Still again, De Palma raises the ire of Hitchcock purists with his blatant allusions to, or rip-offs of, the master. Don’t we all idealize who we are and how we look in such flights of imagination? Why the hell not? On the other hand, I’ve been inclined to give De Palma a pass on the shower scene since the whole episode is revealed to be the character’s fantasy. Plus, did De Palma even look for someone closer to Dickinson’s age? So De Palma lures audiences with the voyeuristic thrill of a sweet, nubile body, one with especially perky breasts, to set-up what? Her bloody demise. Understandable, yes, but Dickinson’s decision prompted the need for a body double.
#VICTORIA JOHNSON DRESSED TO KILL MOVIE#
To begin, Dickinson, to hear her tell the story, wasn’t too keen on filming the shower scene (though she had appeared nude in a movie at least once), feeling that it was not the best move for her at the time, coming off her just-wrapped role as TV’s Police Woman, a role model of sorts. At any rate, De Palma indulges the viewer, or is that the camera, in shot after shot, close-up after close-up, of breasts as the nude woman caresses her soapy body–and then De Palma points the camera toward the woman’s pubic area.Īgain, this is problematic.
#VICTORIA JOHNSON DRESSED TO KILL SKIN#
To clarify, that character, Kate Miller, is portrayed by Angie Dickinson, approaching 50 at the time and a golden-blonde stunner with impeccable bone structure, lovely brown eyes, and a fit and trim body. Even so, her nude shower scene involves De Palma’s sleight-of-hand in that the director hired Victoria Johnson, a well known model, famous for her nude pictorials in skin mag Penthouse, to serve as Dickinson’s body double–for below the neck shots–in the shower scene, a move that made headlines, small ones, even though the plan was to keep quiet about the switch, hoping the audience couldn’t tell the difference between a 20ish body and one well into middle age, no matter how fit. He’s been married–and divorced–three times, btw.Īnother slam against Dressed to Kill is the objectification of its leading female, the woman in the shower at the beginning. Keeping in mind that, in this case, the call-girl is played by luscious lippy blonde, Nancy Allen–De Palma’s then wife. I believe his defense is something to the effect that audiences, male and female, are more likely to fear for the safety of a woman, especially if she appears helpless, than they are a man–like, say, Rambo (that’s quote from a DVD featurette). What a tired trope, right?Įlsewhere, further objections include the recurring idea of depicting women in dangerous scenarios as a means of exciting audiences, and keeping them that way as in the hot shot upscale call-girl (ugh) who discovers the slain woman’s body in an elevator and quickly becomes the target of the killer, lest she be able to make a positive ID.ĭe Palma probably doesn’t endorse violence against women in his day-to-day life, but his movies certainly illustrate a pronounced fascination with material that leans that way.
A few short scenes later, that same lonely woman enjoys a wild romp with a complete stranger–tall dark and handsome per her previous fantasy–she encounters at a museum however, her sexuality threatens a crazed stalker, and the woman pays a fatal price for so casually abandoning her roles as devoted wife and mom. For example, the film opens with a woman’s fantasy of being sexually attacked in the shower–by someone other than her husband, apparently oblivious from a distance of only 3-4 feet.
The naysayers carped that De Palma, who also wrote the film, trivialized violence against women, at least, and conflated sex and violence, at worst. When the super-sly director of such 70s hits as Carrie, Obsession, and The Fury, among others, unleashed audacious psycho-sexual mystery-thriller Dressed to Kill in 1980, the critics’ huzzahs rivaled the feminists’ outcries. For comparison’s sake, please refer to the following: Meanwhile, per this image: Notice the figure hovering in the background and the presumably female leg that is either being slipped into, or out of, hosiery in the foreground. According to graphic designer Stephen Sayadian, he modelled the original Dressed to Kill 1-sheet (aka movie poster) on an iconic image featured in the 1-sheet for 1967’s landmark film offering The Graduate.
0 kommentar(er)
