Brian De Palma two categories, his psychological thrillers ("Sisters", "Body Double", "Obsession", "Dressed to Kill", "Blow Out", "Raising Cain") and his mainly commercial films ("Scarface", "The Untouchables", "Carlito's Way", and "Mission: Impossible"). He has often produced "De Palma" films one after the other before going on to direct a different genre, but would always return to his familiar territory. Because of the subject matter and graphic violence of some of De Palma's films, such as "Dressed to Kill", "Scarface" and "Body Double", they are often at the center of controversy with the Motion Picture Association of America, film critics and the viewing public.
Brian De Palma and attended various Protestant and Quaker schools, eventually graduating from Friends' Central School. He had a poor relationship with his father, and would secretly follow him to record his adulterous behavior; this would eventually inspire the teenage character played by Keith Gordon in De Palma's 1980 film "Dressed to Kill". When he was in high school, he built computers. He won a regional science-fair prize for a project titled "An Analog Computer to Solve Differential Equations". Enrolled at Columbia as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process after viewing "Citizen Kane" and "Vertigo". De Palma subsequently