Saturday, November 11, 2006

[1980] DRESSED TO KILL: This was amazing. If you wanted to say this was the best film of the year 1980 I would not think you were nuts. The art gallery scene, the seduction, and then the fact that it all terminates in a venereal disease gag; Angie Dickinson's murder, with all the quick editing and the way Nancy Allen suddenly finally sees the murderer in the mirror; Dennis Franz doing Sipowicz all the way back in 1980; the weird train scene where you can't tell who's chasing who; and the final dream sequence where De Palma gets one last dig in at you. The guy who reviewed this at Slant says Kael called this a comedy and I basically agree. It's a thriller-comedy (like when you talk about a horror-comedy, which are far more common.) The jokes, or the reversals of expectations, are all visual, though, which makes it somewhat difficult to talk about, but you really should see it.

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