DRESSED TO KILL: It's Delightful, It's Demented, It's DePalma!

DANGER! You have entered The House Where Spoilers Dwell!

Before I talk about this week’s movie, Dressed to Kill (1980), please allow me to share the story of my one-scene stand with writer/director/producer Brian DePalma and a guy named Joe during a press junket for a different DePalma movie.

Yes, you read that right! It was 1984, and I was a Junior earning my B.A. in Communications at Fordham University. I wrote for the more freewheeling of the school’s two newspapers—titled the paper, appropriately enough. So I was invited, along with my fellow college film critics, to attend a press screening of DePalma’s upcoming thriller Body Double at Columbia Pictures’ Manhattan headquarters. Before and after the screening, I’d been chatting pleasantly about movies and such with a young fella we’ll call “Joe.” After the screening, DePalma was peppered with questions. One guy was particularly eager to learn more about the filming of the super-hot, marvelously over-the-top make-out-verging-on-sex scene on the beach between stars Craig Wasson and Deborah Shelton, a sexy homage to Vertigo with the camera swooning and swooping around the couple. (Ironically, both actors were dressed.)

DePalma said he’d be glad to demonstrate how he’d done it, if he could have a male and female volunteer from the audience. Just for fun, Joe and I volunteered. We figured DePalma would just walk around us and discuss the blocking of the scene and such. To our surprise, DePalma said, “Okay, start kissing.” We thought he was kidding, but no, our fearless director said, “Okay, roll ’em. Put your arms around her….” Honest to God, there we were, two college writers who barely knew each other, kissing and moaning and manhandling each other just like in the movie scene, while DePalma simultaneously directed us and explained the anatomy of the scene to the audience. I can’t speak for Joe, but I must blushingly admit I was so caught up in our hot love scene, I barely heard a word DePalma said! I guess Joe and I displayed natural chemistry together, because DePalma seemed quite pleased and our audience was

clearly enjoying themselves, too. We each had a honey at the time, so nothing else came of our little one-scene stand, but I won’t lie to you: it was lots of fun. I’m glad we didn’t have to undress, though!

Yikes! Is Liz seeing a body double?

The more sensitive moviegoers among us have often accused DePalma of exploiting women; shamelessly manipulating audiences (but isn’t that part of a director’s job?); and ripping off classic directors, especially Alfred Hitchcock (for plots and camerawork) and Dario Argento (for stylish giallo-style bloodletting). But just like Hitchcock had been at the peak of his powers during the 1950s, DePalma was

similarly riding high from the 1970s through the ’90s, giving thriller-lovers the ride of their lives. Since he began making movies in the 1960s, DePalma has embraced many genres, including offbeat comedies; horror; gritty crime dramas (including Scarface and The Untouchables, both stylish and suspenseful remakes); war dramas, and even science fiction. But DePalma was best known to movie buffs of my generation as our Master of the Macabre. Sisters (1973), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Obsession (1976), Carrie (1976), and The Fury (1978) were fine warm-ups, but I’ve always felt that it was DePalma’s 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill (DtK) that really put him on the map and set his style in stone. 

 

*YIKES!*  Er, sorry, lady, wrong floor, gotta run!"

DtK was the first R-rated, “mature”-themed film that my friends and I were truly eager to see. Controversy, sex, transvestites, gore, naughty words—and nobody was more eager to see it than us Catholic high school girls! But for the first month of DtK's run, every showing was sold out all day, every day, whether we tried to see it in our Bronx neighborhood or midtown Manhattan. Every theater had lines around the block, brimming with people waiting to get into the next show in the days before Moviefone or Fandango. Undaunted, my best high school bud Cris Yablonsky and I braved a still-long line at the Beekman Theatre on a weekday (the film came out in July, so we weren’t skipping classes). At last, we reached the box office, money in hand—only to have the ticket-seller peer at 16-year-old Cris and 17-year-old-but-younger-looking me, muttering, “Youse kids’re too young to get in widdout a parent or guardian.”  Our pleas to the contrary fell on deaf ears, and we stomped up Second Avenue, ranting about the unfairness of it all in language that made DtK's  salty dialogue sound like a lecture from our Religion class! Eventually my older brother Peter took me to see DtK. I was wowed, even if I did end up watching the scarier, gorier scenes between my fingers! 

"Whadda ya wanna do tonight, Liz?"
"I dunno, Peter, whadda you wanna do tonight?"

