User reviews

Hang on to your psychoanalysis, Ladies and Gentlemen...a young Brian De Palma has brought us a fine mindf*ck that is in good company with "Psycho," "The Tenant," and even "Fight Club." "Sisters" is a brain-sizzling thriller that probes the relationship between separated Siamese twins Danielle and Dominique (Margot Kidder) in a maniacally unsettling way. Danielle is a successful actress/model; Dominique is a raving lunatic who becomes violent when sexually aroused. When Dominique murders Danielle's boyfriend, reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) takes matters into her own hands after the police refuse to help. Meanwhile, Danielle's ex-husband Emil (John Waters doppleganger William Finley) runs a local psych ward. And Charles Durning plays a detective tracking the progress of a particularly heavy couch. De Palma weaves his character interactions seamlessly, employing the types of technical tricks that would be used more superficially in his later works (the use of split-screen to show action from two separate viewpoints, for instance), in addition to some of the trippiest black-and-white imagery this side of "Eraserhead." "Sisters" is an effective, highly influential work that holds up incredibly well today...just make sure you have a refill on your pills before watching it.

Starts out very strong, and you can tell pretty quickly that De Palma is already a far stronger director than he was when he made Murder A La Mod just a few years prior.

The mystery is initially interesting, and the extended sequence where split screens are used is also great (if a little gimmicky, but it's a fun gimmick, and probably far less common back in the 1970s).

Unfortunately it lost steam for me in the second half. It starts to really emphasise the "psychological" part of psychological thriller, and I don't think it does so particularly well. The theme of doubles/pairs is often popular in thrillers, but I didn't think it was too well-explored here. By the end, it was difficult to feel very invested in the way things wrapped up.

But as far as early De Palma goes, this might be the earliest film of his I've seen that definitely feels very "De Palma", in the sense that it has his distinct visual style already quite well defined.

It's worth a watch for those stylish visuals and the strong first half, but in the end it was still a very slight disappointment.

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.

This one holds a nostalgic value for me, long before I saw the re-release of Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW. It was the *first* R-rated film I was ever able to get into (since I was like 13 at the time) and it scared the hell outta me. Add to it the frightening Bernard Hermann score and I wound up having nightmares for days afterwards.

I recently saw it again for the first time in 30 years, and it still holds up if you view it in the context of the time it was made.

We're talking the early 70s, folks. It's not Freddie or Jason or the dude with the weird mask in SCREAM. This is a deeper, twisted psychological film, sort of along the macabre lines of David Cronenberg, who I also happen to like.

Yeah, I suppose the slashing would be mild by today's standards, but this one was ahead of most all of 'em...

A good beginning for DePalma. 7 out of 10

I'd have to say that this film, though sometimes just shamefully manipulative for audience reaction (and I say that sort of as a compliment), is one of De Palma's very best films, both artistically and just in sheer entertainment value. It's got the low-budget quality of an AIP production, but set apart from Roger Corman's films or other films from the company. It's got such a strange, occasionally off-the-hinges, but dedicated wit that it's hard to ignore. In fact, this wit, and a good number of tight, screwed-up close-up angles, special point of view takes, and some of De Palma's trademarks (split-screen, ambiguous villain, women in trouble, etc) are what set it apart from being a complete Hitchcock homage.

It's no doubt that the director is so in love with the Master's style that, apparently, he even times his edits and shots to go with Bernard Herrmann's music. But what sets Sisters apart from even the more macabre Hitchcock films is that since De Palma is working in a low-budget, under-the-radar, with actors with not much credit to their names, things can be taken further than usual in dealing with the psychological 'whoas' of what goes on. This is possibly one of the most morbid tales to be told in 70's cinema.

Another important aspect to Sisters and its success is the faith that De Palma has in his actors/friend Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt. They fit their roles so well one can't imagine big-name actors doing them any better (though Salt, up until the last act, is playing it all appropriately one-note). Kidder's Danielle/Dominique is quite a character too, one with so much complexity her story becomes like some wild ball of string that gets unraveled with little blood-laden marks along the road. Danielle brings home a truly nice guy, Phillip (good character actor, Lisle Wilson), sleeps with him, and then goes ape when she doesn't get her medicine...or is it her sister, Dominique? This first half hour is like some kind of satirical, sincere kind of film-making that could make just a great, open-ended short film. But with the addition of De Palma's split screen (possibly the best he's used it in any of his films), the story spins off into Grace, a reporter who gets on the case on her own to find out what happened to the body. This leads her into a very dark place, one that leads her into something so bizarre I dare not mention here.

