On May 13, 2018, tragedy struck when Margot Kidder, most famous for playing Lois Lane in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, passed away at the age of 69. While the cause of death at time of writing this is unknown, her health had been questioned ever since her 1996 incident, where she had a manic breakdown and was found in the backyard of a homeowner in Los Angeles with her teeth caps having been knocked out due to a rape attack. Since then, it’s been widely publicized how she’s suffered from bipolar disorder and how she had been working for years on recovering and ensuring she wouldn’t suffer from any more nervous breakdowns. As most people are paying tribute to her through the Superman movies, there are others who are looking to some of her genre work as tribute, such as Bob Clark’s 1974 slasher Black Christmas and the classic 1979 haunted house movie, The Amityville Horror. Another title that got brought up, which I’ll be talking about in this review is Brian De Palma’s 1973 thriller Sisters.
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Not to be confused with the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy of the same name, Sisters tells the story of siamese twins Danielle and Dominique (Kidder), one nice, innocent, and sweet, the other more evil and sinister. One day, Danielle brings a guy back to her apartment much to the dismay of her sister, and after he goes out to get her medicine and a birthday cake, the lover ends up getting stabbed viciously by Dominique. While bleeding to death, the murder is witnessed by a neighbor through her window named Grace Collier, played by Jennifer Salt. She calls the police to report on the murder, but while she’s arguing with the cops, Danielle and her ex-husband/psychiatrist Dr. Emil Breton work to clean up the murder scene and make it seem like nothing happened. While the cops dismiss this as a crazy woman making false accusations, Grace is determined to prove that a man was indeed murdered, and what she finds is way more than she bargained for.
Sadly, that’s all I can really say about the plot without giving away the many twists and turns the movie takes.
Throughout most of his career, De Palma was often criticized for, among other things, being a rip-off of Alfred Hitchcock. Personally, I would consider himself more a genuine fan of Hitchcock rather than a rip-off of him since he takes a lot of the tropes and conventions that Hitchcock used and does his own thing with it. While Sisters shares a lot of similar elements to films like Rear Window and Psycho, it still tells its own story. Granted, there had already been a similar evil twins movie made the year prior called The Other, which I have not seen at the time of writing this, so I don’t know if Sisters took anything from that movie. What I do know is that De Palma got the idea for this movie from an article written in the late 60’s on Russian conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, where he saw a picture of them where one had a very stoic and serene look on her face, while the other had a more sinister look to her. This is what led to the idea of twins who were conjoined but separated and had split personalities.
Margot Kidder stands out as both Danielle and Dominique. When she’s Danielle, she’s very unassuming, sweet, innocent, and even a little flirtatious. As Dominique, she’s deranged and seems almost animalistic in her rage. Jennifer Salt is also great as Grace Collier, who’s very feisty and determined to get to the bottom of this. What’s great about her character is that she’s a very strong and independent female character who doesn’t just seem like a man-hating ball-buster, but rather a woman who’s motivated by a desire to get things done and prove to others what she can do. There’s also some fun comedic relief in the form of her mother, played by Salt’s real-life mother Mary Davenport, who responds to Grace’s talk of following the case and solving the murder with lines like, “Are you on diet pills again?”
The one actor who truly steals the show is the late William Finley as the sinister Dr. Emil Breton, who, while being an obvious red herring, is still genuinely terrifying. He’s very cold and chilling, and you can see that he has his own personal agenda and will stop at nothing to make sure everything goes his way. Once you find out more about what’s going on, he becomes even more diabolical. Another actor of note in the film is character-actor Charles Durning, who plays a private investigator hired by Grace to help prove that a murder had taken place. While his screen-time is somewhat limited, he’s still a source of entertainment and makes for a fun counterpart to Salt’s Grace character.
While this wasn’t the first movie he had made, this was the first horror film that De Palma had directed, and this would lead to a long and illustrious horror career, with movies like Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out amongst others. Even with the low budget and some of the little mistakes that are noticeable throughout, the movie still works as an effective horror/thriller. It has some great performances, it’s got great suspense, the use of split screens and long, tracking shots are phenomenal and help give a sense of unease, and the score by the late-great Bernard Hermann is terrific. If you’re a fan of Hitchcock’s work and you’re looking for something a bit lesser known featuring Margot Kidder, this is definitely a great one to watch, especially if you want to see some of Brian De Palma’s early work.
