After last weeks visit to The Shining, we were adamant that we would never, ever review a scary movie again. Owing to circumstances beyond our control, we are now in a position to do some sort of a review of Mr De Palma's Dressed To Kill. Despite anything you may have heard to the contrary, this is not a terror movie; it is better described as a thriller with pretensions; rather than inviting comparison with Kubrick's Shining, it aspires to be a latter-day Psycho, and fails admirably. Some of De Palma's attempts to emulate the 'Master' are downright painful, such as the long sequence in which Angie Dickinson on the make tries to pick up a guy in an art gallery. The sequence is silent apart from a particularly uninspired music score, and goes on like this for about five minutes. But you cannot emulate Hitch's genius for letting the camera tell the story merely by eschewing dialogue, and in Dressed To Kill this sequence comes across more as a stylised courtship ballet than as a real human encounter. This, indeed, is the 'De Palma touch'; the whole film gives an impression of distance and stylisation. Whereas Hitchcock's roaming camera enhances the story-line, De Palma's seems to solicit admiration of its elegance and cleverness. Each sequence shouts self-consciously 'Look at this, and this, and this; I did it all myself, aren't I clever.' The production is obtrusively artificial and slick; every murderous razor gleams as if it has been polished with Pledge, every pose to be carefully casual. The whole thing has a chocolate-box air about it.