But those last fifteen-twenty minutes or so are where things become a kind of make-or-break test in a sense for the audience; how far can one push this overtly surreal quagmire of a scene where the 'doctor' is present in front of our two main actresses? The 'doctor' himself is played by William Finley, and it would be arguable that his is such a toweringly creepy, scary performance of a villain that it becomes almost too uncanny. In this climax one has to wonder how far it will go, and then it becomes clear that it's almost the point of the story to go over the edge like this. We're dealt with an already peculiar premise of two Siamese twins, one of whom may or may not be alive, and how they're let loose onto the world. Early on it seems like this might just be an off-beat, funny noir kind of story, but by the end it becomes a bit more.

It takes originality to pull off some of the scenes here, or at least faith in what's written will work on screen. In a way this is the best place to see the bridge of De Palma's early black comedies (Hi Mom, Greetings; the neat opening TV show scene brings this to mind) and the hit or miss thrillers that have dominated his long career. Basically, for me, this was a hit, and that it was manipulative, sordid, and left the viewer still wanting some answers, makes it as successful a wink (if not homage) to Hitchcok that the filmmaker has done.

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."

SPOILER: A movie that doesn't really make a lick of sense when you think about it but that is so stylishly entertaining that you can't look away....yep, you guessed it, another Brian De Palma movie.

In this one Margot Kidder plays a woman whose Siamese twin died when they were separated and who now has a good twin/bad twin split personality. The good twin is a mousy thing with a French accent; the bad twin hacks people up with butcher knives. A busy body reporter (Jennifer Salt) who lives across the way witnesses one of the murders and tries to convince the police to investigate. When they don't take her claims seriously, she enlists the help of a private detective (Charles Durning). I'm not sure why she does so, because he does barely anything and she goes off on her own to investigate the crime herself. This leads her to a mental institution where.....oh, just see the wackadoodle thing yourself.

De Palma again tips his not so subtle hat to Hitchcock, and even hires frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann to compose the film's terrific score. Themes of voyeurism (again, see Hitchcock) abound, but I'm not sure what De Palma is really using them to say, or indeed if he's trying to say anything at all. I just enjoyed watching his groovy use of split screens.

Grade: B+

Nancy Drew (Jennifer Salt) would kill to get off of Staten Island and become the maverick of NYC journalism. The only problem is that all she has done to this point with her 'little job" is write about rampant police corruption, isolating herself even further from the big city. What she needs is a break, and witnessing a murder, (especially a DePalma split-screen murder) appears to be her ticket, if she can get anyone to listen. The journey she takes as means of recognition meanders through the horrors of medical science gone awry, culminating in a payoff that puts this film atop DePalma's list of credits. Nancy Drew on Acid!

This potentially brilliant and ingenious double identity thriller concerns about a Siamese twins(Margot Kidder, previous-Superman) are surgically separated by a doctor(William Finley, pre- Phantom of Opera). One sister is scarred physically and mentally when a murder occur in his apartment. The killing is witnessed by an investigative journalist(Jennifer Salt, post-Midnight cowboy). The intrepid reporter is helped by a private eye (Charles Durning,The fury) . And then things really get worse.

This scary triller is plenty of mystery, intrigue, and suspenseful. Adding special characteristics techniques as ominous camera movements and split screen. De Palma's first homage to Hitchcock and the amusement turn out to be inquire what scenes taken from suspense Master. For that reason takes parts from ¨Vertigo, Psycho and Rear Window¨. All this said, the mechanics of suspense are worked quite well and may frighten the easily scared quite badly, but De Palma has made a habit of dwelling on their more sordid side-shoots. The film displays a great musical score by Bernard Hermmann, Hitchock's favorite composer and imitating his former hits. Furthermore appropriate cinematography by cameraman Gregory Sandor. The picture is brilliantly directed by Brian De Palma. This one along with ¨Obsession,Dresssed to Kill, Blow out¨ are outwardly another ode to Hitchcock, but the Master might well shift uneasily in his grave at the long-drawn -out tension, the flash violent scenes and the shock effects with the accent on gas-provoking , but on most occasion without finesse. Rating : Above average but gets some riveting basic ideas and fascinating images.

