Review of Sisters (1973) by Justin A — 29 Jun 2009

An interesting and mysterious film with imperfections sprinkled here and there and everywhere; some story issues, others directing issues, some acting issues, music issues - but I will mention that a little later. At times "Sisters" felt like a silly slasher film, but other times represented some great levels of Hitchcock terror. Not to mention the film was composed by Bernard Hermann himself, but this isn't the Bernard music you'll find yourself humming in your head on a cold dreary night. It's almost as if Brian DePalma requested that he snort a line of coke right before creating the music. It was intriguing, it was irritating, it was pulsating, it was typical horror music non-sense.

If I hadn't been apart of a generation that grew up on the revival of the slasher movie genre, everything in this film would have been fresh. That's not to say any horror film today could pull off true horror, because it can't. The idea of today's horror film standards is more sexual and gore-filled, rather than deeply psychological. The 'gore' that was in "Sisters" was more frightening than anything on screen in recent memory for the simple reason that there is a much more maddening and deranged reasoning for blood in this film. Today's slasher films primary objective is to get gross-out reactions from it's audience. And me saying blood was effective in this film is saying a lot because the blood was absolutely corny as hell.

With better actors, a bigger budget, better equipment, more time, Brian DePalma could have made something really great, really terrifying. Even with the chilling and nicely directed tense and creepy moments, I'm not sure if this was supposed to be truly scary.