Would Dressed to Kill be considered transphobic in today's PC society?

All of them.

This is why we have locks on our houses.

Yes.

I watched it with friends last year and the boyfriend of my friend found it racist because Nancy Allen was chased by black men in the subway. And, of course, he found it transphobic.

R3, get better friends

I feel at this point there would be less of an issue with transphobia because the killer is trans and people would be pissy that there aren't enough handicapped non binary person of color in the movie.

*People of color

Oh dear.....

This scene where they describe the surgeries and the old lady gives disgusted looks to the camera is so funny. Yes the movie would be labeled transphobic but it's so goofy I don't understand how people got offended by the movie back in the day. It's a lot of fun.

It was considered transphobic at the time.

Almost everything is considered offensive by someone, somewhere, especially amongst the trans community. Who even cares anymore?

Billy Crystal joked on the Oscars something about Linda Tripp looking like Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill (cut to Caine laughing who was in the audience.)

Keith Gordon was so nerd sexy in this. His lips are so kissable. (In Christine and Legend of Billie Jean too.)

No cause the killer was just using it as a disguise. He wasn't a trans.

wouldn't his character have been diagnosed with multiple personalities?

The killer wasn't trans.

The killer was like Buffalo Bob. A crazed murderer using a transgender cover to whip himself up and get off.

Pffft.

Currently on HBOMAX. Holds up brilliantly.

^^^ HBO Max is what I watched it on

I think it is kind of unclear if the character was trans.

Caine has multiple personalities and one is female. I'm not sure if the film ever states that Caine's psychiatrist character was trying to become a woman.

(it all is homage to Psycho anyway. The leading lady getting killed early etc. Norman Bates wasn't Trans. He was a multiple. He dressed as a woman because that personality thought they were a woman. The psyciatrist at the end explains it all. Dressed to Kill isn't as clear.)

Keith Gordon was HAF in this film and Christine before he started losing his hair

Like Silence of the Lambs it was considered transphobic when released.

if Michael Cain's character was really that dangerous they would've put handcuffs or had something to restrain him

People who thought Silence of the Lambs was transphobic just weren't paying attention. Lecter says that Buffalo Bill isn't trans. He's been rejected by all the major surgical centers.

He just hates himself so much he wants to change into something else. A woman.

(although I guess lots of trans people could be diagnosed as not really being trans but just unhappy with themselves. Back in `1991 though standards were higher for gender reassignment surgery.)

Dr. Jill Biden does not dress as we.

R20, the simple Trans Woman Jody Foster solved that crime.

I can't believed they don't understand that movie.

I would rather murder them.

I would dig a shallow grave, and put then in it.

I would refuse to hear their plees.

That are young and dumb and full of themselves.

I love most De Palma movies and especially Dressed to Kill. They are melodramatic and humorous and use sound and music to great effect. Dressed was considered transphobic by many even when it was released in 1980…as well as derivative of Hitchcock and misogynistic. Most critics had favorably reviewed Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, and Carrie. They were fairly nasty to De Palma regarding Obsession then The Fury. Mixed reviews for Dressed, then they hated Blow Out and Body Double and Scarface. I think they are all watchable and interesting movies. I think his last true “De Palma movie” was Raising Cain, which must have been like a gift to himself after the Bonfire of the Vanities debacle.

Raising Cain has one of the best trailers ever.

Psycho is considered by many to be transphobic. Never mind that Norman isn't truly trans and that it has the scene with the psychiatrist explaining the difference between someone like Norman and a transvestite. Norman was killing while wearing women's clothing and a wig, so to them it's irredeemable for that alone.

Raising Cain was De Palma's strike back at the critics who said all his other films were homages to Hitchcock. I never really understood that until I heard Tarantino explain it somewhere online.

What is the homage to Carrie? Anyone know?

oops left out a sentence

People said he always ripped off Hitchcock so he made a film ripping off himself.

R27 Do you mean how was Carrie an homage to Hitchcock? I don’t think it was since it was an adaptation of a King book and most of his other movies were his original screenplays.

no sorry r29

I mean in Raising Cain he does little homages to his other films. There's an elevator scene which is homage to Dressed to Kill. Those scenes in the clip of Lolita D. spinning with stuff going on around her is homage to Obsession I believe. I think the baby carriage is homage to The Untouchables.

I was wondering what in Raising Cain pays homage to Carrie.

R30 I haven’t seen it in ages but, yes, I remember those shots and scenes…plus, the shopping interlude (Body Double at Beverly Center, the Met in Dressed), the wigs, John Lithgow in a dress, the dream within a dream within a dream, the slo-mo/split screen at the conclusion

R30…and that last set piece of Raising Cain reminding me a bit of Carrie/Sue/Chris and the moments before all hell breaks loose in Carrie.

It's a great film and really captures the sleaziness of NYC in that era.

