Norman Evans Movies

One of Brian De Palma's most divisive films, Dressed to Kill is a spine-chilling Alfred Hitchcock update for the late 1970s. Sexually frustrated wife and mother Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) visits her New York psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), to complain about her unfulfilling erotic life. When she then goes to meet her husband at a museum, she meets an anonymous man whom she follows out to a cab. After an afternoon of satisfying sex, Kate discovers that the man has a venereal disease, but that information becomes a moot point when a razor-wielding blonde woman slashes Kate to ribbons in the elevator of the man's building. Blonde prostitute Liz (Nancy Allen), who caught a glimpse of the murderer, becomes both the prime suspect and the killer's next target. With the police less than willing to believe her story, Liz joins forces with Kate's son Peter (Keith Gordon) to get the psychopath themselves. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Fame star Irene Cara made her film bow in Aaron Loves Angela. Cara plays Angela, a Puerto Rican girl who falls in love with Aaron, a black ghetto youth (Kevin Hooks, whose father Robert Hooks also appears in the film). The unrelenting grimness of their lives is leavened ever so slightly by comic-relief character Willie (Leon Pinkley). Way, way down on the cast list is singer Jose Feliciano, making his unstressed acting debut. The script for Aaron Loves Angela is by Gerald Sanford, and appears to have been adapted from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of Woody Allen's earlier, more slapstick-oriented efforts, Bananas tells the story of Fielding Mellish (Allen), a neurotic New Yorker who follows the object of his affections, Nancy (Louise Lasser), to the fictional Central American country of San Marcos, where she is involved in a revolution. Nancy wants nothing to do with Fielding, but he soon becomes a guest of the country's dictator (Carlos Montalban), before accidentally becoming the leader of San Marcos himself. Fielding is eventually shipped back to the US and tried as a subversive, but being that this is a comedy, and an especially light one at that, everything works out in the end. A far cry from Allen's later, more somber films, Bananas still works as an often hilarious amalgam of sight gags, one-liners, and bizarre asides. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

In this musical, a chimeny-sweep is bequeathed an aging hotel and decides to staff it with his former army buddies. Trouble ensues when two con men try to buy the hotel and it's grounds. They offer the sweep very little, telling him the property is almost worthless. They do not tell him that the value will greatly increase when the new airport is built nearby. Fortunately, the owner and his partners are not about to sell. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi