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Dressed to Kill



Brian De Palma ascended to the highest ranks of American suspense filmmaking with this virtuoso, explicit erotic thriller. At once tongue-in-cheek and scary as hell, Dressed to Kill revolves around the grisly murder of a woman in Manhattan, and what happens when her psychiatrist, her brainiac teenage son, and the prostitute who witnessed the crime try to piece together what happened while the killer remains at large. With its masterfully executed scenes of horror, voluptuous camera work, and passionate score, Dressed to Kill is a veritable symphony of terror, enhanced by vivid performances by Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, and Nancy Allen.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer of director Brian De Palma's preferred unrated version, approved by the director, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between De Palma and filmmaker Noah Baumbach
• New interviews with actor Nancy Allen, producer George Litto, composer Pino Donaggio, shower-scene body double Victoria Lynn Johnson, and poster photographic art director Stephen Sayadian
• New profile of cinematographer Ralf Bode, featuring filmmaker Michael Apted
• The Making of "Dressed to Kill," a 2001 documentary featuring De Palma
• Interview with actor-director Keith Gordon from 2001
• Video pieces from 2001 about the different versions of the film and the cuts made to avoid an X rating
• Gallery of storyboards by De Palma
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Koresky

Criterion added a new special feature:
• New conversation between De Palma and filmmaker Noah Baumbach

Presumably this will have the same transfer as the Arrow release? Although the host of new extras do make it a more attractive package if you haven't already got the previous effort.

Nothing so far leads to believe that what MGM in the US, Arrow in the UK and Carlotta in France has released on BD is sourced from a new 4K restoration 2 to 4 years ago.

So it could well be a new restoration indeed.

as far as I can remember this was "Double Double" (from Twilight Time which has been restored in x4).
Not "Dressed To Kill". I do like the MGM Blu-Ray. Carlotta took the same master and I remember that they said that they will improve a lot of things (in the museum sequence, etc...). I was not that fond of their "corrections", especially during the last scenes in porte-jaretelles and vice versa and everything...

I know it's not the purist thing to say, but I'd miss the 5.1 soundtrack option from the Arrow, which envelops you in Pino Donaggio's gorgeous score.

I'll be curious to see how much better the new 4K master is. I was already very pleasantly surprised with the previous Blu-rays. The film always looked pretty ropey on DVD.

I often wonder why Criterion hasn't done more surround (or just stereo) mixes with some of their older titles.

I think they just use whatever is provided to them, and they just don't usually include what is not the "purist" sound.
This being said, maybe they haven't been able to licence the 5.1 mix, I don't know.

Beaver

Something really bizarre going on with the dimensions on this one. Most of the comparisons show a slight gain in information on the right, and a comparatively huge one on the left, along with a very obvious squashing of the image compared to the older transfer. Granted that is really only noticeable when comparing the transfers rather than looking at the Criterion in isolation, but I start to get suspicious when taking into account the gain on the left. Is it possible that Criterion transferred the whole 1.33:1 image (thus including the soundtrack area), for a 2.66:1 image after anamorphis, and then squashed that image to 2.35:1, rather than trimming the left as they should have done?

For the record, the older transfer was preceded by an even older one in the DVD era that shared the former's dimensions.

The colours look really washed out too. I'll stick with my Arrow disc.

Christ, that looks horrible. Have video standards left the building at Criterion?

Lost Highway wrote:The colours look really washed out too. I'll stick with my Arrow disc.

That last cap is horrible.

Ever since the Scanners BD, Criterion isn't quite what they used to be...
It seems as if director's are looking for a specific "new presentation" of movies, which is fine, and Criterion just... ramps a lot of blue/green on it and... stretches it?
Really, the stretching looks terrible. The review seems to aim at a rather tame critique, but... really, it does look horrendous!!

Scanners was fair - this is terrible!!

I'm not sure Criterion has anything to do with the new color timing of both Dressed to Kill and Scanners.

They okayed and released it, they have all of the responsibility

I personally feel that everything else about the release is fine (apart from that one final cap, which is hopefully just an anomaly). In all the usual areas the transfer is superior, with better detail and grain structure, and the colour in general is merely different as opposed to worse. The stretching though is inexplicable, and absolutely wrong if my theory is correct. If Criterion did a disc replacement and fixed that one issue I'd be happy to replace my Arrow with it.

I do prefer the colors on the older transfers, but at least there's room for reasonable people to disagree about that. The squashing, on the other hand, is inarguably wrong.