I suppose, but every cross dressing/trans/trans adjacent person I've ever met loves the film. So......?

I always find it interesting how the film goes from being about Angie Dickinson's character to Nancy Allen's. When Allen picks up the razor Dickinson has been cut with it is like the baton has been passed and now Nancy is the star.

Cross dressing killers in movies are based on that a lot of serial killers were cross dressers. Not while they killed but Ed Gein was the inspiration behind Psycho and Silence of the Lambs and he really did try to make a woman skin suit.

I am deeply ambivalent about this film.

The Met sequence is a masterpiece.

The cast is note-perfect,

Angie is fabulous.

Keith Gordon is angelically beautiful.

Nancy Allen has never been sexier.

But there is no denying that the film is not only transphobic but profoundly mysoyginistic and homophobic to boot with a nice dash of racism to even things out. Basically we are watching a woman slaughtered for daring to own her own sexual agency; and then a fairly standard horror slasher in the Italian style tarted up with a dollop of sexual paranoia. In case we don't get how sick trannies are, there is the lurid conversation at the end between Nancy and Keith to drive the point home.

I am a gay man who doesn't quite get the whole Trans-hate thing going on on this site (I have a trans cousin) but Dressed to Kill goes far beyond even some of the hate I've seen here.

[quote]Basically we are watching a woman slaughtered for daring to own her own sexual agency

But doesn't the enterprising capitalistic hooker turning her profits into stocks make up for that?

Plus Angie isn't killed because she had the affair with the Met guy. She is killed because she caused confusion in a confused mind. (and it was 1980, Friday the 13th and Halloween and all those films were slashing women (and men) right and left.

Dear lord, R37.

I thought this was a thread about Eddie Izzard.

Not everything is for everyone. Good art doesn't pander to everybody. Besides, it's rated R, for RESTRICTED. Get a clue.

R38, I agree that that is a reading. But the tempo of the times suggests otherwise. De Palma is too smart a director to simply buy into the then-current gender blame game. But he doesn't do much to off-set it. At best he sneeringly mocks it. Angie's character wouldn't have been killed if she hadn't been seen by the killer - yeah, as she pursued an extramarital sexual experience. And Nancy's character is presented as the "happy hooker" trope beloved by straight men only to be shown as traumatized at the end by PTSD (as, it is implied, Keith Gordon's character is). I don't think that's actually unrealistic - but it is not presented as anything more than a sick joke.

Dressed tp Kill is a fascinating film, but it is, as was observed of De Palma's Carrie, " a slick work of master surgery by a doctor who left the knife in the body".

They should have given the lead role to a trans murderer.

Oh shut the fuck up, troll.

R37 is a sick fuck

It seems a reasonable, mixed, opinion. You're overreacting.

I think it has become considered X-phobic if the minority X is portrayed as anything but a successful, “normal” and mainstream character. Kind of ironic if you think about it.

I'm a sick fuck, R45?

I'm actually curious.

How?

I was Miss Angie Dickinson's body double!

Lucy almost took the Angie Dickinson role - she even shaved her pussy for the shower scene - but Gary talked her out of it.

I don't know why anyone would have a problem with R37. It begins with "I am deeply ambivalent about this film" then proceeds to praise AND acknowledge the films more problematic issues. A evenhanded opinion.

[quote] Angie's character wouldn't have been killed if she hadn't been seen by the killer - yeah, as she pursued an extramarital sexual experience.

I thought it is implied he follows her a lot and on this day she just happened to get picked up by the Met guy. (He pulls the glove away after she drops it.)

I thought Caine, the doctor is touched by her unhappiness and aroused by her out of a sort of sympathetic love and then the Bobbi personality has to destroy her because she feels it is going against her desire for "them" to be a woman. (although she could have been a lesbian and think of Angie.)

I disagree with the racism part. I guess you mean the guys on the subway platform? NYC was like that back then.

The PTSD Nancy Allen goes thru at the end to me just reads as the now necessity for thrillers to have that last big jolt. I mean I never liked that too much because it is so out of Carrie. But just the year before Alien had the same last jolt thing.

Siskel and Ebert once picked Carrie as one of the films that changed the movies since it made the last jolt thing a requirement.

R52, that's a good break-down of the film overall.

My sniff taste for racism is this.

If the minority in question is shown as a criminal - is there a separate scene showing the same minority as not a criminal?

If not? Yeah, kinda racist, whether the people in charge were aware of it or not.

Well there is the woman going into her apartment who witnesses Nancy Allen holding the knife and starts screaming and rushing into the apartment. Another black person in the cast.

The subway scene doesn't play as racist. They are suspicious as to why she's hanging so close to them. They sense something's wrong.

Oh yeah. That's right she brings on the contact. They are not harassing her forgot that.

Michael Caine's character is more the twitter trannie.

More vile and more dangerous than your run of the mill one.

Anything and everything can be considered “transphobic” OP. It’s a dreary uninspired dogwhistle for the permanently offended.

I love this movie, but yes, it is transphobic. ‘Bobbi’ wants to have the operation, so when Dr Elliot is aroused by Angie Dickinson, who asks him point blank why he doesn’t sleep with her, it is her death sentence. You can see the exact moment on the link, it is not very subtle. That is why Bobbi follows herto the Museum and kills her. Arguably, the same happens to Norman Bates in Psycho when he meets Marion Crane, and Mother kills her for it.

In Dressed to Kill it can also be said that Angie’s death is moralistic as it immediately follows her sleeping with another man she picks up at the museum. Sort of a moral punishment. But that is not the reason she is killed in the film.

HAVE YOU WATCHED THE MOVIE OP?

The killer was not a transgender but a Cross-dresser, on the last scene the transgenders on television are shown in a sympathetic and friendly way.

The recent film about De Palma got some really bad reviews that trahsed his supposed hatred of trans people. It seems he's been soft canceled.

the last scene is Nancy Allen waking up from the dream of having her throat cut. What trans people are in that scene?

And Caine watches a Phil Donahue episode about sex changes so we are led to believe he wants one and is interested in the topic

As far as I remember before the credits transgenders are shown on television being interviewed.

The movie makes no association between being trans and being a murderer.

The Killer was a male psychiatrist using a disguise. He was a misogynistic not a trans person.

No, there’s a scene midway through of both Caine and Allen (split screen) watching a Donahue episode with an ex-military trans woman as the guest. If I recall correctly, the trans guest even makes the point that being trans has nothing to do with being gay.

Jesus Christ.

Dickinson’s character was not killed for “daring to own her own sexual agency” (fuck’s sake, how much babble have you been indoctrinated with to use that phrase unironically?). She’s killed because her therapist is attracted to her, and he’d rather not be—because his erect penis triggers him, as a pre-op autogynephile cross dresser / split personality. The erection triggers his ‘other’ personality—HIS doctor calls it “Bobbi’s red alert” at the end of the movie. It has nothing to do with De Palma moralizing over her character’s sex life.

I can almost guarantee I’ve seen this movie more times than any of you bitches here, so don’t even go there. I’ve owned it on Beta, VHS, laserdisc, DVD, and Blu ray, and I plan to buy the UHD when it comes out next year. Haha.

Is it “transphobic”? No. But everything is considered transphobic and racist nowadays; the words have lost all meaning. Who gives a fuck.

R64–

“Oh, I’ve always been a devout heterosexual.” [chuckle chuckle]

OP, it was seen as transphobic even then. Gays protested “Silence of the Lambs”.

It was considered trans and homophobic when it first came out! Also sexist.

The public saw anything in a dress as gay and gays knew this. It didn’t matter what a character in the film said. Gays were the perps in film for a decades and then the AIDS crisis happened. Gays protested all of these films.

I don't get this "Angie was punished for sleeping with a man" argument, when the woman who does survive and become the final girl is a prostitute.

OP Transphobia, as a word, did not exist when the film was released.

Great post, R65, i have seen the movie many times as well and agree with you except i find it maybe not transphobic but the psychopath trans is not ideal, much in the way of having a gay murderer may be deemed homophobic (it not necessarily so).

I do think that, maybe not intentionally, when you have a woman violently murdered at the exact moment she comes from a sex escapade, moralizing is inevitable, even if unintentionally. I find that moment actually sad, because like in Psycho, she is murdered at a moment of regret.

I think the sexual encounter Dickinson has is there mostly to set up the idea that she has exposed herself to a venerial disease. We think that is going to be her big problem then bam she's murdered and gone.

It was supposed to throw you off track like how Psycho is thought to be a movie about a woman stealing money and then bam it is not.

[quote] maybe not transphobic but the psychopath trans is not ideal

Yeah, ideally in real life, trans people wouldn’t be severely mentally ill, but…

It's like EVERY Brian DePalma movie except Carrie: sleazy, puerile, misogynistic, derivative of Hitchcock, and wildly overrated by nitwits.

You have terrible taste. Mission to Mars? Bonfire?

R75 OH. Trannys found this thread.

[quote] his erect penis triggers him, as a pre-op autogynephile cross dresser / split personality. The erection triggers his ‘other’ personality—HIS doctor calls it “Bobbi’s red alert” at the end of the movie.

Oh my.

I have the DVD signed by Nancy Allen and Miss Angie Dickinson.

Yeah Boris R74 ideally you would keep your right wing insanity restricted to Russian webpages you sickfyck.

R80 Fuck off ya mental drip.

R76, Mission to Mars and Bonfire of the Vanities are absolute crap. R77, You're clearly one of those nitwits I was referring to.

I'm more pissed off that DePalma didn't show Edie McClurg's bush during the opening sequence of Carrie