The Hitchcock Connection (Dressed to Kill) Dressed to Kill

Dressed to Kill is De Palma's most explicit Hitchcock reworking -- more systematic than Obsession (1976), more structurally committed than Body Double (1984). The borrowings are not hidden or allusive but open and point-by-point, drawn primarily from Psycho (1960) with significant elements from Vertigo (1958). De Palma takes the architecture of Hitchcock's most famous films and fills it with the explicit sexuality and violence that the Production Code prevented Hitchcock from showing.

The Psycho template is structural: protagonist killed early, split-identity killer, psychiatrist's exposition

The borrowings from Psycho are systematic:

• Protagonist murdered at the end of Act I. Marion Crane is killed in the shower at the Bates Motel; Kate Miller is killed in the elevator at the stranger's apartment building. Both deaths restructure their films entirely, removing the character the audience has invested in and forcing new leads to carry the narrative.
• The killer hides inside a respectable figure. Norman Bates is the shy motel proprietor; Dr. Robert Elliott is the composed Manhattan psychiatrist. Both killers present as helpful and unthreatening.
• A split-identity explanation. Norman's "Mother" personality emerges when he is sexually aroused; Elliott's "Bobbi" personality emerges under the same trigger. Both films use the split as their central mechanism.
• A psychiatrist explains the pathology in an expository coda. Dr. Richmond explains Norman's condition to the police; Dr. Levy explains Elliott's condition to Marino, Liz, and Peter.

"De Palma's 1980 story of a psychologically troubled cross-dresser with a deadly razor immediately summons to mind the image of Norman Bates from Psycho." -- Sven Mikulec, Cinephilia & Beyond

The Vertigo debt runs through the museum sequence and the theme of obsessive following

The museum sequence draws from Vertigo's San Francisco pursuit -- Scottie following Madeleine through streets and into a museum, the camera tracking movement through space without dialogue, the visual grammar of obsessive looking. De Palma transposes the setting from San Francisco to Philadelphia (standing in for Manhattan) and the pursuer from a male detective to a female housewife, but the cinematic grammar is the same: long focal lengths, wordless tracking, desire expressed through spatial proximity.

Hitchcock reportedly dismissed the homage when told about the museum sequence:

"You mean fromage?" -- Alfred Hitchcock, quoted in Film Daze (1980)

De Palma replaced what Hitchcock could not show with what the MPAA tried to suppress

The fundamental difference between De Palma and Hitchcock is explicitness. Psycho's shower scene implies violence through montage -- no knife visibly penetrates flesh. Dressed to Kill's elevator murder shows the razor connecting. Psycho hints at Norman's sexuality through his relationship with Marion; Dressed to Kill opens on a masturbation fantasy and follows Kate into bed with a stranger. De Palma takes the narrative architecture Hitchcock built and fills it with the content Hitchcock's era would not allow -- which is precisely why the MPAA initially gave Dressed to Kill an X rating.

Pauline Kael saw De Palma transcending Hitchcock rather than imitating him

Kael's review placed the film's technique beyond mere homage:

"This sophisticated horror comedy is permeated with the distilled essence of impure thoughts. De Palma presents extreme fantasies and pulls the audience into them with such an apparent ease that the pleasure of the suspense becomes aphrodisiacal." -- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1980)

"His timing is so great that when he wants you to feel something he gets you every time. His thriller technique, constantly refined, has become insidious, jewelled." -- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1980)

The giallo tradition is the third influence De Palma rarely acknowledges

De Palma's technique -- gliding camera, long takes, scenes that play without dialogue, violence as aesthetic spectacle, a gloved killer -- draws as much from Italian giallo thrillers as from Hitchcock. The razor, the elaborate stalking sequences, the emphasis on visual sensation over expository logic, and the identity-switch reveal all have precedents in Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Diabolique Magazine argued that Dressed to Kill functions as a gateway to giallo cinema, opening "the elevator doors to Hitchcock and giallo" simultaneously. (diabolique)