Q: Dressed to Kill starts off with Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) having a sexually explicit nightmare, later on that day she visits her psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) for a session in which she admits to be sexually frustrated & unfulfilled in her current marriage. Kate then visits a museum & picks up a stranger, they go back to his apartment for casual sex, when done Kate is set to leave but is attacked & killed in the buildings elevator by a razor blade wielding blonde woman. Prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) discovers the gruesome scene & sees the killer but manages to escape. Detective Marino (Dennis Franz) says he suspects Liz as being the killer as there are no other witnesses so Liz teams up with Kate's son Peter (Keith Gordon) to track down the real killer, clear Liz's name & see that justice is done...

Written & directed by Brian De Palma I thought Dressed to Kill was a good solid psychological murder mystery. The script is measured & slow at times but it likes to focus on the character's so you really know them, the entire first twenty minutes is just developing Kate as a character before she is suddenly killed off, then the film switches it's attentions to Liz & no one else gets a look in. This way Dressed to Kill is quite absorbing & engaging, unfortunately the character's themselves aren't exactly likable. I found some of the dialogue quite funny at times, especially the dirty talk that Liz spouts occasionally. The killers motives are somewhat plausible but I guess you'd have to be pretty messed up to do anything suggested in Dressed to Kill. It's a good film but it didn't excite me that much & I didn't really find any character to root for or like. The film tacks on a needless & unnecessary twist ending that I didn't really see the point of.

Director De Palma directs with style & visual flair, from the art museum sequence to a car chase & as a whole it's impeccably filmed throughout. I'd imagine that every shot in Dressed to Kill had a great deal of thought put into it. I felt the film was a bit flat & uninspired at times though, nothing about it really excited me that much. There is a fair bit of nudity, some sex & rape along with a few bits of gore & violence, Kate's murder by razor blade in the elevator being the highlight, if that's the right word. However, it's by no means as shocking or controversial when viewed today as many would have you believe.

With a supposed budget of about $6,500,000 Dressed to Kill has that glossy high production value feel of a Hollywood film. The New York locations are nice, the cinematography is good & as a whole it's extremely well made. I thought the music was inappropriate & was far to loud & intrusive. The acting is OK but despite his top billing I didn't think Caine had that much screen time. Allen was married to director De Palma at the time Dressed to Kill was made, interestingly out of the four films she appeared in made by De Palma in two of them, this & Blow Out (1981), he cast her as a prostitute... A body double was used for Dickinson as she pleasures herself in a shower at the start.

Dressed to Kill is a good thriller that is well worth watching but I didn't think it quite lived up to it's lofty reputation. Good but not brilliant.
A: positive
Q: No, I'm not joking around. If you ever, EVER, have the chance to see this movie see it. If you need chop off your arm to see it, see it. It's worth it.

Fatty Drives The Bus is unlike any film you've ever seen. It takes trash cinema and elevates it to a work of art. While it contains poor shots, idiotic characters, bad dialogue, strange acting, and cinematography that belongs on public access in Iowa, it actually succeeds in its goal as a film. It strives to be the dumbest, strangest, most inane movie you've ever seen. And boy does it ever succeed.

I will lay out the plot for those of you who worry about such things (the filmmakers obviously didn't), but really you needn't pay too much attention because the entire film's plot is presented in a very long piece of text played before the opening credits. In any event, FDTB (as its admirers call it) is the story of a bus tour through Chicago, which is led by Satan. You see, Jesus is in town, and all the passengers on the bus are supposed to die, and all their souls would have gone to hell, except with Jesus in town, a lackey in hell calls off the job, and this angers Satan because, well he doesn't like looking like a fool in front of the guy, so he decides to get the people on the bus to sign over their souls to him directly, but he's a devil, so he needs to disguise himself, otherwise, who'd go on a tour with him right, so he disguises himself as Roger and he gets on the bus, where the driver is never referred to by name, but he is kind of fat, so I guess he's Fatty. The bus (and the riders) are on a collision course with wackiness!

Examples of some lunacy: The title repeats on the screen 3 times. I don't know why. A character appears on the bus in mid-trip without explanation or introduction, and occassionally sits next to the others, and they look at her like she doesn't belong. I don't know why. Two characters fall in love and exchange longing glances, that are really the same shots repeated over and over again. I don't know why. After Satan gives a minute long monologue about transforming into human form a title card flashes "Satan is going to transform." I don't know why. One character is a woman who is very obviously a man in drag, and is referred to by other characters as "the glamorous Bridget." I don't know why.

If there was one good thing that came out of my internship at Troma last summer it was getting my own copy of Fatty Drives The Bus.
A: positive
Q: Yes, this movie make me feel real horror, when i realized that i paid for it and spent more than 1 hour of my life trying to watch it. The bald guy just give me the impression of being a psycho - Junkie actor and the girl is the worst actress i ever seen . Believe me if you appreciate your time avoid this movie, i understand a movie requires money to be created and some movies do not have that money but that is no justification for a stupid plot and bad acting. I'm always supporting independent movies, when it deserves the support, but movies like this makes a bad name for this kind of movies. I'm still traumatized. I will not trust in any nice cover anymore.
A: negative