz herself, because she picked up the murder weapon and her fingerprints are now on it. Liz turns to Dr. Elliott, as she suspects a connection between his practice and the killer. Eventually she is hunted by this woman herself, but with the help of the murdered man's son, Peter, she can save herself.
In the meantime, Dr. Elliott received a strange message from Bobbi, a transgender patient, on his answering machine. Dr. Elliott is supposed to help Bobbi become a woman through a gender reassignment. Elliott then goes to see psychiatrist Dr. Levy, with whom Bobbi is now being treated, and tells him that he is convinced that Bobbi is the murderer of Kate and that she must be stopped.
Liz visits Dr. Elliott again because she wants to get Bobbi's address. With a little striptease, she can distract him long enough to gain access to the patient file. Meanwhile, Peter is waiting outside the window. When Liz comes back into the living room, the blonde woman with the razor is suddenly behind her. A policewoman suddenly appearing pushes Peter aside and can kill the murderer with a pistol shot through the window. A wig falls from her head and Dr. Elliott comes out. Dr. Levy later explains to Liz that Dr. Elliott is a transsexual who hid behind the blonde woman. Whenever Dr. Elliott was sexually aroused, his feminine but unstable alter ego Bobbi "took over" control and viewed the caregiver as a danger to be destroyed due to Bobbi's instability, and in this case it was Kate Miller. The situation arose because Bobbi wanted gender reassignment, but Elliot didn't allow it because of his strong masculine side. This is how Bobbi eventually got murderous. When Dr. Levy after his last conversation with Elliott the connections became clear, he alerted the police, who could intervene in time.
Elliott ends up in a mental hospital because of his dissociative identity disorder . Shortly afterwards he escapes and as Bobbi attacks Liz in her bathroom with a razor. Liz wakes up screaming - the attack was just a nightmare .
Reviews
"A psychological thriller designed for sometimes rather clumsy effects with at least some external tension ."
“Hitchcock fan De Palma lives up to his role model and builds up the tension very skillfully. He also delivers an essay on the subject of voyeurism. We see a lot of 'forbidden' images up to the sexual fantasies of a mature wife. […] Conclusion: sophisticated and ice cold. Goosebumps guaranteed! "
“'Dressed To Kill' is“ Psycho ”on amphetamines, he takes its basic idea and creates a pulp masterpiece from it, lustfully oversexed, over-the-top, tasteless, full of broken logic and inconsistencies. In this way, de Palma concentrates entirely on his strengths, creating a very special cinematic world and first lulling the viewer into safety, and then demonstrating his own inferiority with brutal severity. "
Awards
- Nancy Allen was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Young Actress and a Golden Raspberry in the category of Worst Actress .
- Angie Dickinson won a Saturn Award for best actress.
literature
- Susan Dworkin: Death Comes Twice or: How to Make a Thriller. Bastei Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1985, ISBN 3-404-13021-9 .
Web links
- Dressed to kill in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Dressed to Kill at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Dressed to Kill at Metacritic (English)
- Dressed to Kill in the online film database
- Dressed to kill in the German dubbing index
- Review / interpretation by Dieter Wenk in the Filmzentrale
- Detailed review of the DVD (Region 2) in English at Home Cinema
- Comparison of the cut versions R-Rated - Unrated from Dressed to Kill at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Dressed to Kill . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; released October 2016).
- ↑ Dressed to Kill on prisma.de
- ↑ Dressed to Kill. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Dressed to Kill on cinema.de
- ↑ Dressed to Kill on filmstarts.de