Sisters movie storyline. The first of Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock homages conceals a more serious, and ultimately more truly horrific, layer beneath its jocular salute to the Master. From the opening of the film, De Palma invokes familiar Hitchcock themes from foundational works like Rear Window and Psycho (voyeurism, normality vs. the monstrous, etc.) in tongue-in-cheek ways, as a one-night stand between French-Canadian model Danielle (Margot Kidder) and a fellow contestant on a voyeurism-based game show called Peeping Toms ends in morning-after murder — an early-act killing that invokes Psycho’s shower murder, but is considerably more brutal and explicit.
Our identification then shifts to Grace (Jennifer Salt), an intrepid but occasionally overzealous reporter who witnesses the killing and tries to get to the bottom of the subsequent cover-up. Her quest leads her to a delirious, narcotically stimulated hallucination in a sinister medical clinic, where she relives a traumatic incident from Danielle’s past at the hands of a creepy surgeon (William Finley). Abandoning Hitchcock and radically shifting tone in its final movements, Sisters finds its horror not in the masterful manipulation of audience expectations, but in patriarchy’s pervasive control over women.
Sisters (released as Blood Sisters in the United Kingdom) is a 1972 American slasher film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, and Charles Durning. The plot focuses on a French Canadian model whose separated conjoined twin is suspected of a brutal murder witnessed by a newspaper reporter in Staten Island.
Co-written by De Palma and Louisa Rose, the screenplay for the film was inspired by the Soviet Conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova and features narrative and visual references to several films by Alfred Hitchcock. Filmed on location in Staten Island, New York City, the film prominently features split-screen compositions (also present in subsequent De Palma films such as Carrie), and was scored by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann.
Released in the spring of 1973, Sisters received praise from critics who noted its adept performances and prominent use of homage. It marked the first thriller for De Palma, who followed it with other shocking, graphic thrillers, and went on to become a cult film in the years after its release.
Sisters (1973)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, William Finley, Charles Durning, Lisle Wilson, Barnard Hughes, Mary Davenport, Dolph Sweet, Bobby C. Collins, Olympia Dukakis
Screenplay by: Brian De Palma, Louisa Rose
Production Design by: Gary Weist
Cinematography by: Gregory Sandor
Film Editing by: Paul Hirsch
Makeup Department: Jeanne Richmond
Casting By: Sylvia Fay
Music by: Bernard Herrmann
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: American International Pictures (AIP)
Release Date: March 26, 1973
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