brian de palma has the subtlety of boxed wine

i just finished watching dressed to kill, one of the film in brian depalma's golden period of carrie, untouchables, scarface, and blow out (sisters was earlier). all of those movies i just mentioned are completely ridiculous almost laughably so. seriously, scarface is absolutely absurd and blow out is just downright stupid. in blow out, he took antonioni's subtle tale of paranoia and malaise and turned into a crazy ass origin tale of the wilhelm scream. likewise, in dressed to kill, he takes a hitchcokian premise cobbled together from psycho, rear window, and rope and puts it all into a blender, adds some bush in the credits, and creates an astoundingly silly yet entertaining film.

this is however, by no means, a great movie.

its featured on the new york times top 1000 films of all time lists which is actually the worst film canon in all of cinema lit. about 70% of the films on there are decent but not worthy of the lofty best of ever titles, the other 29% are films on every list (double indemnity, seventh seal, casablanca, etc) and the other 1% are genuinely good hidden gems that deserve to be noticed (um...drawing a blank right now but there are a few. i assure you).

nancy allen is a terrible terrible actresses. she is undoutedly hot but absolutely horrible...like megan fox with poofy 80s hair and a penchant for nudity.

if you like depalma but recognize the innat stupidity in his films, give it a watch

2.5/5