In a lot of ways, Brian De Palma is a hack. He's a very talented hack, but a hack nonetheless. Sometimes, as with Carrie or The Untouchables, he comes up with something special that somehow emerges from his muddle of influences and homages (French for stealing) as a coherent whole. Sometimes, though, the finished project is a choppy blend of classical Hollywood references and 1980s nihilism. In this film, the end product is near the middle of the pack. It has some genuinely creepy sequences and some really well-shot scenes, but De Palma strays too often into gratuitous violence and sensationalism. De Palma was one of the major voices in the 1970s-1980s school of filmmaking that wanted to see how far they could push the envelope. What they learned (or, at least, what the audiences learned) is that being able to show everything that classic Hollywood had to cover up is not necessarily a good thing, especially if the films exist only to see how far they could go.

This film starts off with what is possibly his most gratuitous scene: Angie Dickinson sensuously caressing herself in a shower, shown in great detail (although with a body double for certain shots). What the heck is this supposed to accomplish? At least his equally graphic shower scene in Carrie had a purpose, since Carrie's first experience with menstruation happens in the gym shower. But here, it's just an excuse to show some flesh. Anyway, she's married to a jerk who doesn't satisfy her sexually. She's not sure that she is attractive anymore, and she is seeing her psychiatrist, played by Michael Caine, about it. He assures her that she is attractive, so she goes and picks up a guy at the art museum. The filming of this sequence is the cinematic highlight of the film. They spend the afternoon in a hotel, and on the way out, she is graphically murdered by a tall woman with a razor. The only witness is a prostitute played by Nancy Allen, who was in practically every movie that needed a pretty face from 1975 to 1985. She's really good here as the crafty prostitute who has to find out who the killer is before she is murdered herself. She enlists the help of Dickinson's son, played by Keith Gordon, the protagonist from another classic of early 1980s exploitation horror, Christine. Meanwhile, Caine is being harassed by the detective in charge of the case, played by Dennis Franz (who looks the same now as he did back then, only a little wider), and he suspects that one of his patients might be the killer.

This is De Palma's homage to Alfred Hitchcock's much better film Psycho. That might be enough to give away the identity, or at least one of the pasttimes, of the killer, if you've ever seen Hitchcock's film. De Palma loves Hitchcock, and many of his early films borrow heavily from the classics. The music in this film is strongly reminiscent of that from Psycho too. This is a stylish but empty updating of a film that really didn't need it. Trivia answer of the day: De Palma was heavily criticized for using a body double for Angie Dickinson's shower scenes, so he titled his next film Body Double as a response.