A reporter witnesses a murder in a neighbor's apartment but there's no evidence of the crime when the police arrive. This cheesy thriller launched De Palma's quest to become the successor to Alfred Hitchcock. Based on the evidence here, instead of Master of Suspense, he could more aptly be called Master of Incompetence. The script starts off as an amateurish mystery but winds up as an incomprehensible mess featuring an extended delusional sequence. Although he borrows elements from Hitchcock's "Rear Window," "Psycho," and "Spellbound," De Palma doesn't have even a fraction of the master's talent for telling a good story. A decent cast is wasted.

The first time I viewed it was in 2003, on cable television. Considering that it was a Brian DePalma film, I was expecting something interesting and suspenseful. I really enjoyed his films BLOW-OUT(1981), and THE UNTOUCHABLES(1987). Here were two films where he demonstrated his effective use of creating suspense that was more integral to the plot. After recently re-watching his 1973 shocker, SISTERS, my opinion of him has been unchanged.

Sure, maybe there are things about it, such as visuals and styles,that are extremely similar to Hitchcock, but I thought that this movie was completely original story wise. The opening sequence is very cleverly played out so that you don't quite know what you're going to watch and by the end you are surprised by the direction it takes. The story involves a woman who says that her identical twin sister lives with her and is apparently crazy.

This may ring a bell with Hitchcock fans as sounding a little too familiar and indeed it does as there are very similar events that somewhat mirror scenes from his films. Before long, an innocent man is murdered and we are immediately introduced to a woman reporter who believes that there is something amiss. Afterward, the movie gets very creative with some of the strangest characters. The film also ends with a weird twist that seems to have some sci-fi overtones to it.

Despite being a little twisted and confusing toward the end, the film is very well made and effectively scary. I wouldn't recommend the film to people who don't really like thinking during movies as this film has an ending that leaves a confusing plothole behind. It is the kind of plot hole that was left in too obviously to be done on accident. But I guess that's part of the charm of DePalma. All of his films offer something similar in the suspense element, but different in every other way.

In this early Brian DePalma psychological thriller, Margot Kidder plays a French Canadian actress living with her twin sister while separated from her husband, William Finley. He stalks her as she begins dating Lisle Wilson, whom she met while pranking him on the set of a 'Candid Camera' style show. Jennifer Salt plays a fledgling newspaper reporter, who happens to live across from Margot Kidder's apartment and witnesses a murder. Unable to convince the police a murder really occurred, she attempts to solve the crime with the help of private detective Charles Durning.

I enjoyed the film but DePalma has often been critiqued for being a Hitchcock clone and this is the film where you really get a sense of it. It has a similar visual style and deliberate pacing and is an excellent mashup of North By Northwest (where no one's motivations are what they seem) meets Rear Window (where no one will believe the protagonist), albeit on a budget. It has some clever twists you may or may not see coming but I don't think you'll expect the ending and in my opinion that's what keeps this film relevant.

7/10 in 1972 5/10 in 2021 and still worth a viewing.

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.

A charming foray into the world of castration anxiety, Sisters is at once highly inventive and highly derivative, and after an odd start takes off in some disturbing directions. It's not the most masterfully paced movie, but it truly comes alive in its setpieces, which are handled with a great deal of visual flair.

Margot Kidder gives a serviceable performance as the mysterious model with a Dark Secret; Jennifer Salt comes across a lot better, as hers is a trickier part to play; and William Finley has a field day as Kidder's ex-husband, who is alternately disturbed and fascinated by his ex-wife's psychosis. But the true star of the movie is De Palma, nestling cozily within the confines of the genre to produce a more or less unique picture; audaciously switching to split-screen technique to increase tension (he would go back to this well again), and providing the film's reason for being in the form of a hallucinatory recreation of the traumatic separation of the titular sisters. Furthermore, as mentioned before, I've rarely ever seen a movie confronting male castration anxiety so directly; if it's all a little Freudian-in-primary-colors, it still has an impact entirely of its own.

