Reception
Dressed to Kill currently holds an 84% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 stars out of 4, stating "Dressed to Kill is an exercise in style, not narrative; it would rather look and feel like a thriller than make sense, but DePalma has so much fun with the conventions of the thriller that we forgive him and go along. In his movie guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4, calling it a "High-tension melodrama", and stating "De Palma works on viewers emotions, not logic and maintains a fever pitch from start to finish." He also praised Pino Donaggio's "chilling" music score.
Two versions of the film exist in North America, an R rated version and an unrated version. The unrated version was around 30 secs longer and showed more genitalia in the shower scene (see below), more blood in the elevator scene, including a close-up shot of the killer slitting Kate's throat, and some sexier dialogue from Liz during the scene in Elliott's office. These scenes were trimmed when the MPAA originally gave the film a "X" rating.
Read more about this topic: Dressed To Kill (1980 film)
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