What's more, it's not even consistent. For instance the second cap, from the shower scene, doesn't appear to be squashed at all, and indeed shows much less "gain" on the left side than most of the other caps.

EddieLarkin may or may not have all the details right in his speculation but it's clear that something along the lines he suggests has happened here. Aesthetically the non-Criterion framings look right to me (look at the shot of Nancy Allen in the police station; the new framings force her toward the center, not a typical De Palman framing). Anyone doubting the presence of squashing need only examine the corpse's ovular pupil and iris.

I'm pretty forgiving about minor revisionism when the original filmmakers contribute to those decisions (though I do think Criterion is becoming pretty lousy at color timing even when creators are involved, with too many releases blue-ing themselves in recent years à la Badlands) but in this case De Palma and Criterion either failed to notice the problem (improbable) or decided not to fix it due to added expense or whatever (also improbable, if the transfer was conducted in-house). It's impossible to believe this was a deliberate aesthetic choice. A baffling situation, but either way, this is definitely a botch job.

domino harvey wrote:They okayed and released it, they have all of the responsibility

Well, I'd say rather that the main bulk of responsability would fall on De Palma himself for supervising the new restoration with this color scheme no ? And Criterion just wouldn't go against his wish.
Then again, I suppose there are no mistakes in the end result.

BTW, I found this from Mulvaney on blu-ray.com : http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p ... tcount=368" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for writing regarding your concerns with the upcoming release of DRESSED TO KILL. This release was fully supervised by the director, Brian De Palma, and any framing or color choices were approved by De Palma. This is the only release of DRESSED TO KILL that was supervised and approved by the director. Please feel free to write again if you have further questions.

Aside from the very washed-out colors, the image itself seems wildly out of whack with faces squeezed. Look at the sixth(?) capture on Beaver with Nancy Allen sitting on a bench. The Criterion is drastically horizontally compressed compared to the others, making her head look unnatural. You see the same effect with Michael Caine's round lamp turning oval in one of the later captures.

This looks like a release to avoid in favor of the Arrow. Not sure what happened here. Hope it doesn't happen again.

tenia wrote:

domino harvey wrote:They okayed and released it, they have all of the responsibility

Well, I'd say rather that the main bulk of responsability would fall on De Palma himself for supervising the new restoration with this color scheme no ? And Criterion just wouldn't go against his wish.
Then again, I suppose there are no mistakes in the end result.

BTW, I found this from Mulvaney on blu-ray.com : http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p ... tcount=368" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for writing regarding your concerns with the upcoming release of DRESSED TO KILL. This release was fully supervised by the director, Brian De Palma, and any framing or color choices were approved by De Palma. This is the only release of DRESSED TO KILL that was supervised and approved by the director. Please feel free to write again if you have further questions.

Criterion should stop working directly with the filmmakers.

carmilla mircalla wrote:Criterion should stop working directly with the filmmakers.

I think some filmmakers should not be allowed to tinker with their movies, or at least to supervise anything like a new restoration, because some forget how they edited their movie (Eraserhead) or that the edit they're looking at is censored (Shivers).

tenia wrote:I think some filmmakers should not be allowed to tinker with their movies, or at least to supervise anything like a new restoration, because some forget how they edited their movie (Eraserhead) or that the edit they're looking at is censored (Shivers).

Can't wait to see the screencaps for Mulholland Dr. and The Brood!

tenia wrote:I think some filmmakers should not be allowed to tinker with their movies, or at least to supervise anything like a new restoration, because some forget how they edited their movie (Eraserhead) or that the edit they're looking at is censored (Shivers).

I think that all applies to all filmmakers. If you're revisiting work 40 years after the fact you almost assuredly are going to forget something if you don't have all the proper references.

EddieLarkin wrote:

tenia wrote:I think some filmmakers should not be allowed to tinker with their movies, or at least to supervise anything like a new restoration, because some forget how they edited their movie (Eraserhead) or that the edit they're looking at is censored (Shivers).

I think that all applies to all filmmakers. If you're revisiting work 40 years after the fact you almost assuredly are going to forget something if you don't have all the proper references.

Agreed, and I think that's problematic when doing a restoration which will be used as a reference (for DCP, storage and future 35mm print creation) for many years to come.

What higher authority is being proposed here other than the filmmaker themselves to supervise any restoration/ grading etc.?
If the filmmaker fucks up (e.g Friedkin) So be it. If they feel they fucked up on set or in the edit and want to rectify it or wanted to do something that the tools of the day didn't allow for why should the original become sacrosanct?
Rembrandt did it all the time after all.