At 17, I thought DtK was the height of sophisticated suspense, with its elegant New York City locations, Ralf Bode's dreamlike cinematography, frank-for-1980 sexual shenanigans, and its air of playful luridness, accompanied perfectly by Pino Donaggio’s Bernard Herrmann-esque score, complete with shrieking violins as needed. When reviewers described DtK as a sexier, bloodier remake of Psycho, I eagerly sought out Hitchcock’s classic. I loved it as much as DtK, though I’ll admit I found Hitchcock’s brooding atmosphere and gradual menace just as mesmerizing as DePalma’s visual pyrotechnics and gore. Both DVDs are sitting together in our home video library, of course!  A movie ticket to DtK was a passport to The Wild World of Brian DePalma. We put logic aside and enjoyed the Hitchcock-Meets-Argento ride. In the context of DePalma’s fictional universe, the plot plays less preposterous than it sounds on paper. We start with the first of DtK’s bevy of beautiful neo-Hitchcockian New York blondes, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson). Lonely, sexually frustrated Kate hooks up with a handsome stranger (played by Ken Baker, whose two-tone shoes would have done Bruno Anthony proud) after a sexy cat-and-mouse pursuit in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the interiors were actually filmed at The Philadelphia Museum of Art). A passionate time is had by both until Kate discovers Health Department paperwork revealing that her handsome stranger has an STD—the gift that keeps on giving! But Kate won’t have to worry about fessing up to hubby; on her nervous way out of the STD stud’s apartment house, poor Kate is brutally murdered in the elevator by a tall blonde woman wearing sunglasses and wielding a mean straight razor. (Love that cute yet unnerving kid in the elevator!) Ever notice how these kind of controversial thrillers, with their oh-so-modern mores, use the most old-fashioned murder weapons? DtK had its straight razor, Basic Instinct had its ice pick, and so on.

With DtK’s Janet Leigh manqué dead, the leading-lady crown is passed to high-class blonde call girl/stock-market whiz Liz Blake (Carrie’s Nancy Allen—Mrs. DePalma at the time). Liz witnesses the murder as she leaves a “date” she had in the building. Police Detective Marino (Dennis Franz) growls, “What kind of building is this? Everybody’s gettin’ laid after lunch?” (Is that an asset or a liability to the local housing market?) Like so many thriller protagonists, Liz just had to pick up the straight razor and get her fingerprints all over it!  Since no one else saw the real killer, Marino tells Liz she’s the most likely suspect. Marino also grills Kate’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who pleads patient confidentiality. “Mrs. Miller is beyond the point of bein’ embarrassed by anything you might have to tell me,” snaps Marino.  Dr. Elliott knows the truth: the killer is one of his patients, Bobbie, a transvestite who leaves threatening messages on Dr. Elliott’s answering machine (played by the voice of Phantom of the Paradise’s William Finley), sneering that he killed Kate to take revenge on Elliott for nixing his sex-change operation (or gender reassignment surgery, as we say here in the 21st century). Having made eye contact with Liz at the murder scene, Bobbie’s got her on his hit list.

Luckily, Kate's teenage son Peter (Keith Gordon, on whom I had a crush at the time; now he's a film director himself with films like A Midnight Clear and the film version of The Singing Detective), has been playing amateur detective with various DIY gadgets his electronics-whiz brain has cooked up, including hidden mics and cameras and homemade mace with which he saves Liz on the subway after she’s trapped by both Bobbie and a street gang. Grateful Liz and vengeful Peter team up to smoke out Kate’s killer. Their only weapons are Peter’s inventions and Liz’s, um, feminine wiles. She strips to black undies and lacy garters, talking dirty in a nighttime therapy session with Dr. Elliott in order to distract/seduce him long enough for her to find his patient records and get the suspected killer's name. Nancy Drew was never like this!

But, surprise—Dr. Elliott himself is Mrs. Bates, er, Bobbie!  NYPD officer Betty Luce (Susanna Clemm), whom Liz thought was Bobbie when she spotted Luce tailing her just before the subway scene, shoots Dr. Elliott in the neck before he can murder Liz, and he’s off to Bellevue. The Psycho motif comes full circle as kindly Dr. Levy (David Margulies) explains to Liz, Marino, and Luce that Elliott was a dual personality, with Bobbie going homicidal whenever Elliott became “masculinely sexual,” like when he was attracted to Kate and Liz. But the end of DtK is more DePalma than Hitchcock or Argento, starting with a hilarious scene at Windows on the World, where Liz cheerfully explains the fine art of gender reassignment surgery while a horrified lady lunching at the next table overhears them.  (This scene usually suffers in TV’s “pan-and-scan” version—like cutting out all the gore and sex wasn’t enough!)  The film ends with a “The nightmare’s not over!” set piece involving the most surreal view of Bellevue you’ll ever see; a sexy nurse; and Elliott on the loose to menace poor Liz as she tries to unwind in Peter's shower.  Don’t worry, Liz is just having a bad dream after her nerve-shattering experience.  Luckily, the caring Peter is there to comfort her just before the end credits.  *Whew!* Any questions?

