Dressed to Kill
Brian de palma turned into at the peak of his powers because the grasp of pastiche when he made this riveting hitchcockian horror story about elevator murderers and those insecure of their personal bodies. In the beginning the story of a promiscuous girl (angie dickinson), “dressed to kill” borrows a page from “psycho” with the aid of taking its apparent protagonist out of the image after the first act.
From there, the threat of a mysterious trans woman named bobbi on a killing spree hovers during the tale, as she stalks liz (nancy allen) while a psychiatrist (michael caine) makes frantic tries to warn the police approximately the chance handy. The twist about bobbi’s real identification is obvious to any engaged viewer, however de palma’s stylish riff on slasher tropes makes use of the familiarity of its winding plot to supply a exceptional meditation on fluid sexual identification — and the frustrations of being pressured to suppress it — long earlier than the idea had tons visibility in popular way of life. It’s a superb, risky exam of femininity, the fear involved in being the object of an insatiable male gaze, and what occurs while latent dreams stay underserved. No horror film made today has the heart to head there.