Review: "The First Deadly Sin" and "Dressed to Kill"

The year 1980 was a turning point in American history -- the election of conservative Ronald Reagan as President proved that the country was rejecting the progressive ethos of the 1960s and '70s, the white hot flame of disco music was burning out, and the culture was gradually turning away from the dark cinematic vision of the New Hollywood (think The Godfather, think Chinatown) to the more upbeat blockbuster era (think Rocky, think the Star Wars trilogy).

New York City was also recovering from the late 1970s traumas of near-bankruptcy, the blackout, and high crime. Ed Koch was mayor and, such were the times, that he turned being a belligerent, mean-spirited asshole into electoral gold.

This same year saw the release of two movies set in NYC that were very similar and very different -- but that showed that the city and the world were changing, as was the lives of their creators.

The First Deadly Sin is something that I can't believe I'm typing -- it's a gritty NYC crime drama starring Frank Sinatra. Yes, FRANK FRIGGIN' SINATRA! "Old blue eyes", in this movie, plays an aging NYPD detective named Delaney who is, yes, just about to retire to take care of his very sick wife (an always great Faye Dunaway, still riding her post-Network Oscar-winning wave before Mommie Dearest ended it all) but who becomes obsessed with finding a serial killer who has been menacing the Upper West Side -- and, it is later revealed, all of NYC. His investigation takes him into a dark realm of trying to understand systematic but senseless violence all the while tangled up in the bureaucracy of the NYPD and the heartbreaking illness of his wife. It's a tense, well-told story and it was a a rare, late-career movie performance by Sinatra -- long past his glory days as a movie musical star.

Sinatra is, of course, great in this movie, and you can see why he remains a legend 25 years after his death. In this movie, he quietly emotes such pathos, such sympathy, such complexity, that we root for him 100%. This was his last big movie and it's sad, in a way, that Sinatra didn't act more in the later years of his life because this movie proves what a perennial talent he was, what a great actor he was (he doesn't sing this movie so there you go), and how exciting he is to watch in every scene -- even in a dark, disturbing, non-glamorous movie and role like this where he is struggling with the horror of death all around him, in both his city and his marriage. It's about the totality and agony of loss. The movie was not a big hit at the time but it really holds up.

By the way, a totally unknown struggling actor at the time walks around in the background of this movie -- a man named Bruce Willis, also dealing with his own sense of loss right now.

Some might argue that this other movie from 1980 doesn't hold up -- and even the director of it seems to agree. Dressed to Kill by Brian De Palm is about a murderous transsexual menacing wayward women in NYC, and it was highly controversial then and even more so now. I get that criticism and sympathize with it. However, just as a piece of filmmaking, Dressed to Kill is brilliant, an amazing and bizarre thriller that basically takes the story of Psycho (if you know it) and twists the hell out of it. Angie Dickinson plays a rich, bored housewife who's afternoon of passion brings her an untimely death in an elevator, Nancy Allen plays a hooker who sees the murder and becomes the killer's next prey, and Michael Caine plays a psychiatrist trying to help both women -- or is he?

You need to see Dressed to Kill to fully understand it -- trying to describe it with words is hard because, like all De Palma movies, the essence of its storytelling is visual. He doesn't use lots of special effects -- it's his use of the camera that is its own special effect. The movie is highly unconventional, there are whole scenes without dialogue -- including a brilliant 10-minute sequence in an art gallery that makes no sense but that you follow anyway, and that has a a great payoff. Like all De Palma movies, it'll enthrall and repulse you but this may be my favorite of his movies and I'm not even a big thriller fan -- but you should see this!

Dressed to Kill was, shockingly, given both its subject matter and unusual storytelling, a big hit in 1980. It's hard to imagine audiences today going to a movie this dark, depraved, weird, and challenging but they did. It shows NYC as a sexy, glamorous, and dangerous place -- this is not a "gritty crime drama", oh no, it's a sexy, alluring one, and it really gets under your skin. Skin, that you should probably cover up with clothes although please don't, you know, get dressed to kill.