Review of Sisters (1973) by Allan C — 29 May 2016

Fun and very self relative thriller about conjoined twins who've been surgically separated, one good, one evil, This thriller set director Brian De Palma on a trajectory he's continue with for a the majority of his career.

Margot Kidder plays Danielle, the good half of the twins, who lives her life as an actress and model. Her murderous sister Dominique then comes to visit for their birthday and Danielle has to cover for her sister's misdeeds with the help of her ex-husband, Emil.

Thins are made complicated when the murder was witnessed by a reporter int eh next building over, who whine begins investigating Danielle and Dominique. Like a lot of films written and directed by Brian De Palma, "Sisters" is a love letter to the films of Alfred Hitchcock and actually manage to surpass the later films actually directed by Hitchcock.

And the contribution by composer Bernard Herrmann to this films cannot be played up enough. Herrmann was a major factor in the overall success of many of Hitchcock's best films, such as "Vertigo," "North by Northwest," and "Psych" to name a few (though to Hitch's defense, he made some genuine classics without Herrmann as well), Herrmann had fallen out of favor in Hollywood in the 1970s, but a new generation of filmmakers were embracing him again, including the likes of De Palma to Larry Cohen to Martin Scorsese.

Herrmann gives the the a pitch perfect score to compliment De Palma's over-the-top thriller. Kidder also deserves recognition for fine performance and I don't think I ever really have her enough credit as an actress, mostly thinking of her simply as Lois Lane in the Superman pictures.

De Palma's films are almost always very self relative and aware of the films he's paying tribute to or stealing from, and this one is no exception. He pulls from "Rear Window," "Psycho" and any number of other thrillers of the past.

My main complaints about the film are that the dialogue is rather stilted and the ending is rather predictable, but maybe that twist hadn't been used as much back in 1973. Despite the film's weaknesses, there is enough here to make this a lesser classic in the Brian De Palma cannon of films and well worth watching.