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Dressed to Kill

Dressed to Kill

Thriller · Mystery · Horror · 1980

After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.

Movie details

Dressed to Kill

“The latest fashion in murder.”

1980 Thriller · Mystery · Horror 1h 45m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.0 / 10

55K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

84 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

74 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

7.0 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Dressed to Kill?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Brian De Palma

Written by

Brian De Palma

Nancy Allen

Nancy Allen

Liz Blake

Michael Caine

Michael Caine

Doctor Robert Elliott

Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson

Kate Miller

Keith Gordon

Keith Gordon

Peter Miller

Dennis Franz

Dennis Franz

Detective Marino

David Margulies

David Margulies

Dr. Levy

Ken Baker

Ken Baker

Warren Lockman

Court is in session

Put Dressed to Kill on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.