Sisters (1972)

There is so much to appreciate in this early De Palma film.Let me start with the actors - Margot Kidder (that pout!) and William Finley (the man with the sinister face) not only look remarkable, but exude sensuality and danger. The plainly pretty and earnest Jennifer Salt is a perfect foil for the sultry Kidder. Charles Durning and some other bit players like the actress who played Salt's mother and the two bakery employees add muscle to the ensemble.The almost hilariously bombastic score by Bernard Herrmann is perfect for this genre flick. It does have a melancholic tune which is played while Kidder and her boyfriend are on a ferry.The set pieces are something else. Like the white corporate cleanliness of Danielle's flat which forms the backdrop for the close up of the two red pills. Split screens, extensive use of close ups (like the one of Danielle's eyes - maybe a nod to Vertigo's title sequence) and dream sequences add to the film's visual splendor.De Palma satirized American society in his earlier films like Greetings, Hi Mom and Get to Know Your Rabbit. Jennifer Salt's amusing exchanges with the cops and her naked ambition as a reporter is De Palma's commentary on the American media and police force.Sisters is probably the first De Palma masterpiece. (10/10)

Blood Sisters is a jarring who-what-why dunnit that's very much of its time. Whether it works for contemporary audiences ... well, I'm not so sure.The film starts by introducing Margot Kidder as a French Canadian actress/model and 'star' of a dubious TV game show built around voyeurism. As opening's go, it has its own flavour of disturbing, but it does cleverly mirror exactly the theme of the movie in a less than a minute: if you were witness to something private, would you do 'the right thing'?After an interesting premise, there's a slow and laboured build-up to a one-night stand, a menacing ex-husband, a secret twin and an inevitable - and very schlocky - murder. For me, the movie only briefly comes to life in the middle, where we have local beat reporter Jennifer Salt (the only halfway believable presence in the movie) witnessing the crime from across the street. When the police refuse to take her seriously, she sets out to investigate on her own, sometimes accompanied by her hilariously critical mother.Blood Sisters does its 'moments' well - there's intermittent tension, gore, black comedy and frustration, but otherwise it seems to lope along fairly immaturely. My biggest gripe - purely as a modern viewer - is in the film's extremely outdated ideas about mental health and disability. It's not so much about 'investigating' anything as going straight for the shock factor.I could forgive that if there were was something more endearing about this movie. I did like the overall feel and mood of the movie, down to the jerky editing and its rather obvious plot twists, but the acting is too hammy to be anything other than distracting. The ending is a masterpiece of short-change: not so much who-dunnit as huh-dunnit ... Yep, it left me stumped.I'd probably watch this movie again but not because it's good. It's an underwhelming 5/10 for me.

Ambitious Staten Island reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) witnesses actress/model Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) committing a brutal murder in the apartment building opposite, but struggles to convince the police that what she saw actually happened.If you''re going to imitate the work of any one director, you could do a lot worse than choose the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock—which is precisely what Brian De Palma did for his breakthrough thriller Sisters, an entertaining 'homage' to both Psycho and Rear Window with a little bit of early-70s psychedelia thrown in for good measure.The movie's plot, character development, and cinematography all reek of Hitchcock, and the Bernard Herrman score only adds to the effect. In fact, it would be easy to accuse De Palma of having very few ideas of his own—if it wasn't for the film's bonkers final act, which is far freakier than anything that Alfred ever came up with. Danielle's demented history is told in a warped, hallucinatory flashback that is so bizarre and unique that one can easily forgive De Palma for the film's less original elements.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for Margot Kidder's irresistible French accent—a psycho has never sounded sexier.

Writer/director Brian De Palma is most acclaimed for his - admittedly brilliant - epic gangster movies from the 80's and 90's ("Scarface", "The Untouchables", "Carlito's Way"), but personally I'm a much bigger fan of his imaginative, raw and often very flamboyant horror outings of the 1970's. "Carrie" is an obvious favorite, but so are the "The Fury", "Murder à la Mod" and the oddly stupendous but still criminally underrated "Phantom of the Paradise". And also "Sisters" is a very worthwhile and entertaining motion picture from the period De Palma was still a struggling young filmmaker. Particularly the first half hour is a crude and shocking psycho-thriller that once again showcases the director's blatant obsession of Alfred Hitchcock, while the rest of the film is more of an experimental paranoia/medical horror (although Hitchcock's influence is clearly present here as well). The Canadian actress/model Danielle, on the run for her stalking ex-husband, meets the gentle Philip during a crazy TV-show entitled "Peeping Tom" and invites him to her Staten Island apartment for a passionate night. The next morning, however, Philip discovers that Danielle has a twin sister named Dominique, and she isn't nearly as hospitable or charming. From her apartment across the street, the ambitious journalist Grace Collier witnesses how Philip is brutally murdered, but by the time the police arrives, all the evidence has disappeared and they don't believe her story. Grace starts her own private investigation, which unravels disturbing secrets about Danielle, Dominique and ex-husband Emil. Since the background of the twin sisters is rather predictable, even if you haven't read or heard anything about the plot from beforehand, the whole second and final act of "Sisters" isn't too suspenseful or surprising. De Palma attempts to compensate for this by inserting grotesque surgical horror, black humor and an ambiguous open ending. Speaking in terms of style, our director effectively uses cool split-screen and excessive gross-out gore during the murder sequence and flashbacks. De Palma could also rely on a downright terrific score by Bernard Herrmann and stellar performances from Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt and particularly William Finley as eerie husband/surgeon. His character reminded me of a sinister Nazi doctor or even a cold war spy, and his hypnosis sequence is genuinely uncanny.