Ron Jeremy and I, some of you may be delighted to learn, go back a long way. Although maybe that’s not the right way to put it, because that implies that Ron Jeremy and I have an ongoing relationship, which is not the case. I met Mr. Jeremy, who was then being introduced to people by his non-stage name, that is, Ron Hyatt, pretty much 31 years ago to the very day that I’m writing this, coincidentally enough. I had taken a two-week job as a production assistant on an “adult film” then entitled The Family Jewels, which would be released as A Girl’s Best Friend. These were in the waning years of porno chic, when a good deal of production was still done out here in New York, and a large percentage of the “talent” “pool” subsisted of actual actors or at the very least trained performers who weren’t quite making it in what Variety may still call “legit.” Video had not yet rolled over celluloid, and Jewels, which was directed by the late Henri Pachard (Ron Sullivan) was in fact being shot on Panaflex cameras and the whole crew was a bunch of jaded moonlighting pros who had some time off from their regular gigs doing segment work for That’s Incredible or some such series. When I got the job (the circumstances of which getting will be available for your reading pleasure in my memoir My Life In Pornography, provided I ever complete and/or sell the damn thing) I was informed that my P.A. work would not have me around during any sex scenes, which were supposedly shot on a “closed set;” some time later, during what I recall as being one of the hottest post-Labor-Day weeks I’d ever experienced, as I crouched behind a large potted plant, my hand poised above the switch of an electric fan that I was to turn on between takes as Mr. Jeremy and a performer nicknamed “The Singing Cocksucker” attempted a form of sexual congress, that promise seemed a distant memory. Anyway.
Back in 1980 Mr. Jeremy was even more peculiarly delusional than he is depicted in the strangely poignant 2001 documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy—albeit, perhaps, with better reason. A buff and boisterous 27 years of age, he was crowing to whoever would listen that he had just acquired his SAG card, and also completed some extra work in the new Woody Allen picture, which, as was even then the case with Woody Allen pictures, was as yet untitled. (My calculations put it as Stardust Memories, and I don’t believe Ron made the final cut.) Because porno chic really still was a thing, and because of what was being perceived as the “new” or “newish” permissiveness in mainstream film, Ron believed that the porn thing would soon no longer be a stigma and that he’d be able to make a relatively painless and strain-free entry into the Hollywood firmament. I remember him waxing particularly eloquent on this topic with then-Playboy-writer David Rensin, who was visiting the set for an article and who sat around quietly dictating his notes into a mini-cassette recorder. Ron, I remember, had just done a threesome scene with two blondes that had sufficiently discombobulated him that he emerged from the bedroom set with his Fruit of the Loom briefs on inside-out. Warming to his topic, Jeremy ultimately decried the hypocrisy of the ratings system. “Did you see Dressed to Kill?” he asked Rensin. Of course he had; we’d all seen DePalma’s Dressed to Kill, which had been released earlier that summer and was something of a succès de scandale. (Hey, look, I did the accent grave!!) I think I had seen it two or three times, ’cause me and my boys were big DePalma fans. Ron wasn’t quite so sanguine about the picture. “I can’t believe they gave that picture an R! It’s total bullshit! I mean, come on. That shower scene in the beginning? I saw that finger go up there, you can’t fool me. And they call US perverts.”
Ron was referring of course, to the film’s notorious opening shower-rape-fantasy scene, in which Angie Dickinson and, alternately, her nude double Penthouse Pet Victoria Lynn (and boy did Penthouse make hay out of THAT connection, if I recall correctly) are violently taken by an unknown hunky assailant. It was Mr. Jeremy’s contention that the sex play in that scene indeed crossed the line into “hardcore,” e.g., “penetration” and was getting away with something. Mr. Jeremy’s subsequent public pronouncements, inasmuch as I’ve followed them, have not infrequently taken a similar why’s-everybody-always-picking-on-me-when-somebody-else-is-doing-worse-stuff tone.
I bring this up because I think about Ron Jeremy all the time, and I can’t stop doing so. No. I bring this up because I’ve been looking at the brand-spanking-new Blu-ray disc of Dressed to Kill—the unrated version, yet!—and so of course with all the enhanced detail and stuff I thought, “I wonder if Ron Jeremy was right?” As it happens, no, I think not. But since I don’t have the capacity to get Blu-ray captures off of my computer, and since, you know, I don’t run a PORN WEBSITE, I’m not gonna run the frames to prove it. So take my word for it. I think Mr. Jeremy may have been a little confused; there’s a shot near the end of the fantasy scene in which the attacker lifts Dickinson and/or Lynn by hoisting her up from the, um, groin area; the attacker’s naked thigh is visible in the shot, and the whole thing goes by sufficiently quickly that the impression of penetration—not so much in a sexual sense, but the same sense of that bit with the meathook in the first slaughter sequence of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—is relatively strong. And that, as they say, is the Magic of Filmmaking Illusion! Whoop-dee-doo! I’ll be rating the Blu-ray in the upcoming Blu-ray Consumer Guide, which, God willing, will be up before September’s out, but I’ll say here that I’m pretty happy with its look, which is VERY in keeping with what I recall of its theatrical appearance (and as I mentioned, I saw it more than once!), and I’m actually enjoying the film quite a bit, its idiocies of dialogue and plotting and its hysterical incidental racism notwithstanding. “Yeah, but what a kid!”
The last time I watched this I remember thinking that Nancy Allen’s encounter with the killer in the subway train is a prototype version of Pacino’s more elaborate attempts to escape from the gang members in Carlito’s Way.
For me, the best bit about Dressed To Kill is still Allen’s wide-eyed and eager account of the step-by-step process of how to transform a man into a woman near the end. Almost as if she is standing up for all the brutalised female characters during the film and suddenly giving the gents in the audience something to cross their legs over!
A minor point, but I’m very glad to see art based on the original one sheet rather than the gaudy cover that came with the DVD.
“suddenly giving the gents in the audience something to cross their legs over!”
I think this was Exhibit A in Robin Wood’s essay about how all De Palma films were about castration anxiety.
And the anxiety reaches a peak with RAISING CAIN where Margo is the last personality standing.
I was watching/re-watching De Palma movies recently (stalled for now; will pick up eventually again with the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie), including this one. The first time I saw it, I thought it was the height of his self-indulgence, in more ways than one, even though the technique was admittedly topnotch. Upon rewatch, I have to admit I liked it a lot more, though I still think the ending is pretty silly and too long to be the “oh my God!” ending De Palma seemed to be aiming for (and did much better in CARRIE).
DRESSED TO KILL is probably my favorite De Palma film. Perhaps because as kids we somehow managed to borrow the seemingly (at least in my memory) unexpurgated VHS from our local public library when my mother mistakenly thought she was getting us a similarly titled Sherlock Holmes adventure.
Then again, it could be that perfect Steadicam work in the museum scene. Or the genuine shock of the murders. Or the supporting performances by Dennis Franz and Keith Gordon.
Heck, any movie that can riff off (as opposed to rip off) Hitchcock this well and still impress Ron Jeremy with its sleaziness has to be doing something right. Would that present day De Palma could find his way back to the sweet spot of his early 80’s work.
Good lord, how I LOVE Dennis Franz in this movie, as I was reminded while watching the Blu-ray. “LOOK, Doc-TAH.” “No, fuck YOU.” “Now I want you to find your friend Ted from out of town and bring him IN TOWN and DOWN town and IN HERE…“All of it topped by him turning so amiable at the end. And that JACKET. Just genius. Didn’t hit those highs in “Blow Out” or “Body Double,” alas.
Dennis Franz’s embarrassed reaction in the Psycho-like explanation scene is hilarious.
Franz apparently hasn’t done a thing since NYPD BLUE ended. Hope he comes back some day. I appreciated Hugh Laurie’s recent NY Times interview, in which he decried American TV’s tendency to cast conventionally attractive actors: “I think that’s hugely misguided. The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.”
Franz graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where I went to film school. He came back for a visit during his NYPD BLUE heyday, but I missed meeting him because I was stuck conforming the negative of one of my films. Really bummed me out.
He was magnificent in HOMER S.: PORTRAIT OF AN ASS-GRABBER. At least the scene I watched.
Well, what?
Would I be putting my mother and father in legal jeopardy by saying they took me and my sister (born 1966 and 1967) to DRESSED TO KILL during its theatrical release? (I remember my parents were watching “Police Woman” at the time … maybe that was the reason.) Anyhoo … I remember just this side of nothing about the film except the shock cut from the end of the shower scene to what-I-now-know-to-be-sex in bed. And I remember thinking it was stupid and nonsensical.
I remember after I first saw the film and delved into its special features– and Glenn, I must ask, is that strangely sycophantic yet appealing Keith Gordon documentary-defense from the DVD on the Blu?– hearing that it caused something of a moral panic, and I was kind of surprised, frankly. The opening scene was shocking, yes, but didn’t seem enough to cause such an uproar.
You have to understand, I wasn’t even conceived when DRESSED TO KILL made its way into theaters, and by the time I was a young adult, I had this conception of The 80s as somewhat hedonistic era w/r/t film: mountains of coke, crazed slashers, Bootsie Goodhead. What I didn’t come to realize until later was that, as someone who was born in the early eighties but become culturally cognizant in the nineties, the things that lasted to be passed down did so because of some special quality they possessed beyond their capacity to shock and appall. I know, I know, it’s pretty basic stuff, but that was when I realized it.
The question I have to ask of folks who were there is– how panicky was the panic, how shrill the outcry? Was it at about the same level as that levelled against, say, FIGHT CLUB or SHOWGIRLS? Was it mostly the territory of cultural scolds who make for good headlines but are for the most part ignored?
