Sisters

Plot synopsis:
Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) is a model and would-be-actress hired to pretend that she is a blind woman so that an inssurance seller Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson) would have to decide if he is going to look her undressing or not as part of The Peeping Toms, a hidden camera programme. He doesn't look to her at the changing rooms of his gym, so both win a price in the programme. Philip wins a dinner-for-two at the African Room restaurant, and Danielle wins a cutlery set. After the programme, Danielle and Philip seem to hit it on, so Philip invites her to the dinner.At the restaurant, they are interrupted by Danielle's ex-husband Emil Breton (William "Bill" Finlay), but Philip makes him be overthrown from the restaurant. Later, Danielle and Philip go to the former's apartment in Staten Island. The ex-husband follows them, so that Philip has to leave the apartment, make believe that he's leaving for good and then coming back through the back door. When he comes back, Philip opens the door with Danielle's keys, and at the same time he gives the cutlery gift - which Danielle had left in his car - to her. Philip and Danielle make love in the couch of the living room.The next morning Danielle wakes up and he isn't feeling that well. He goes to the medicine box in the bathroom and checks that there are only three red pills left. She takes one immediately and leaves the other two in a corner of the washbasin. However, when Philip also wakes up and dresses himself he throws the other two pills down the sink. Philip overhears Danielle and her sister Dominique fighting and arguing about him. Danielle says she isn't feeling that well, and would please Philip go for more red pills to the chemist's? Philip complies and loses more time because he wants to buy a present for Danielle and her twin sister Dominique, who is supposedly visiting Danielle - although during the game show she said that she was dead.Philip returns to the apartment and unlocks the door with Danielle's key again. She takes the big knife from the cutlery set and offers it to Danielle to cut up the birthday cake. However, she uses the knife to viciously kill him. Philip crawls trying to call her neighbour's attention - her wind is a bit higher but close enough for both tenants to see each other. Philip even tries to write HELP with her own blood in the window.The neighbour is Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) a journalist who usually writes about the state of things in Staten Island, sometimes to criticize the police officers and their use of violence. So Detective Kelly (Dolph Sweet) is not very kind towards Grace's agitation. Meanwhile, Danielle wakes up confused and dazzled. She has tried to talk to her doctor, who promises to bring her more of the red pills.Emil comes up to the apartment. Danielle opens the door up, still feeling sleepy. When Emil points to the corpse behind, Danielle says that Dominique was there. Emil, who is at the same time Danielle's doctor and the provider of pills, cleans the apartment up while Danielle dresses up.They put the corpse inside the bed-sofa. Emil laves and takes the bloodied knife away. When Detective Kelly and Grace appear, there is not a stain in sight. Danielle is kind, and the only remains of the corpse is a red stain on the back of the fouton where Grace is sitting down. Danielle justifies the double sets of matching clothes due to her job as model, because if one of them gets stained, they would have a completely equal outfit available. Grace finds the cake in the fridge. Also, Danielle had said that she lives on her own, and that's the opportunity for Grace to prove that she is lying. However, Grace falls down and smashes the cake against detective Kelly's leg. Emil appears, saying that they are separating but that they are not still divorced.Detective Kelly tells Grace not to disturb him or Danielle again with that matter. The only clue Grace has got at this moment is that she has read the name of the bakery where Philip bought that cake. She had a date with her mother, annoying Mrs Collier (Mary Davenport), who mentions a new open-door psychiatrict hospital which has been opend in Staten Island. But Grace is not listening to her. When they arrive to the bakery, she jumps to ask the shop assistants (Olympia Dukakis and Justine Johnston), but the only thing that she learns is that there was a black man who had bought that particular cake dedicated to Danielle and Dominique on their birthdays.Grace hires a private detective called Joseph Larch (Charles Durning), who says that the only possibility of hiding a body is within the sofa. Grace tells him that he has found the Blanchion Siamese twins, but the detective says that he didn't see any twins, he has only found a place in which a human body could be hidden without the police finding it.Grace talks to a doctor, Arthur McLennen (Barnard Hughes) who studied the