Sisters (1973)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Spencer S

  
  Certain aspects of this thriller were tailor made for me: convoluted backstory with an element of supreme weirdness, blood splatter during a murder sequence, and camera angles and cinematography vacant from 70's cinema. DePalma is undoubtedly a genius when it comes to building… More
  Certain aspects of this thriller were tailor made for me: convoluted backstory with an element of supreme weirdness, blood splatter during a murder sequence, and camera angles and cinematography vacant from 70's cinema. DePalma is undoubtedly a genius when it comes to building suspense, but the bitter truth is that Sisters just doesn't contain a juicy enough payoff. Sure, Siamese twins are a goldmine of psychological drama, but in the off kilter way it was used, nothing comes out of this hour and a half ride through the apparent ravaged mind of none other than Margot Kidder. (Just try watching this without thinking about Lois Lane.) The fact that reporter Grace Collier (Salt) is trying to unearth the tragic circumstances of a surgery gone awry would have worked if not for her involvement in a strange hypnosis performed by Kidder's ex-husband, supposedly to exorcise her demons after she murders her date (not a spoiler). Between Kidder's raging French Canadian accent, Salt's flimsy acting, and a strange turn for legend Charles Durning, it could have had its moments. It was the last twenty minutes, where everything is mysteriously explained in a flashback that is actually a dream that is actually just stupid. Good to see another DePalma, but not his best work.

• Reid V

  
  I have always been divided on DePalma. I find Scarface an overrated disaster and Mission Impossible forgettable, but know that he is held in high regard by some directors that I respect. Unsettled by my inability to compartmentalize him in my mind, I have decided to go back and check… More
  I have always been divided on DePalma. I find Scarface an overrated disaster and Mission Impossible forgettable, but know that he is held in high regard by some directors that I respect. Unsettled by my inability to compartmentalize him in my mind, I have decided to go back and check out some more of his earlier work. After starting with Sisters, I can now see that I may be in for quite an uncompromising journey. Sisters is a smorgasboard of influences. I can see why some people see DePalma as a modern day Hitchcock, as half of this film feels like the lovechild of Rear Window & Rope with a little dash of exploitation thrown in there. However, this description is more satisfying than the actual film as it is prone to fly off of the handle and often wonders off into the absurd. Maybe that is the tone he was going for. Is this supposed to be a very black comedy? I am willing to accept the fact that maybe I am not yet accustomed to DePalma's work and maybe the tone flew right over my head. This doesn't mean that I didn't get anything from the film. The split-screen segment is really well structured and one can not help but be amazed at how easy he makes it look. He is clearly a competent director with the right influences guiding him, I guess I just wonder in the end what he is really trying to accomplish. The film feels muddled and lacking a real focus. In fact, it making it difficult to write a review about it, so I am just going to stop.

• Michael G

  
  I will gladly give Brian DePalma points for a few glimpses of greatness and the use of split screen (that he was so famous for.) The other thing for which DePalma was known was mercilessly and shamelessly ripping off Alfred Hitchcock with the subtlety of a town whore at a key party.… More
  I will gladly give Brian DePalma points for a few glimpses of greatness and the use of split screen (that he was so famous for.) The other thing for which DePalma was known was mercilessly and shamelessly ripping off Alfred Hitchcock with the subtlety of a town whore at a key party. Sisters isn't bad. My problem with it was I couldn't keep myself from dissecting it and recognizing from which Hitchcock movie DePalma was thieving. Margo Kidder's accent got kind of overbearing, but once it got going, the creepiness paid off and the ending was actually kind of worth it.

• AJ V

  
  Creepy, suspenseful, and confusing (especially towards the end). It's a pretty good horror thriller movie, even though the theme of twins has been used often enough now, but I think it could have been a bit clearer with the doctor character's intentions towards the end.… More
  Creepy, suspenseful, and confusing (especially towards the end). It's a pretty good horror thriller movie, even though the theme of twins has been used often enough now, but I think it could have been a bit clearer with the doctor character's intentions towards the end. Overall, a pretty good movie.

