After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.

Hitchcock meets erotica in this Brian De Palma picture, which luxuriates in rounded, yielding forms. Things that cut and glint—a razor blade, a diamond ring—lacerate the film’s layered softnesses: Nancy Allen’s brushed-out curls, the slow flow of the Steadicam, the strings of Pino Donaggio’s score.