case of the Blanchion Siamese twins, the first set of twins of Canadian origin. Dr Pierre Milius - Emil's younger persona - appears on a news report talking about the delicate psychological mental equilibrium of one of them. As teenagers, Danielle is shy, but Dominique is more talkative and shows off more. McLennen says that, because of the official silence, he had bribed one of the nurses who helped during the surgery, and that nurse told him that there complications had arisen during the process, resulting in Dominique's death.Larch keeps on watching the strange movements in Danielle's apartment. Grace follows Danielle to the hospital sight. There, she overhears a discussion of Emil and Danielle having a row, because she's fed-up of being controlled. She sees how she puts an injection to her, forcibly. Grace tries to use the phone, but one of the interns doesn't let her. Arlene (Cathy Berry), the crazy patient, says that viri and bacteria go through the telephone line, and that she got sick because of answering the phone. A hospital attendant (Burt Richards) asks his boss to see to the problem. Emil tells Jansen, the hospital attendant, that she's the new patient, Margaret, and that she should be put in a room. Grace tries to explain, but it's useless, she's not believed. Emil hypnotises her so that she will believe that everything was a strange dream of hers.Grace appears now on the dreams /reminiscences about Danielle's life while attached to Dominique. Danielle suffered because when she started to be in love with her doctor, she realised that her twin sister will not accept the risk of surgery, and that she will not accept her being in love with somebody else either.Grace wakes up and screams. Danielle also wakes up, dazed. She wants Dominique back, but she is also afraid of her attacking Emil. Emil says that, every time he tried to make love to Danielle, Danielle became Dominique, furious and enraged. Danielle tries to run away from Danielle, He shows her the knife, still bloodstained. Danielle - possibly thinking she's Dominique - picks up a scalpel and cuts Emil's skin. Emil tries to kill Danielle but he bleeds to death instead. All t his happens in the presence of a dizzy Grace who wakes up in time to see Danielle hugging to a dead Emil, still bleeding. Grace screams.Emil is taken away in an ambulance, dead. Danielle denies that she has killed anyone in her life, and she also states that her sister died last Spring. Grace Collier is taken away, dazed and confused.Some time afterwards, Kelly tries to talk to recovering Grace. Danielle has confessed to killing Emil, but he admits that they have problems to detect who the black man could be. However, Grace repeats what Emil has taught her through hypnotism: that she couldn't have possibly seen such a corpse because there was no murder to begin with, and her mother supports him.The shrouded sofa appears in a semi-abandoned semi-dereclict countryside train stating, with a cow chewing peacefully nearby. Detective Kelly watches the sofa, thinking that some day the culprit will arrive to get rid of the sofa and the body for good.

Tags: avant garde, murder, paranormal, cult, good versus evil, insanity, satire, claustrophobic

Review:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By combining his then experimental split screen technique with a brilliantly unsettling score by composer icon Bernard Herrmann, a "Rear Window" esquire story, and an eerie crackerjack sort of ending  DePalma successfully creates a truly thrilling viewing experience.
In terms of horror movie scores, it's right up there with "Psycho" and "Halloween".A good, gory, satisfying film...one of De Palma's best.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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!
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.
Music is by Bernard Herrmann and cinematography by Gregory Sandor.When newspaper reporter Grace Collier (Salt) observes what she perceives to be a murder in the apartment across the street from her own, it proves to be the catalyst for a trip down a dark psychologically damaged street.To be honest here, the continuous complaints about De Palma being a Hitchcock clone got boring around about the mid eighties.
It's not as if he's the only one who owes his career to director's from the past really is it?Sisters is a wonderfully trippy suspenser, where De Palma lifts from some great Hitchcock motifs to portray a clinically edgy story based around an article he read about Siamese twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova.
While twists and revelations engage the brain instead of insulting it, something many of today's horror/thriller directors could learn to "homage" from actually, and a nightmare section of film literally unfurled out of the minds eye is top draw.Herrmann was enticed out of near retirement to score the music, the genre and themes at work in the story ready made for his skilled compositions.
