Dial M for Murder

directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1954)

I got kinda bored with this one.  It's too easy to figure out, and you gottta wade through a whole lotta yadayada before you get to the denouement satisfactions.

Ray Milland is defintinely evil, and nasty, greeedy, coldhearted, so I wanted to see him suffer.  He's always got the stiff upper lip though, so his suffering isn't that entertaining.   It's definitely the devious selfish machinations where he delivers; his duplicitous actions are what'll get you all incensed and rooting for him to get nailed.

Grace Kelly is very gorgeous in this, but she's so bland and helpless too.  I felt like her character was being punished too much by the script, though. She's so tortured!  So often the damsel in distress is a boring character of function, just there as a beautiful thang to get threatened and rescued.  Even though she's put through the wringer, at least she had some complexity beyond just being a victim.

I guess I was expecting this to be more crazy than it was.  It's so highly rated, that set me up for something more than what it is - a tightly wound mystery thriller - sorta like a CSI episode.  It feels like a play and that makes sense since it was originally a Broadway production by Fredrick Knott, and he adapted the screenplay as well.  Maybe I'd have liked it better if I saw it in 3D, like it was originally shot.

One scene made me laugh, one cop is walking off with some evidence: a women's purse.  He's got it dangling dainitly on his arm, and as he sets off on his way back to the station, a detective stops him short. "You can't walk around like that, you'll get arrested." And the cop puts the purse inside a satchel to cover up the gender crime.  Holy eh? You'll get arrested!  This is really true though.  At one point in English history, you could be arrested for wearing clothes that didn't define your gender "properly".  It's the actual legal reason behind Joan of Arc getting burned at the stake.  In hindsight, it makes more sense that Albert Nobbs was so terrified to be outed.

In case you're wondering, the Hitchcock cameo is in BITD school photo of the blackguard Milland.

Dressed to Kill

directed by Brian De Palma (1980)

Oh my God.  What a crazy movie.  I feel conflicted about how much I enjoyed this mess.  I don't think it could be made today, it's too offensive and ignorant regarding transexuals and mental illness.  It's such a lurid flick.  I knew I was in for something different when the film started off soft core porno with Angie Dickenson lathering her boobs and snatch up in the shower all lasciviousness while watching a hunky bare chested man shave with a straight razor.  It's bizarre slow motion with sugary muzak.  BTW who uses a straight razor?!!  Suddenly she's being attacked by another man in the shower who also has a straight razor, but that must be a fantasy, because next you see her in bed moaning while being piledrive humped by her husband.

That's all I wrote when I watched this back in February, so I think I'll have to watch it again.  Sometime I'll have a De Palma fest and watch everything of his I've never seen and revisit the ones like this, that I liked.  Lots of times though, a movie isn't nearly as good when you no longer have part of your brain trying to figure out what the plot is while you're watching.

I remember I kept thinking well this is just mental and preposterous, really similar to Argento in it's incoherency, but that didn't make me want to stop watching - far from it, I wanted to see MORE!

I really like Brian De Palma's flicks.  I think he's a nut though.  I read recently, that when he was making Carrie, for the final scene where Carrie is unleashing her fury at the school dance, he was told the fire hoses were too dangerous to use on scenes featuring the actors because the water pressure was too strong.  I guess he yeah yeah whatevered that, because he did use the hoses, and PJ Soles got pasted in the face.  The blast punctured her eardrum, and the pain made her pass out.  She was deaf for 6 months.  

He's most often compared to Alfred Hitchcock, and I can see that, because aside from the formalist similarities, Hitchcock was an asshole to his actors too.