Sisters

So, to begin, the twist ending isn't unpredictable in these days, but I don't blame Brian De Palma for that. Audiences in 1972 may very well have been wowed by it.

However, I still enjoyed this movie for it's homages to Hitchcock and the performances of Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt. De Palma's obsession with voyeurism and split screen storytelling are also prominent here.

A great film to watch as a De Palma fan who seeks out the director's obsessions that he would use in better films like "Carrie" and "Blowout."

Sisters benefits from a terrific set-up, a well delivered first hour, a marvelous Bernard Herrmann score, and De Palma's able use of a split screen. Unfortunately it can't carry itself through to the end, and soon collapses into a confusing, formulaic, and ridiculous ending that obviously tries to cover up the fact that, well, De Palma simply didn't know HOW to end the film. Nonetheless it is essential viewing for fans of shock cinema, psychological horror, or cod-Hitchcock fans.

Brian De Palma is often unfairly dismissed as "that guy that rips off Hitchcock", a statement that overlooks the variety of his output. Of his twenty-odd full length movies only a handful have been thrillers, in fact before 'Sisters' he was best know as a maker of quirky comedies like 'Greetings' and 'Get To Know Your Rabbit'. 'Sisters' was De Palma's first foray into Hitchcock territory, and I think his subsequent stereotyping shows just how impressive he was in this genre. He has made several more famous and successful movies subsequent to this one, but it still remains one of his most entertaining works. Margot Kidder, a few years prior to her fame as Lois Lane, is brilliant as troubled separated siamese twins with a secret. Jennifer Salt ('Midnight Cowboy') plays a spunky newspaper columnist who believes she has witnessed one of the twins commit a murder (a deliberate nod to 'Rear Window'). She cannot get the police to believe her and begins to do her own investigations, helped by a small time private eye Larch (Charles Durning - 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?'). She finds out that there is a lot more to the sisters' than meets the eye, and vows to find out what is really going on. Kidder is of course the star of the movie, but equally memorable is De Palma regular William Finley ('The Phantom Of The Paradise', 'Eaten Alive') in a wonderfully creepy performance as one of twins ex-husband. Kidder and Finley and De Palma's assured direction, which includes a brilliant murder sequence and cool use of split screen in another, make this a thriller that won't easily be forgotten. Highly recommended.

De Palma don't make 'em like this anymore. Brilliant, creepy psychological thriller concerning French-Canadian twin sisters Danielle and Dominique (Margot Kidder). One is seemingly normal and one is seemingly insane. One is an actress who, while on a game show, wins dinner with one of its contestants, Philip (Lisle Wilson). The two have an enjoyable time, and even end up spending the night together back at her apartment. The next day, Philip awakens to the two sisters arguing in the next room. Danielle then asks Philip to go into town and purchase some more medicine for her. He does so and, out of the kindness of his heart, purchases a birthday cake for the sisters, since today is their birthday. Upon his return, the thrills begin and Jennifer Salt decides to investigate these weird goings-on. SISTERS is a very eerie thriller from Brian De Palma which features his outstanding scriptwriting/direction, Paul Hirsch's top-notch editing, Bernard Hermann's welcome nerve-jangling score, not to mention the awesome split-screen, enabling us to see two events at one time. Despite the ultimately strange conclusion, the film is a creeper and not to be missed. 9/10

A young French-Canadian model and would-be actress Danielle Breton (Kidder) in New York City, meets cute with a black advertising salesman Philip Woode (Wilson), in a proto-reality show "Peeping Tom", which conspicuously heralds director Brian De Palma's intrigue of voyeurism in this lurid genre piece: the urge of killing from a Siamese twin under severe psychological pressure and personality disorder, who has been recently successfully severed from her sister.

Yes, Danielle has a twin sister Dominique, De Palma and co-writer Louisa Rose's script doesn't shy away from steadily implicating that Dominique is the insidious killer who lurks behind the camera, initiates conversations with the personable Danielle, and mercilessly assaults any man who gets intimate with her lovable sister, an emblem of the evil side of the conjoined anomaly, meantime, a bespectacled, bulged-eyed, gangling Emil Breton (Finley), Danielle's ex-husband, looks equally suspicious and sinister with his hidden agenda.

Philip is the jinxed victim who thinks he is getting lucky, but fails to notice that he overstays his welcome due to his own goodwill, how ironic is that? Before succumbing to death, however clumsily, at least he manages to catch the attraction of Grace Collier (Salt), the journalist living in the building across Danielle's apartment, immediately she alerts the police force, but as outlined by the split screen dynamically chronicling the paralleled actions, contrasting the crime scene where Danielle and Emil hastily conceal the dead body (thanks for ruining couch bed for me Mr. De Palma) and clean up the blood, with the detectives dilly-dally their action (racism and sexism are heedfully hinted here) to check Danielle's apartment against Grace's mounting keenness and impatience. What De Palma devises is a stylish and effective cinematic machination, but he also wears his heart on his sleeve, which inconveniently renders the not-so-convoluted story an unwelcome feeling of arbitrariness.

Grace, hogs the limelight thereafter, vigilantly plays detective, digs into the backstories of Danielle and hopes for an exposé, thanks to the assistance of a private eye Joseph Larch (Durning), who will later undertake a tailing mission to a bizarre and goofy cul-de-sac (and literally, the ending of the film). Grace is characterised as an uncouth, career-pursuing knucklehead, we understand that she is a woman of principle, works hard to break the glass ceiling, but her undisguised single- mindedness and wanting for etiquette turn herself into an irritant, consequently pare down viewers' investment into her dangerous pursuit, which ends up in a mental hospital, where Emil finally gives his tell-all recount and discloses the darkest secret of Danielle, while Grace's own sanity will be forever compromised by Emil's hypnotic brainwash. Undeniably, this part is the meat of the story, it is presented from a peculiar angle of an eyeball, with a surreal veneer onto the sensational tale-of-misery by its grotesque tableaux vivants and freaky colour scheme, yet, for my money, Bernard Herrmann's intrusive score is a shade shrill and nerve-racking.

Margot Kidder deserves some kudos for her dualistic impersonation and nails a not-so-irritating French accent, to corroborate her undervalued versatility. It would also turn out to be a wonderful idea for Jennifer Salt to give up acting and become a successful TV producer and writer instead. On the first impression, SISTERS is a testimony of De Palma's forte: injecting a dash of gore into a deeply unsettling psycho-drama, but that doesn't make him an essential master, because a certain requirement of gravitas and punctiliousness is something uniformly absent from most of his works I have watched.