The passing years have made DePalma's once-controversial attitudes towards women and sex, at least as portrayed in DtK and his other thrillers, seem almost naïve at best, and sometimes nastily sexist at worst. Much as I enjoyed Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon in the movie, can you really see lovable nerd Peter ending up with sexy, worldly call girl Liz in the real world?  Granted, opposites reportedly attract! Having said that, as a filmmaker, DePalma knows his craft, having learned it from the masters, making his work seem like homages rather than rip-offs.  In DtK, his lush visual style is aided and abetted by Ralf Bode’s gorgeous cinematography.  DePalma has a terrific eye for composition, making effective use of screen tricks such as split screens and 360-degree shots, conveying lots of info in each shot.  For instance, pay close attention to the scene where Angie Dickinson steps out onto the Met’s steps and sees her handsome stranger proffering her lost glove from the cab’s window. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss Caine as Bobbie during the camera’s glide from Dickinson to the taxi!  DePalma plays with the audience’s emotions like a master puppeteer; he knows how to time events and effects for maximum suspense. Moreover, DtK successfully combines laughs and scares, especially when it comes to urban terrors like subway thugs.  (Ironically, one of the actors who plays one of the thugs who chase Nancy Allen in the subway scene was later arrested for assault in real life.)

DePalma’s directorial style strikes a fine balance with the actors’ genuine warmth and spunk. As Dr. Elliott, Michael Caine comes off as urbane yet concerned about Kate and his other patients, at least until we see his true colors. (And Caine looks surprisingly convincing in drag, too, though I understand body doubles were sometimes used as well.)  As Kate Miller, Angie Dickinson makes your heart go out to her, with her gentle voice, sad brown eyes, and wistful, hopeful smile.  When Dickinson sets out for a sexual adventure, she seems like a lonely soul looking for love and affirmation, not some bold hussy. When she’s brutally murdered, you feel terribly sorry for her and furious at the bastard who’d do this to such a sweet lady. In their only scene together, Dickinson and Gordon project real warmth and caring about each other.  You can believe this kid loved his mom, in a healthy way (something you sure didn’t see in Psycho!), enough to want to nab her killer himself. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from Diva (1981), the role of hard-bitten call girl Liz Blake suits apple-cheeked girl-next-door Nancy Allen so badly that it suits her very well!  If DePalma was counting on his then-wife’s wholesome aura (Allen is one of the few people who can make the foulest swear words sound cuddly) to make her raunchy character appealing, he was right on the money. I really liked the gentle tenderness that grows between Allen and Gordon; it makes their characters’ unlikely relationship more believable in spite of itself.  I also found it endearing that with everyone else in the film, Allen’s Liz wears either slutwear or elegant yet sensual dressy outfits, but with Gordon’s Peter (Peter & Gordon!), she wears demure sweater-and-skirt ensembles, T-shirts (not tight ones, either) and jeans, and flannel pajamas.  Even her hairstyle looks more wholesome in her scenes with Peter!  Finally, let’s not forget Dennis Franz, who steals every scene he’s in as polyester-and-vinyl-clad, crude, no-bullshit New York cop Marino. Franz was so good in this role, he’s been pretty much playing it ever since:  After teaming up with DePalma and Allen again as a sleazy photographer in Blow-Out (1981), Franz went on to greater fame playing crude but essentially likable cops on TV, most notably on Steven Bochco’s Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue.  Vinnie and I love Franz’s sarcastic way of expressing himself; it’s as if he’s mentally making quotation marks with his fingers.

Unlike his beloved Hitchcock, who let his blonde heroines smolder from within, DePalma puts his female characters’ sexuality right out front and center where moviegoers could see it!  Every woman in DtK but Angie Dickinson seems to have super-glossy fire-engine-red lips, making them look, depending on your mood, either sexy in a trashy way, or as if they’d just bitten someone and drawn blood.  And wouldn’t you know they all have sexy underwear! How come we never see the guys’ underwear?

