10 Horror Movies Where NOBODY Guessed The Killer

We spend most of Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill believing that Kate Miller's (Angie Dickinson) murderer is a tall, blonde woman who wields a razor, later revealed to be Bobbi, a transgender patient of psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine).

Except, the final sequence reveals that Elliott actually is Bobbi. More to the point, Elliott wishes to transition, but an alternative personality prevents that from occurring.

And so (as the film clumsily rationalises), whenever a woman sexually arouses Elliott, it causes the unstable Bobbi portion of his personality to feel threatened and, as exemplified by what happened to Kate, lash out violently.

While Dressed to Kill's legacy is certainly complicated today by understandable accusations of adhering to transphobic tropes, the reveal does nevertheless retain a punchiness through its sheer unexpectedness, especially for a film released in 1980. Certainly, nobody expected the killer to be Michael Caine all along.