Director Brian De Palma's first Hitchcockian thriller was this bizarre and ever-so mysterious shocker.

Beautiful woman desperately tries to cover up the murder that her psychotic twin sister has committed, while a reporter who witnessed the crime tries to expose it.

Many criticize Brian De Palm's thrillers for being derivative of the works of the great Alfred Hitchcock, but even still his thrillers are brilliant and Sisters is no exception! De Palma sets up this film with an intriguing and mysterious story that grows more complex and sinister the deeper one sinks into it. De Palma's direction is wonderfully inventive and well-carries the film. From the films dramatic opening credits to its unsettling final image, the style of De Palma is simply spell binding! He produces one terrifically shocking murder sequence and one of the most hypnotic (and creepy) dream sequences ever! Kudos also go to the great Bernard Herrmann for his outstandingly frightening score.

Actress Margot Kidder does one of her greatest performances, as both the beautiful model and her deranged twin. Jennifer Salt is also good as the female reporter. De Palma-regular William Finely is well sinister as a mysterious doctor and Charles During is good as a P.I.

Not to be missed by thriller fans and required viewing for those who love the works of Brian De Palma.

*** 1/2 out of ****

There's a certain extent of how much influence can one director draw from his icon, and Brian De Palma seems to stretch that extent to its very limits with "Sisters". This, along with "Dressed to Kill" are the American film maker's most Hitchcok-ian films, and a double feature screening is much suggested for a complete experience. Perhaps lacking the later films sexual emphasis (but of course not lacking sexual themes entirely-typically for De Palma) this film borderlines horror exploitation, but only in the best of ways.

The visual style is top notch, as split screen narratives serve the suspense in an excellent way and drive the story forward keeping a fast pace, saving on screen time. However, as usually commented on De Palma's work, one can truly argue that this stylization is utilized to cover up the lack of a strong story. Talking about the story, it borrows (and that is a very weak word...) elements from classic Hitchcock films, notably Rear Window. There is an abundance of clichés, which, although performed perfectly, are still, nevertheless clichés. To be honest, once you've seen psycho, this movie and its "sister feature" (no pun intended), Dressed to Kill, lose a lot of what appreciation they could have earned from the viewer.

With that being said, "Sisters" is a very entertaining movie, mainly because of its visual style and tricks, which will satisfy fans of the director but disappoint viewers looking for an original story or plot.

Sisters (1973)

I don't know the boundary between humor and stupidity, but this teeters more toward stupidity. There's no way you can take it seriously, so it's not like an actual horror film where twin sisters do the usual good sister bad sister thing. It's some kind of distanced parody of it, but the acting is stiff, and the plot stiff, and the whole thing filmed with a professional capability that goes nowhere special, but makes you take it seriously.

I have to admit, de Palma has never worked for me--he's either so sexist, or abusive, or violent, or indulgent it just gets irritating. Yes, Knife in the Water has its chilling moments, and here there is some intelligence, for sure, like when the split screen effect reaches a point where the two viewpoints merge at the doorway (really nice). But it's a cheesy 1970s flick that pushes buttons and is, if you are insensitive, a fun ride.

The inevitable comparison to Hitchcock makes the differences more salient than similarities--though Bernard Hermann does the score here (as in Psycho and other Hitchcock gems), and so the movie sounds like Hitch. But the themes and how they develop are divergent. For one thing, Hitchcock never seems to enjoy cruelty--he turns to humor, or to the artificial, to avoid actual conscious meanness. De Palma, here and elsewhere, uses nastiness for his own end, like Serrano uses shock, to get attention. One way to show this is to notice that there isn't a classic Hitchcock device--the innocent accused of the crime. We are mostly just drawn to the crime, and the criminal. The one outsider, the investigating columnist, is a device for the filmmaker to explore his theme--the conjoined twin idea in particular.

Is this a dud or a failure. Not at all. There's a raw, 1970s frankness to it all, and a kind of fast, uncomplicated development of plot, that is gripping, if you let it be. But be prepared. If you aren't predisposed to enjoy an over the top, highly deliberate film that leaves you outside the drama, you might find it slightly ridiculous. With enough sense of humor, you might find it hilarious, or, like Blue Velvet, campy and "fun." But it's not my kind of joy ride.