Finally, I just couldn’t wrap up this look back at DtK without mentioning something that I, as a native New Yorker, always get a huge kick out of. Filmmakers often play fast and loose with a major city’s geography so as to be able to use its more picturesque sites for key scenes.  DePalma is no exception.  Angie Dickinson’s museum scene, the interiors and paintings,  actually belong to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but when Ms. Dickinson goes outdoors, she’s definitely on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vinnie and I always joke that she gave that handsome stranger one hell of a merry chase!

"Didja hear the one about the
Hitchcockian Blonde? This'll kill ya...."

So does DePalma with DtK — a merry, mad chase through cinematic plot devices old and new.  Whether you enjoy the film for what it is or squawk about its cheerfully “politically incorrect” mindset, you sure as hell won’t be bored!  I guess that’s why it’s stayed with me when so many more “respected” films haven’t.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: Tell Mother I Love Her

Danger! Blood, Guts, and Spoilers Ahead!

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin): “I’m fixing to do something dumber than hell, but I’m going anyways. If I don’t come back, you tell Mother I love her.”

Carla Jean Moss (Kelly Macdonald): “Your mother’s dead, Llewelyn.”

Llewelyn: “Well, then I’ll tell her myself.”

Those of you who’ve been enjoying my playful natterings about classic movies ranging from the 1930s to the 1970s might be surprised to see a bleak, bloodily violent, gallows-humored 2007 Western noir like No Country for Old Men (NCfOM) here on TotED. But you see, this thriller, written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, just happened to be my beloved mother’s absolute favorite film during the final two years of her life. On January 22nd, 2011, this very weekend, it would have been Mom’s 84th  birthday. Now Mom was multifaceted, to say the least. The "Cherry Girl" side of our family affectionately nicknamed her "Auntie Mame" -- oh, and Cherry was Mom’s maiden name. Mom and her sister, my Auntie Joy (who died of pulmonary fibrosis just a few months after Mom did) told us many hilarious anecdotes about the boys’ reactions to the Cherry sisters’ surname in high school.  

Mom in New York City at Auntie Joy's NYC pad in the early Aughties.

Mom and I talked on the phone almost every day, and when she moved to Florida over 20 years ago, we visited her each summer. She was an unfailing champion to all who needed a champion, and a scold to those who richly deserved scolding. She had a great sense of humor and a loving heart, while still providing witty yet no-nonsense advice. She was glamorous, yet down to earth; a talented painter and sculptor and an avid reader as well as an excellent swimmer and tennis player; a lover of all things swanky and soignée. One of Mom’s most endearing quirks was that for all her smarts and sophistication, she was the Mistress of Unwitting Movie-Title Malaprops. For instance, she automatically referred to Roxanne, Steve Martin’s comedic update of Cyrano de Bergerac, as “Pinocchio.” She was also a fan of the Tom Hanks-directed comedy about a 1960s rock band, “That Noise You Make!” as well as Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner “Slumlord Millionaire.” 

 

They shoot dogs, don't they?
Hell yeah, when the dogs are trying to kill you!

Mom was a big fan of Mel Brooks, The Marx Brothers, and the Coen Brothers—especially NCfOM. Mom loved the intelligence and offbeat humor of the Coen Brothers’ films as much as I did, whether they were comedies, dramas, or thrillers like Blood Simple, Fargo (our family loves Frances McDormand, too) and, of course, NCfOM. Although Mom and I weren’t able to see NCfOM together in the same theater since we lived in two different states, we did happen to see it on the same day. When we caught up with each other by phone, we talked excitedly about the movie for an hour! Soon Mom and I were recommending it to other friends and loved ones. Each of us saw it at least three times in our respective local theaters, usually taking others who we knew would love it (even I admit that NCfOM isn’t for all tastes, what with its relentless violence and abrupt downbeat ending). I wish I had a dollar for every time Mom called to ask me to explain the complex plot to one of her many admirers. Yes, even in her 70s and early 80s, and even when her health went downhill, Mom had more male admirers than James Bond had hottie honeys, dear little minx that she was!   

Anton Chigurh likes his work a LITTLE too much!

When Mom’s health deteriorated from pulmonary fibrosis to the point that she rarely left the house, I sent her the NCfOM DVD. When my daughter Siobhan and I visited Mom several times over the last 18 months of her life, she had it on more often than not, almost like cinematic wallpaper. I wonder if the Coens would have appreciated Mom cheerfully doing the little chores she was still capable of, sitting in her elegant lounging pajamas and drinking a cup of tea with her oxygen tube on like it was just another of her fashionable accessories, all while watching and commenting on what was going on in the film. (Siobhan, as a then-13-year-old animation fan, preferred to watch her beloved cartoon DVDs until NCfOM was over, or at least had come to a stopping point.) Mom and I had always felt there was a Sam Peckinpah vibe to this gripping thriller, set in 1980.  It’s a morality play and a tense suspense story rolled into one, like the leaner, meaner, more vicious brother of the Coens’ previous thrillers. NCfOM’s protagonist is Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin in a brooding, laconic, star-making performance), who goes hunting near the Rio Grande and finds himself embroiled in nightmarish mayhem and violence, West Texas prairie style. Instead of bagging wild game, Llewelyn bags $2 million in drug money after stumbling across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, complete with human and canine carcasses.  (It’s chilling to see the bodies in the process of decaying as others happen upon the scene over the course of the movie.) Llewelyn thinks he can just take off with the money, dodge whoever might come after it, and live happily ever after with his sweet young wife Carla Jean, played with a letter-perfect Texas accent by winsome Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald.  Brolin and Macdonald make a wryly endearing couple. The rare times Llewelyn smiles, it’s usually when he’s talking with Carla Jean. 

This definitely wasn't the kind of room service Llewelyn had in mind!

But to his peril, Llewelyn doesn’t figure on being pursued by merciless bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a mysterious figure with a pneumatic cattle gun, a penchant for using a coin toss to decide whether someone should live or die, and a voice that sounds like it’s coming not from a human being, but from the bowels of Hell itself. Chigurh relentlessly pursues the equally dogged Llewelyn through Texas as the compassionate, sad-eyed Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (the great Tommy Lee Jones as the film’s voice of reason) tries to catch up, but he can't help feeling overmatched by the sheer implacable evil of the “ghost” that is Chigurh.The film’s pacing is deliberate, but for me that simply increased the suspense as I wondered what Chigurh would do next, and whether Llewelyn had a chance in hell of ever eluding him for good, especially with both men’s ever-increasing number of injuries. The suspense scenes are real nail-biters. There’s a thrilling night-into-dawn chase where Llewelyn is pursued first by a monster truck, then into the rapids by dogs. Pit bulls don’t stand a chance against bullets!  One of my favorite scenes finds Llewelyn in his motel room in the dark. The only lights are the glowing tracking transmitter he finds in the satchel of drug money, and the light under the door from the hall outside—until a pair of feet appear on the hall side. All we hear is the transmitter…and the sound of a light bulb in the hall being unscrewed, resulting in more darkness…and I can say no more without ruining a classically terrifying moment! 

In McCarthy’s world as seen through the Coen lens darkly, fate’s gonna catch up with you no matter how smart you think you are. In NCfOM’s particular setting, 1980 seems to be a time in the West when it was easier to victimize people. You get the feeling Chigurh was able to get close to his hapless victims simply because his sheer unnerving strangeness caught them off-guard. It’s a tribute to the power of Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh that his comically unflattering Beatles moptop-cum-Prince Valiant pageboy haircut doesn’t prevent him from being one of the most horrifying villains in movie history. It got so that every time Chigurh showed up, I’d watch the rest of the scene between the fingers covering my face, because I knew Very Bad Things Were About To Happen. Bardem’s Chigurh is all the scarier because he can seem utterly calm and casual even as he blows people’s brains out with that pneumatic cattle gun of his. The damn thing can blow out locks as well as brains; its versatility certainly makes up for its cumbersomeness. My favorite black-humored sight gag:  after Chigurh launches a protracted, agonizing attack in which a cop is killed, the camera pulls back to show that the floor is completely covered with scuff marks from the dead man’s shoes flailing and scraping against the floor during the struggle. There’s low-key, matter-of-fact humor in the dialogue (taken mostly from the novel). My favorite is this exchange between deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt) and Sheriff Bell: 

Wendell: “It’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” 

Sheriff Bell: “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here.” 

Be warned, NCfOM is not for the squeamish or for those who like endings neat, tidy and upbeat, with everyone getting what they deserve. Nevertheless, it haunts and grimly amuses me even now. No wonder this powerful film won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Bardem, and Best Adapted Screenplay for the Coen brothers.  I feel that NCfOM is not only one of the best films the Coens have ever made, but a modern classic all around!

Mom and Baby Siobhan, in late 1996

Dedicated to Jacqueline Tenore Kehoe, with love and laughter

January 22nd, 1927 — December 18th, 2009