Review #825: 'Sisters' (1973)

After over a decade of shorts and forgotten comedies, director Brian De Palma finally embraced his Alfred Hitchcock fixation and made Sisters, kick-starting a second decade of movies that any director would be proud of. Inspired by an article on Siamese twins in the Soviet Union, Sisters begins with a weird game show where the audience and contestants guess on the outcome of prank situation involving a slowly undressing blind woman and a potential peeping tom. The blind woman turns out to be an actress, Danielle (Margot Kidder), who isn't really blind, and she offers a nightcap to the peeper (who turned out not to peep after all), Phillip (Lisle Wilson).

They spend the night together and in the morning, discovering it's Danielle's (and her twin sister Dominique's) birthday, he heads out to a bakery to buy her a cake. On his return, he finds Danielle in a strange state, and she stabs him repeatedly with a knife. In the adjacent window, Grace (Jennifer Salt), witnesses the murder and immediately calls the police. But as she's a reporter who has recently disgruntled the police with a damaging news story, they procrastinate with questions, allowing Danielle and her ex-husband Emil (Phantom of the Paradise's (1974) William Finley) time to hide the body and clean up the murder scene. Grace, frustrated, is joined by private investigator Joseph Larch (Charles Durning), who starts the search for the elusive corpse as Grace probes into Danielle's alarming past.

Although heavy on the Hitchcockian touches - the references to Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960) are obvious - Sisters has a life of his own. The macabre climax especially, as distorted, implanted memories play out like an absurdist silent horror directed by the Maysles brothers, is visually stunning. Although exploitation tactics are used during the bloodier scenes, the film is heavily psychological. For most of the duration of the film, it's unclear as to what it's really about, but this uncertainty only makes the film more intriguing. It's capped off with a fine performance from Kidder (playing both twins) and a reliably creepy turn from Finley, who is possibly the strangest looking man I've ever seen.


Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, William Finley, Charles Durning
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie