Brian de Palma has a bit of a chilly personality, but I admire him as a director and technician. So when he offered me a rathar weird horror film called Dressed to Kill, I figured this was a gamble that might pay off. He was very demanding, often shooting on and on until he got precisely what he wanted. I remember one nine-page sequence that incorporated a 360-degree swing of the camera and required 26 takes (a record for me); whenever we actors got the scene right, the camera didn't and vice versa. That one sequence took a whole day to shoot.

The man is wearing sunglasses, a clear indication that he is not there to appreciate art. But this detail also foreshadows Bobbi, who hides her identity behind dark sunglasses, day and night. Through this association of two characters with “no eyes,” the stranger is the dark angel, the one who delivers Kate to Bobbi, her killer. This approach of connecting worlds is also present in a similar fashion in Psycho; Marion has fallen asleep on the side of the road and is awakened by a policeman, who is wearing dark sunglasses. He never takes them off; we never see his eyes. This very much presages the other character with no eyes, Norman Bates’s dead, mummified mother in the cellar. When she is revealed—as a lightbulb swings back and forth above her face—we see dark holes instead of eyes, just like the cop who wouldn’t take off his sunglasses.

The 1980 thriller "Dressed to Kill" may not have the same reputation as other movies in director Brian De Palma's filmography. (He did, after all, helm "Scarface," "Carrie" and "Mission: Impossible.") But one particular scene sent critics swooning at the time, and still comes up in retrospectives: the extended, wordless sequence inside the art museum.

The eight-minute sequence follows bored housewife Kate (Angie Dickinson) through the galleries as she trails and dodges a handsome stranger. It's supposed to take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the exterior shots are, unmistakably, of uptown Manhattan. Look a little closer at the interior, however, and you might recognize the winding halls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

PMA posed as the Met for the movie, released in theaters 45 years ago today. It was natural choice for De Palma, a Philly native who graduated from Friends' Central School and won the Delaware Valley Science Fair with his homemade computer. Despite his scientific pedigree – his dad was also an orthopedic surgeon at Thomas Jefferson University – he ultimately chose to tinker with film reels, not motherboards.

The director, who would later use the city as his backdrop for "Blow Out," leaned on his hometown for "Dressed to Kill" when New York shut him down.

“We scouted the sequence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but they didn’t like the script," De Palma later recalled. "They thought it was in bad taste. And because I grew up in Philadelphia, we were able to move the interior to the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

De Palma said he got the "visual idea" for the scene from his trips to museums as a college student. After visiting PMA, taking photos and obsessively tweaking his storyboard, he was ready to film.

Viewers will notice art on the walls that would've been contemporary for the time. Kate sits on a bench in front of "West Interior," a 1979 piece by Alex Katz that is no longer on view but still in the museum's collection. As she glances around the room, her eyes fix on "Reclining Nude," a 1976 portrait of a gorilla by Tommy Dale Palmore. It also remains at PMA, though off display. As she chases the stranger through the museum, "2 Priory Walk" by Jennifer Bartlett is visible.

Dickinson remembered the scene as a tricky bit of choreography, emotionally and physically, in the book "The De Palma Decade."

"As serious as the scene is, it is also humorous, because it gets desperate," she said. "At first, she is intrigued. And then she finds him rude. Now, she’s going to confront him but can’t find him. And technically, it was so complicated, and complex to do – in fact, I was (at times) holding a rope attached to the camera, so I would stay in focus as I walked."

The scene made an instant splash when the movie hit theaters on July 25, 1980. Roger Ebert called it "absolutely brilliant." Critics at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other publications also singled out the sequence in their reviews.

Paul Williams is the guest on the above episode of The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, and it's a great conversation, with Corgan asking Williams questions that cover his long career in music, TV, and films. These two songwriters also discuss songwriting. About an hour in, they talk about Phantom Of The Paradise.

"Speaking of Hollywood fantasies," Corgan says, "I’d seen reference to the movie Phantom Of The Paradise (1974), but somehow I ended up with the laser disc. And that’s one of those movies, like, you put it in, you sit back and watch a movie, you know, it’s quasi-musical, right? And, I don’t know whatever I was on substance-wise, but I remember thinking, how did this movie ever get made? Like, it’s so cool that it got made, and obviously it’s become – I don’t want to say it’s a cult classic because I think it’s better than that – but at the same time, you think like, who the f--- greenlit this movie?? It’s like, things like that don’t really happen, but, they do. You know, it’s like somehow when the inmates get to run the asylum for five minutes, look what they do – you know, they make a movie like Phantom Of The Paradise!"

