Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill is a superior thriller, featuring an excellent cast, a genius score courtesy Pino Donaggio, and wonderful camera work from Ralf Bode. As with Carrie, De Palma effectively showcases slow motion photography and splitscreens in Dressed to Kill.

While her husband is shaving, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), is taking a soothing shower. She sensually caresses herself with the soap, as the glass door fogs up. Suddenly someone grabs her from behind, puts his hand on her mouth and violently rapes her. But it's just a dream.

...or is it a fantasy? Kate is having sex with her husband, and it looks like he's having all the fun. Later on, she stops by her son Peter's room to see if he wants to go to the museum. He declines and she heads out to her appointment with her therapist (Michael Caine).

She tells her therapist that she is unhappy with her marriage and proceeds to come onto him. He tells her that he finds her attractive but that he is happily married. At the museum, Kate sits and looks at the paintings.

She watches a couple kissing, a little girl stray from her mother, and she marks her date book with things to do. (The pacing in this scene is slow and very reminiscent of Hitchcock. There is no dialogue for about 10 minutes, and we hear Pino Dinaggio's lovely score.) A man sits next to Kate and they proceed to play a cat and mouse game.

When she realizes she's dropped one of her gloves, she exits the museum to find the man in the back of a taxi waving the glove. She gets in the cab and they make love. Back at his apartment they engage in more lovemaking. Kate wakes up and realizes the day has gone by and she needs to get back home.

With the stranger still sleeping, she decides to write him a note telling him what a wonderful time she had. As she is writing it she discovers something horrible: a notice from the Department of Health telling the man he has contracted a venereal disease!

She makes a hasty retreat from the apartment, but in the elevator she realizes she left her wedding ring behind. Heading back up, the elevator stops on the guy's floor. Suddenly...a tall blonde woman wearing sunglasses and a long black coat steps forward. She raises a straight razor in the air and slashes Kate's hand as she tries to protect herself. The woman keeps slashing brutally, until Kate's bloodied body slumps to the floor.

The elevator opens up on another floor as Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) is talking to her "John."

He sees the carnage and runs off. Horrified, she looks up at the mirror in the corner and catches a glimpse of the killer holding the razor. The murderer drops it and Nancy grabs it just as the door closes. A cleaning woman sees this and screams, thinking Nancy is the killer.

In the meantime, Michael goes back to his office and plays his answering machine. There is a message from one of his patients, "Bobbi", telling the doctor that he is a man trapped in a woman's body and that he/she borrowed his razor and committed a crime. A second message is from the police department telling him that Kate was murdered.

At the station, Sgt. Marino (Dennis Franz), questions the doctor as Peter (Keith Gordon) sits outside eavesdropping with a homemade device. He hears them talking about the tawdry details surrounding his mother's death. Marino suggests the murderer could be one of his patients, but Elliott balks at that. Liz is next for questioning, and the Detective tells her that she is a suspect.

The next day, Peter stands outside of the doctor's office with a stopwatch, timing the patients who come and go. Being an amateur inventor, he puts together a video camera to record at different intervals.

Meanwhile there is a blonde watching Liz's every move, and Dr. Elliott is getting menacing phone calls from "Bobbi." When Liz leaves a hotel after having serviced a customer, she notices the blonde across the street. She jumps into a taxi, but the stranger is in pursuit.

She runs into a subway station and straight into the path of a group of thugs who begin harassing her. When the subway pulls in, there is a cop onboard who doesn't believe her story. He gets off and the thugs continue their harassment. Running through the train, Liz ends up between cars. All of a sudden, the blonde grabs her from behind and tries to slash her. Peter appears and sprays the killer with mace.

Back at Liz's apartment, Peter tells her that he followed the killer from Dr. Elliott's and that if they can get into his office, they can get her name. Liz goes to Sgt. Marino who tells her that they would need a search warrant. Taking matters into her own hands, Liz makes an appointment with Elliott. On a rainy night, with Peter watching from across the street, she seduces the doctor.

Taking her clothes off, she goes into the another room so he can undress. She looks through his files and finds the name of the person she believes is the killer. But Peter catches a horrific sight. He sees that "Bobbi" is now in the office. When Liz comes back into the room, he tries to warn her.

Liz turns around and sees the killer. She puts her hand up and is slashed, before a shot comes through the window from a police officer outside. On the ground, we see Dr. Elliott writhing, wearing lipstick and with a wig beside him.

At the police station, we get almost the identical explanation from PSYCHO. The doctor, who is a transvestite with a split personality, killed Kate when he was turned on by her.

The film cuts to a mental institution, where the doctor is incarcerated. As a nurse approaches him, he strangles her and takes her clothing. He shows up at Peter's house and while Liz is taking a shower, he enters the house.

In the bathroom, Liz notices a pair of nurse's shoes. As she slowly get out of the shower, she opens the medicine cabinet and grabs a blade. But it's too late. Dr. Elliott slashes her neck. In an almost exact replica of the final scene in De Palma's film Carrie, Liz wakes up from this nightmare screaming.

Dan: I loved this film when I was a kid and I think it holds up well. The elevator scene did for me what PSYCHO did for people taking showers. For a time, when I rode on an elevator, I was afraid of what would be behind the door when it opened. Perhaps a killer with a knife?! There's no doubt that this movie and that scene in particular, were inspired by Hitchcock's masterpiece.

Jason: A great thriller, even if the echoes of Hitchcock's PSYCHO here are thunderous. The story is interesting and really well-paced. The action is clever, and the splitscreens bring together all the characters tightly. The murderous doctor and his blonde wig definitely classifies this as a horror film. Big plus of this movie is Angie Dickinson.

Like Janet Leigh in PSYCHO, she is killed fairly early on, but because the viewer sympathizes with her ill-timing and bad luck (even though she's committed adultery), her presence is felt like a ghost throughout the rest of the movie.