Other Titles • Sisters • Blood Sisters (1973) • Schwestern des Bösen (1973)
Synopses for Sisters (1973)
1.
Sisters is not Brian De Palma's first film, but in many ways it is the first Brian De Palma film, or at least the first to reveal (and revel in) his affinity with Hitchcock. A pre-Superman Margot Kidder struggles with a French-Canadian accent as an aspiring actress whose one-night stand leads to a homicidal morning-after. Jennifer Salt is a reporter with more moxie than tact or skill who sees the killing from her apartment window across the way. When the police fail to turn up any evidence of the crime, Salt investigates with a private eye (the hilariously relentless Charles Durning), uncovering the secret story of a pair of Siamese twins and a weaselly, stalker doctor. It's a mystery simmering in a stew of voyeurism, guilt, sex, and obsession. De Palma borrows from Rear Window, Psycho, and Vertigo (as well as Roman Polanski's Repulsion), and composer Bernard Herrmann quotes from his own Hitchcock scores (notably Psycho) for the unsettling music, but the result is more original than you might imagine. Laced with dark humor, inventive technique, and impressive technical precision (the split-screen sequences are breathtakingly effective), De Palma flexes his cinematic muscles with thrilling results, right down to the mordantly wry conclusion. De Palma graduated to big-budget thrillers, but this modest little production remains one of his sharpest, slyest, most engrossing films. Long available only in pallid video transfers, the Home Vision/Criterion letterboxed restoration is bright, clear, and beautiful. --Sean Axmaker
2.
Director Brian De Palma made a name for himself with this twisty shocker starring Margot Kidder, pre-SUPERMAN, as Danielle, a French-Canadian model who may be covering up a murder to protect her recently separated homicidal Siamese twin. Plucky female reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) witnessed the killing from her apartment window but can't convince some clueless cops to investigate, so she hires a private detective (Charles Durning) to help her solve the case. Eventually she winds up at a mysterious sanitarium in the clutches of Danielle's creepy psychiatrist husband, Emil (William Finley), and begins to unravel the shocking truth. Scary, funny, clever, and firmly in the Hitchcock tradition, SISTERS set the tone for many of De Palma’s future works, including DRESSED TO KILL and RAISING CAIN. Bernard Herrmann’s score even sounds like the one he wrote for PSYCHO--only creepier and with weird electronic effects added. De Palma’s innovative use of split-screen techniques to heighten suspense is all his own, though, as is a memorably twisted black-and-white hallucination sequence. Olympia Dukakis can be seen briefly as an employee in a bakery. SISTERS was filmed on Staten Island, New York.
3.
Creepy slasher flick featuring Margot Kidder (Superman) as a psychotic twin with a brand new set of knives. Now with its own cult following, Sisters was the film that put director Brian De Palma (Carrie, The Fury, Dressed To Kill) on the map. A reporter witnesses a murder of a young man inside a neighboring apartment. When the body doesn't turn up, the reporter does some digging of her own and winds up immersed in the secret lives of famous Siamese twins. Replete with gore, excellent use of split-screen photography, and cameras from Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias) and Charles Durning (The Sting, The Hudsucker Proxy).
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