• Aditya G

  
  It is getting somewhat tiring and increasingly routine to come across a "mystery-thriller" so blatantly "inspired" by Alfred Hitchcock's filmography. It is also getting difficult to find a Hitchcock film that is NOT used as a source of inspiration in later… More
  It is getting somewhat tiring and increasingly routine to come across a "mystery-thriller" so blatantly "inspired" by Alfred Hitchcock's filmography. It is also getting difficult to find a Hitchcock film that is NOT used as a source of inspiration in later films! Brian De Palma seems to be the #1 film-maker in this regard then. In his early thriller "Sisters" De Palma creates a mixed bag of material so clearly gathered from at least three popular Hitchcock pictures. For people familiar with Hitchcock's work, "Sisters" would be a great movie to watch over drinks with friends and play a..."spot-the-Hitchcock-inspiration" game! Hell..he even roped in Hitchcock's semi-retired music composer Bernard Herrmann to write the score for this film. But De Palma is usually dependable and generally makes good (if not great) movies with just maybe three-four films which can actually qualify as "great"! So with "Sisters" he brings us a fairly decent, watchable 'who-dun-it mixed with psychological drama' picture which just barely saves itself from falling in the "average" category because of certain good things which will be clear in the rest of the review. So we have a French-Canadian small-time model and TV personality, Danielle (Margot Kidder) who brings home with her, a fellow game-show participant Phillip (Lisle Wilson). She is apparently divorced from her husband, Emil Brenton (William Finley). Danielle (as we come to know early on) has an identical twin, Dominique. Although Dominique and Danielle don't stay together, this particular evening Dominique visits Danielle. As it turns out, Phillip is brutally murdered in Danielle's apartment. A nosey press reporter, Grace (Jennifer Salt) stays in the neighbouring apartment building. She witnesses the killing of Phillip. Grace swings into action and calls the Police to help, but as her bad luck would have it, she is in the bad books of the cops because of her scathing attacks on the violent nature of action of the police force in her articles. The initially reluctant cops search Danielle's apartment but there are no signs of anything violent happening in the place; no blood stains, no signs of struggle, not even a dead body...and the place looks neat, clean and properly organized! Grace's claims are rubbished as hallucinations and the cops move on. Refusing to take things lying down and convinced that what she saw was reality, Grace takes matters into her own hands and is determined to solve the murder, of course, with the help of a private investigator, Joseph Larch (Charles Durning). The film itself lets us down on several counts. As mentioned earlier, De Palma borrows liberally from at least three Hitchcock films and that is one of the major negatives: He even rips off some key plot elements. The supposedly gruesome murder scene comes across as fake and dated because the red/pink paint clearly shows! The scene that was supposed to shock us audiences ruins itself due to shoddily handled make-up effects. There are also some gaping holes in the narrative which De Palma expects us to overlook. And when some character starts speaking out in the revelation (in the form of a conversation between characters), and clearly explains what the big mystery is, taking us viewers to be completely dumb individuals who can't make sense of the already obvious details shown in the visual narrative, it is seriously annoying! That said, there certainly ARE positives and stand-out points which render the film watchable: Firstly, De Palma keeps the length of the film at a crisp 90 mins length so there isn't much time to waste and we are drawn into the main story pretty soon after the film begins with a few character introductions. He does a good job of creating a smooth narrative that doesn't let up (provided you don't already figure out what is going on!). De Palma also makes use of some clever camera shots, more specifically his unusual way of incorporating POV (Point of View) shots using the split-screen technique. So in one half of the screen we have one character on the first floor of a building, while the other half shows events concurrently happening upstairs. Finally when the different locations converge, we still see it with split-screen imagery, but this time we see two different POVs: e.g. 'A' is shown facing the audience in 'screen A' and 'B' is shown looking at the audience in 'screen B', yet 'A' and 'B' are really face to face, talking to each other! This camera technique has been handled with dexterity, without causing too much of a bother to the viewer. There is also a particularly surreal, hallucinatory sequence, one of the most cleverly written scenes in the film, which is spectacularly shot in black-and-white. The final shot of the film in particular is also worth a mention. It'll bring a smile to your face in a twisted sense. It is certainly unique...if not entirely realistic. The acting is great, particularly by Margot Kidder who's at her finest. She looks cute and talks with a very sweet French accent to her English! She does really well in all of her scenes, especially the difficult ones. Jennifer Salt is also awesome as the nosy yet feisty reporter who will stop at nothing in her quest to get to the bottom of the mystery. William Finley is superb as the poker-faced, but extremely creepy ex-husband of Danielle. Charles Durning has a brief but memorable role as private detective Larch. The pluses ensure that the viewers aren't entirely disappointed with the overall product. Fans of Hitchcock's work may find it unappealing...others may find it relatively entertaining.

• Ken S

  
  Engaging, creepy and funny.. DePalma's first horror/suspense film shows a lot of hallmarks of the directors later work. Recommended for DePalma dissenters. Amazing split screen work.

• Randy T

  
  Sparsely budgeted psychological thriller made way back when Brian DePalma was still honing his craft. There are a few subdued flashes of brilliance near the end, but over all I just wasn't impressed.