Paul Williams, laughing so hard he can barely get the words out, responds, "That’s the best description of it I’ve ever heard! That’s exactly what it was like."

Meanwhile, posting a clip from De Palma's Carlito's Way, Cinema Tweets writes, "Brian De Palma’s never received the credit he deserves for his genius as a filmmaker. Overshadowed by his peers that exploded on the scene in the ‘70s, countless directors and actors owe part of their success to De Palma. That includes Al Pacino."

And one more - 1428 Elm's Stephen Rosenberg writes about De Palma's The Fury, with the headline, "You probably haven't seen this '70s Brian De Palma movie that channels Stephen King." Here's an excerpt:

In just premise alone, The Fury feels like it belongs right in the vein of Stephen King’s psychic powers-focused stories of that era, including Carrie, The Dead Zone, The Shining, and especially Firestarter, where a shadow government agency tries to use a pyrokinetic’s powers for their own gain. That’s not to say John Farris shouldn’t get his due for writing the story; he’s no one-hit wonder. Farris has written more than 40 novels over the course of his literary career.

The Fury isn’t just good because of its strong, classic horror-sci-fi feel. It’s great to see Brian De Palma’s early fingerprints all over the screen. He has simply always thrived with mystery thrillers, using the camera’s zoom and lighting to increasingly build intensity throughout the scenes.

His split diopter shots and superimposing to showcase Gillian’s psychic abilities are unique and reminiscent of late Hitchcock films, and an early teaser into his best films, like Blow Out and The Untouchables.

At its core, The Fury is just a solid, if not slowly paced, government mystery movie. But peppered between some of the moments that lag are awesome displays of telekinesis, like Robin causing carnival rides to spin apart, or Gillian going full Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone.

From Bill Hader's Top 10 at The Criterion Collection, posted March 17, 2011:

Sisters

I love early Brian De Palma thrillers, and this is one of the best. Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt are great. What Psycho did for taking a shower this movie did for giving a birthday cake to your girlfriend. And where Charles Durning’s character ends up is hilarious.

***SEVERIN SUMMER SALE TITLE REVEAL #8***

 

SISTERS

 

THE WORLDWIDE UHD PREMIERE

3 DISC COLLECTION INCLUDES BONUS SOUNDTRACK CD

 

The SEVERIN SUMMER SALE begins July 25th!

 

In this reimagining of the Brian De Palma classic, director Douglas Buck (FAMILY PORTRAITS: A TRILOGY OF AMERICA) takes the film’s themes of disturbed bloodlines to startling new extremes for the first time ever in UHD: When a persistent reporter (Oscar® nominee Chloë Sevigny of BOYS DON’T CRY and AMERICAN PSYCHO) investigates a controversial doctor (Oscar® nominee Stephen Rea of THE COMPANY OF WOLVES and THE CRYING GAME), she’ll uncover a case of murder, manifestation and identical twins (the American film debut of model/actress/singer Lou Doillon) with a horrific secret. Dallas Roberts (The Walking Dead) and William B. Davis (The X-Files) co-star in this “bold take on the original” (Devil Dead), now scanned in 4K from the original camera negative with 4+ hours of Special Features and a bonus soundtrack CD.

 

Special Features for SISTERS:

 

UHD:

 

• Audio Commentary With Director Douglas Buck And David Gregory Of Severin Films

• Archival Audio Commentary With Douglas Buck

• Trailer 1

• Trailer 2

• Soundtrack CD

 

BLU-RAY:

 

• Audio Commentary With Director Douglas Buck And David Gregory Of Severin Films

• Archival Audio Commentary With Douglas Buck

• Deleted And Extended Scenes

• Archival Making-Of

• Trailer 1

• Trailer 2

• Glass Eye Pix Presents Tales From Beyond The Pale “Hidden Records” By Douglas Buck Featuring Kevin Cline And Tony Todd

• Performed Live July 27, 2015"

• THE BROKEN IMAGO – Promo For Unmade Douglas Buck Feature

• "Electric Blue" By Pornographie Exclusive – Music Video Directed By Douglas Buck

 

Feature Specs for SISTERS:

 

• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

• Runtime: 92 mins

• Audio: English 5.1, English Stereo

• Closed Captions: English

• Region: A/B/C

Read the piece at his blog, Bang Goes The Jukebox.