So Evil, My Sister

Many avid horror fans – myself included - worship obscure & gritty exploitation from the flamboyant 70's decade, because you never really know what to expect. These modest and by now largely forgotten productions usually compensated budgetary restrictions through completely unethical story lines, demented character drawings and crude in-your-face shock effects. Logic and coherence were of minor importance, as long as the film contained a handful of memorable shocks and – preferably – a grotesque and unpredictable climax. From the looks of the VHS-cover I held in my dirty little hands, "Psycho Sisters" looked like a prototypic example of this kind of wondrous cinema. The hellishly red cover image exhibits a young woman (Susan Strasberg) hysterically screaming with, in the background, an ax swinging into … nowhere! It's a flying ax! Awesome!! The back of the cover, containing the synopsis, gloriously speaks about outrageous car crashes, lethally burned yet walking corpses, unstable women newly dismissed from mental institutions and even slavering retards walking around with dangerous gardening tools! How can this possible go wrong? Well, the synopsis doesn't lie … "Psycho Sisters" features all these great elements, and more, but still the wholesome isn't as satisfying as it superficially seems. This is mainly because the tone and atmosphere of the film notably swifts from grainy horror into twisty crime-thriller halfway through the story. Brenda (the lovely as always Susan Strasberg) loses her husband in a horrible car accident and temporarily stays with her sister in a calm house near the beach. Slight problem, however, her sister (Faith Domergue, 50's Sci-Fi heroine of "This Island Earth" and "It Came from Beneath the Sea"!) is a recovering mental patient and feeds Brenda heavy medication as if it were Tic-Tacs and – on top of everything – she has a mentally unstable handyman with an ax walking around the premises freely. Meanwhile, the police dug up some filth regarding Brenda's deceased husband and sent an undercover officer to the beach house. The plot twists, especially during the second half of the film, are easy to foretell and maybe even dissatisfying, but at least "Psycho Sisters" never turns dull or needlessly stretched. The film is (too) low on gore and sleazy images, but director Reginald LeBorg ("Diary of a Madman") nevertheless maintains a moody ambiance. The absolute highlights involve a few oddball hallucination/nightmare sequences in which the protagonists see the burned face before them. That mask is priceless!

This is my third Reginald Le Borg film and, like the other two, it's a largely dull and boring affair with very little to recommend it for. The first Le Borg film I saw was the 1957 chiller 'Voodoo Island', which managed to be completely lacklustre in spite of the fact that it starred horror icon Boris Karloff and featured a decent plot. My next taste was the 1963 Vincent Price film 'Diary of a Madman', which again managed to squander a big star and a decent plot line. Which brings me to Psycho Sisters - a film with an interesting title, but without a big name star or an interesting plot and, rather unsurprisingly, the director does nothing to elevate the film above bottom of the barrel cult cinema. The plot focuses on a woman distraught after the death of her husband. Her younger sister consoles her and its not long before her sinister motives come to light. I went into this expecting a merely decent slice of seventies horror, but got nothing like. The plot is soaked in tedium and it seems to take forever for anything to happen as most of it is taken up with dull lines of dialogue. , meaning that by the time the plot reveals itself; any audience member is likely to be thoroughly bored with the film. The production values are cheap and tacky, and the acting reflects this as none of the stars are able to deliver meaningful performances. Overall, this film really isn't worth bothering with and I'd recommend not tracking it down.