I don’t remember any big kerfuffle re Dressed to Kill. It was mildly notorious–in a positive way–with its fans, but there wasn’t anything like the protests against Cruising or Last Temptation. A Fish Called Wanda even raised a bigger stink.
Tom R.:
If there had been a *major* kerfuffle about DRESSED TO KILL as a perverted sex movie, I’m pretty sure I would not have seen it under the circumstances I did.
Well, that answers my question. Thanks, gents. 😀
I dunno – I have saved several clippings from “American Film” (back when they had a magazine), and while there might not have been a kerfuffle about the movie in the rest of the country, there apparently was quite an outrage in NYC, at least according to a very funny column by Ernest Lehman (one of the film’s defenders).
Anybody remember Franz as the off-duty cop in THE FURY? For a movie that does not want for “big” performances, he’s firing on all cylinders.
I love this whole undercurrent of “No, it wasn’t any kind of scandal, Kenny’s just making shit up to inflate his anecdote” implications here! No, there weren’t picket lines in the mode of “Last Temptation” or “Cruising” but there was a good deal of discussion and arts-and-leisureish thumbsucking about explicitness, whether or not De Palma was a misogynist, and so on. This would continue for his next couple of pictures, and during the making of “Scarface” DePalma had his famed interview explosion wherein he exclaimed “As soon as I get this dignity from ‘Scarface’ I’m going to go out and make an X‑rated suspense porn picture” and “I’m sick of being censored,” and so on. The talk was out there. I take no responsibility for the lack of responsibility of anybody else’s parents!
The only NY critic whose review of it I recall today is Kael, who a) adored it, and b) was never shy about beating the misogyny and morality drums, while talks with cinephiles I recall were more along the lines of “Isn’t Dickinson hot?” than “Isn’t De Palma sick?” I put all that out there because somebody asked a direct question, not to make anyone look cracked. But fuck, I didn’t live in NY then so maybe there was lots and lots of thumb-sucking going on at the time. I do know that when Kael’s line about Scarface came along–a De Palma movie for people who hate them–it had enough context that I didn’t need any discussions about Dressed to Kill to know exactly what she was talking about.
My sarcasm was merely intended as, um, sarcasm.
Here’s my question, perhaps not a particularly essential one, for people whose memories of the film date back to the theatrical release: Was the film’s BIG TWIST as obvious as it seems to be on repeat viewing? I didn’t see it coming as an 18-year-old in the quiet of my dorm room, but upon repeat viewing De Palma seems to be giddily, shamelessly telegraphing it (which is of course at least as in keeping with his teasing process-flaunting storytelling methods in general as is a shocking reveal).
Well, from the elevator killing on we were all on board for the “Psycho” “homage,” so the reveal was a real eye-roller, for sure.
Speaking of De Palma’s giddy/shameless telegraphing, I remember watching an interview on the FEMME FATALE disc where De Palma bragged about putting the big switch in the opening scene, right in clear view, and that no one would notice it the first time through. And he was right; I didn’t notice it. Of course part of that was how he shot it and another part of it was (ahem) what he shot.
Even if we can’t have Early-To-Mid-Eighties De Palma back, I’d settle for a lot more Femme Fatale and a lot less Black Dahlia/Mission to Mars/etc.
I saw Dressed to Kill obsessively when it came out (something like 4–6 times in the theater, back when you could see the same movie in the theater once a month for six months) but I haven’t seen it for a decade or two. I do remember that there was a clever diversion about the identity of the killer, that we see someone who looks like the killer leaving Caine’s office early in the film (probably as Dickinson is arriving), so, perhaps subliminally, we assume the killer isn’t who it turns out to be.
Tom, wasn’t Kael’s line about “A DePalma film for people who don’t like DePalma” directed at THE UNTOUCHABLES? I’ve never read her SCARFACE review, but remember her lukewarm feelings about the Eliot Ness picture. And then how much she loved CASUALTIES OF WAR a couple of years later.
Actually that line (I slightly misquoted it) was only the title of her Scarface review, so it’s not even certain that *she* wrote it. But it *was* the Scarface review.
Our Dennis is a little over the top in THE FURY, (irony) so out of keeping with the overall tone of the piece (/irony). But it is a shame he seems to have dropped off the cultural radar entirely since ’05. I’d like to believe it’s because he’s busy washing up in a bathtub filled with the money he made on NYPD BLUE for over a decade.
My personal favorite Franz performance was in the movie version of AMERICAN BUFFALO. Much more subdued than his delightful work for DePalma. (And I presume all Franz diehards watched his short-lived Hill Street Blues spinoff “Beverly Hills Buntz,” whose pilot was directed by none other than Hal Ashby.)
Phoebe Yap
Very neat article post. Much obliged.