Disc Reviews
Dressed to Kill 4K Review
Arrow Video already released Dressed to Kill some years ago on an already very impressive Blu-ray edition. It also came with some of their more inventive cover art at the time. Naturally, as that was popular, they would want to have a crack at the 4K edition, and here it is. But how well does De Palma’s soft-focus lens honestly come across in 4K? Turns out, quite well.
DTK is slap-bang in the middle of Brian De Palma’s more exploitative cinema works, featuring Keith Coogan teaming up with De Palma regular Nancy Allen as they try to uncover the identity of a female killer who has been stalking and slashing victims.
Michael Caine puts in a strong performance as the psychiatric specialist, and Angie Dickinson got some of her more notorious screen time in cinema history in the film’s early scenes. Arrow has commissioned new artwork once again to go inside the sleeved edition. They haven’t shied away from the razor blade imagery. All of the existing extras have been carried over, but there is actually a huge amount of new extras that did not appear on the Arrow first edition of this, so now could be the time to upgrade.
Of course, they have delivered a decent 4K transfer of the film with a couple of sound options as well including 5.1 lossless. There is a bunch of new interviews (from 2022) with Keith Gordon, Nancy Allen, and production staff Fred Caruso and George Litto. There are a couple of visual essays that were newly created for this release, and the disc also comes with two critics’ commentary tracks.
The archival extras (including a documentary) were already decent, so this makes for the most indispensable edition of Dressed to Kill yet.
Steven Hurst
4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-rayTM presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless 1.0 mono soundtrack
• Optional lossless 5.1 soundtrack
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary by critics Drusilla Adeline and Joshua Conkel
• Audio commentary by critic Maitland McDonagh
• Beyond Good and Evil, brand new visual essay by critics BJ and Harmony Colangelo
• The Empathy of Dressed to Kill, brand new visual essay by critic Jessica Crets
• Strictly Business, 2022 interview with actress Nancy Allen
• Killer Frames, 2022 interview with associate producer/production manager Fred C. Caruso
• An Imitation of Life, 2022 interview with actor Keith Gordon
• Symphony of Fear, 2022 interview with producer George Litto
• Archival interviews with actors Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon
• The Making of a Thriller, archival documentary on the making of the film
• Unrated, R-rated and TV-rated comparison featurette
• Slashing Dressed to Kill, archival featurette examining the changes made to avoid an X rating
• Photo gallery
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Sara Michelle Fetters, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Matthew Sorrento and Heather Wixson
Dressed to Kill 4K is out on 3rd March 2025