Dressed to Kill (1980) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 22, 1980

This was one of the more memorable movie going experiences of 1980 for me. Being that the opening sequence was, without a doubt, the most sexually explicit material I had ever seen. In a movie, at least. I had already thumbed through an issue of Playboy or two by that time.

But, like Alien the previous year, Dressed to Kill did provide a memorable post-viewing comment from my dad to my mother, when we got home from the matinee showing. "It starts with this woman masturbating in the shower. It was so explicit I started thinking I had brought the boys to the wrong kind of movie, but it didn't last long and the rest wasn't as bad. But there was a moment, there..."

I think this was the movie that made me a Brian De Palma fan. While I will acknowledge that there are aspects to the plot that are indeed very problematic, in regard to its clear transphobia. The movie is also very tongue in cheek and laced with a heaping helping of blackly comedic irony. Certain scenes are so slathered in comedic irony that the film brushes up against the line of creative self-parody.

John McCarty, in his seminal Splatter Movies: Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen, said that, "Dressed to Kill may not be Psycho, but it is certainly a very skillfully made and entertaining copy."

I agree. This one really needs to be added to my blu-ray collection.