But DePalma, as in his other thrillers, takes everything one step further and makes the genre his own."Sisters" plays on the sexual voyeurism that Hitchcock only hinted at in his best films.
Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt, very good here), a reporter who has bad blood with the police, witnesses a murder while looking out her window.
Charles Durning and Barnard Hughes make the most of their brief roles and create memorable characters."Sisters" may look cheap at times, but compared to such overpriced and predictable thrillers like "Scream 2" and "Phantoms", it's a superior film.
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.
Margot Kidder plays a pair of Siamese twins -one of whom is very handy with a butcher's knife- who become involved with murder, an insane asylum, a cop bashing witness (Jennifer Salt -Jon Voight's luckless girlfriend in Midnight Cowboy & Eunice from Soap), and a scary looking husband (William Finley).
The mixture of comedy and horror works, and the split screen in a movie about a split personality is clever and effective, and both Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt who were in DePalma's first feature Murder A La Mod(1968) have never been better.
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?
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).
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.
The Staten Island apartment of lovely model Danielle (Margot Kidder) becomes the scene of a grisly murder that is witnessed by her neighbor, Grace (Jennifer Salt), a reporter.
But the police do not believe her story, so it is up to Grace to solve the murder mystery on her own.Largely influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and composed by Hitchcock's composer Bernard Herrmann, this film has a good degree of Hitch's "Rear Window" with just a dash of giallo mixed in.De Palma trademarks show up -- plenty of split screen, and a plot revolving around voyeurism.
Although he had made a few films before,Sisters is perhaps the first film in the true De Palma style,you know,the obsession with voyeurism,the show-offy camera-work,the Hitchcock homages,the preferance for long,wordless dreamlike sequences interrupted by bloody violence,etc.
Things like split screen keep the interest despite a few dull bits,and towards the end De Palma is confident enough to resolve most of the film with some almost surreal dream/flashback sequences and an amusing pay off.Accompanied by a sometimes TERRIFYING Bernard Herrmann score {nowhere near his best,but incredibly effective},and with plenty of humorous touches and an interesting feminist heroine,Sisters is nowhere near top De Palma,but it's a good dry run for classics like Dressed To Kill and Blow Out..
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.
For every guy who ever salivated at the thought of "doing" two sisters at the same time, Brian De Palma has a message for you: be careful what you wish for.SISTERS, actually the director's third indie film, was an obvious Hitchcock homage meant to get his foot in the door in Hollyweird, and catch the eye of both critics and a certain discriminating segment of the audience who had an appetite for both horror and suspense.
Mission VERY well accomplished, Mr. D.!With severed tongue firmly in impaled cheek, SISTERS brings us the heart-warming story of game show model Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder in early foxy mode), who hits it off with one of the show's contestants, Phillip (Lisle Wilson.) Dating leads to other things, of course, and soon he's back at her place.
One word to the wise, fellas: if you want your psycho girlfriend to cut her cake, give her a SPORK to do it with!Naturally, it's not Danielle who gets the surprise, but Phillip when she decides there's something she likes to carve into pieces better than the cake...HIM!Meanwhile, in an apartment in the building across the way, reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) sees the horrific murder and witnesses the dying man trying to scrawl "HELP" on the window in his own blood.What follows is the famous sequence that established De Palma as master of the split-screen technique, as an agitated Grace calls the police and tries to convince them about what she saw, while Danielle, completely out of it, is helped by a mysterious man to clean up the scene and hide the body.
Unfortunately, Grace finds herself in the same position as a certain feline who once had a taste for being 'curious.'Artsy and Hitchcockian in a 'nudge-wink' kind of way, this is the kind of movie that both cinema students and film buffs love, from the zithery-creepy, theramin-spiked Bernard Hermann score, to the "select" casting of character greats like Charles Durning, Barnard Hughes, William Finley (a De Palma favorite) and Dolph Sweet.
The ending in a dark sanitarium is sufficiently atmospheric, and Margot Kidder does a good job as the tormented surviving twin, playing a model who tries to live a normal life, at one point bringing a man she met at a bar home, with the other sister awakening the next morning.