• Conner R

  
  One of Brian De Palma’s first attempts at suspense horror, honestly it’s the closest to Hitchcock you can get. I think many people tend to say that De Palma rips off Hitchcock, but it’s completely untrue. Sure, you can draw similarities in their style, but he’s much more… More
  One of Brian De Palma’s first attempts at suspense horror, honestly it’s the closest to Hitchcock you can get. I think many people tend to say that De Palma rips off Hitchcock, but it’s completely untrue. Sure, you can draw similarities in their style, but he’s much more comical in nature. The plot is completely ridiculous in nature, but it is incredibly fun. The way he shoots his movies are really amazing, unique and inspirational. Jennifer Salt was a great bizarre leading lady and Margot Kidder was really flamboyantly brilliant.

• Tim S

  
  A nice early outting from De Palma. The ending was good, but the resolution wasn't that satisfying.

• Stella D

  
  creepy early de palma about siamese twins. nice comic touches. loved the ending

• Drew S

  
  Here Brian de Palma has put together a warped, exciting foray into body horror, giving us enough gore and disfigurement to be shocking but not enough to oversaturate us. Sisters is a simple mystery film that just happens to be peppered with gruesome imagery; the opening credits alone,… More
  Here Brian de Palma has put together a warped, exciting foray into body horror, giving us enough gore and disfigurement to be shocking but not enough to oversaturate us. Sisters is a simple mystery film that just happens to be peppered with gruesome imagery; the opening credits alone, a collection of fetus pictures magnified to emphasize their bizarre forms, succeed in luring you in almost immediately. It takes the movie about half an hour to really get going, but de Palma doesn't seem particularly concerned about the slowness of the plot. It follows a typical three-act structure with a protagonist switch at the end of the first act, similar to Psycho. Its construction of a likable lead who is subsequently removed from the film makes the film more emotionally involving. It hasn't aged perfectly and may seem a little bit transparent to the cynical viewer (most notable in the consistently incompetent police force) but movies and cinematic culture were different 35 years ago, for better or worse. Anyway, I love the Siamese twin conceit, the profoundly surreal "flashback" sequence in the last fifteen minutes of the film, the movie's occasional inclination toward visceral physical violence, and the sadistic tease of an ending. Even if it's a little obsolete narratively, Sisters was ahead of its time in many other regards. This feels like some crossbreed between Cronenberg and Lynch, years before either of them had even made a mainstream film: the fascination with body horror, use of bizarre aesthetics, and unusual female figures are all there. To address that latter point, Margot Kidder is a delight here (as an added bonus, she was completely crazy! Read her IMDB bio), and Jennifer Salt is an energetic and thoroughly watchable heroine. If you're a de Palma fan, this is absolutely mandatory viewing. Conceivably my new favorite of his films.

• Pierluigi P

  
  With the valuable support of Bernard Herrmann in a terrifying score and Paul Hirsch's superb editing, De Palma accurately exploits Hitchcockian themes for the first time, and even creates his most dazzling split-screen scene ever.

• Stephen M

  
  With respect to the subsequent direction his career took, "Sisters" is the most important movie Brian De Palma ever made. Though there are numerous references to Hitchcock here, the use of split-screen to create suspense is highly original and brilliantly done. Jennifer… More
  With respect to the subsequent direction his career took, "Sisters" is the most important movie Brian De Palma ever made. Though there are numerous references to Hitchcock here, the use of split-screen to create suspense is highly original and brilliantly done. Jennifer Salt's anti-establishment journalist is rather dated now but Margot Kidder and (early De Palma regular) William Finley contribute superb performances.

• Michael S

  
  Brian De Palma's Masterpiece.

• Quinto W

  
  I enjoyed this movie very much, but I still have a couple of problems with it. The first one is that Jennifer Salt's character is trying to prove that Margot Kidder killed a man and we, as an audience, already know she did (this is not a spoiler) and the only element left to… More
  I enjoyed this movie very much, but I still have a couple of problems with it. The first one is that Jennifer Salt's character is trying to prove that Margot Kidder killed a man and we, as an audience, already know she did (this is not a spoiler) and the only element left to create some suspense with is why she did it, but that aspect is very predictable from the moment the kill happens, so there's no mystery there. It's a good film, I just think I would have enjoyed it more back in 73'.

• John M

  
  Director Brian De Palma's first Hitchcockian thriller. "Sisters" is a stylish, mesmerizing, and potent mystery/thriller with touches of horror. It has some great acting, a derivative (¨Psychop¨ and ¨Rear Window¨) but good story, and an effective score to offer.

• Patrick D

  
  This film is just so incredible strange. And Margot Kidder is great in it. It's a film one would hope for from an early DePalma, and a film that really helps raise him up to brilliance.

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