While those two play-act Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960), young investigative reporter Jennifer Salt (as Grace Collier) observes from another apartment a la the legendary director's "Rear Window" (1954).
Because this was a very early De Palma film he was still working on quite a low budget, so Sisters is definitely a movie that is consequently a little rough around the edges.
From here the principal characters meet and the thriller narrative begins, which boils down to a woman believing she has witnessed a murder in the flat opposite hers, her investigations lead her to learn about a strange case of two disturbed Siamese twin sisters.The story and dialogue is often a bit clunky if truth be told.
7.0 is quite a measly score on IMDb, for such a good Brian de Palma film and as for a debut, well, it's intelligent, suspenseful and different, though its nods to the Master, Hitchcock are both critically recognised and acclaimed.Also known as 'Blood Sisters', the movie also encroaches (to my mind) on David Cronenberg's territory, especially during the superbly executed and creepy fantasy sequence.
There's the right amount of suspense and whilst it doesn't reach the heights of the classic Carrie, nor the sheer directorial aplomb of his The Untouchables, 'Sisters' is a pretty fine film and at the now bargain price the DVD is, there are no excuses for De Palma fans, or even Hitch's, indeed anyone who enjoys a decent and clever horror-thriller to not indulge.This was my second viewing; the first having been on TV a long time ago..
Dear readers of this comment,there are films like Body Double,Scarface,Black Dalia,and some others,these are great movies,but this comment will take place where a movie Sisters(1973)will be loved,and hated by millions of movie and Brian De Palma fans.As I sad there are good movies from our director.Let me this time warning you,If your depression is not enough to feel you still living,yes just see this movie,but I rather recommend something else.This is not a real bad film,just does not contains entertaining value.It's slow,and content quality is not good,or new,If you wants to be entertained just watch Arlington Road,that will be depressing,but entertaining in one time.3/10.
Hitchcock-buff Brian De Palma gets an intriguing, just-this-side-of-campy scenario going in "Sisters": twin siblings are involved in a murder, and quickly attempt to cover it up from a nosy female sleuth who witnessed a bloody "something" from her window.
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.
Rating: ***1/2 out of 4.SISTERS isn't Brian De Palma's first film, but it might as well be called that because this is the first film where we got acquainted with his real tastes and his all-time admiration to the works of Alfred Hitchcock.
As I have said, the initial stages of the film (clearly modeled after PSYCHO [1960]) are its best parts but, in a way, I think that the Hitchcockian touches are laid on too thick: the police's antagonism toward Salt's liberal reporter heroine (who thinks she witnessed the deed) all too conveniently gives murderer and accomplice all the time they need to dispose of the body and clean up the mess; William Finley's evil 'mastermind' doesn't ring true in modern-day Manhattan, and the way he goes about exculpating himself - and Kidder - in the eyes (or, rather, mind) of the ever-intrusive Salt is way too melodramatic, i.e. old-fashioned; though it still makes for an undeniably effective plot twist or, if you like, the ultimate 'shock' tactic adopted by the director!
SISTERS is the first Brian de Palma film that sees the director working in his preferred genre (thriller) and with all the elements that he's revisited time and again during his career, from the Hitchcock homages and stylistic flourishes to the joyous score (Herrmann, of course).
This film is kind of a combination of REAR WINDOW and PSYCHO, with journalist heroine Grace (played with everyday charm by Jennifer Salt) investigating a dodgy neighbour, played by the excellently creepy Margot Kidder, a long way from her most popular role as Lois Lane.Sure, the film is predictable, and rough around the edges, with the extra-low budget excluding the kind of dazzling cinematography that de Palma would later bring to the likes of CARLITO'S WAY, but nevertheless it proves to be more than entertaining thanks to the anything-goes nature of the script and of course the stylish direction.
I'm really not sure why the director made is so obviously clear to what's going on and who the murderer is and he even goes as far as to play music from the Hitchcock film that gives away the ending to this movie.
Brian De Palma's early work shows a great deal of homage to Alfred Hitchcock and perhaps nowhere can that be seen better than in Sisters.