Sisters (1973)
AKA Blood Sisters
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, William Finley, Lisle Wilson, Barnard Hughes, Mary Davenport, Dolph Sweet
Directed by Brian De Palma
Expectations: Moderate, but I’m very hopeful.
Well, if there was ever any doubt that Brian De Palma loves Hitchcock, you’d only have to watch Sisters to realize that he not only loves him, he wants to be him… or at least make movies like him. Unlike many people, I have hardly seen any of De Palma’s films, mostly because the ones I have seen didn’t do a lot for me. But as I see this year’s free-form Horrific October as an opportunity to scratch off a lot of movies that have been on my Watch List for years (among other things), the idea of watching one of De Palma’s most celebrated films sounded like a blow out of an idea. Har-dee-har, and no, I haven’t seen that one either.
Sisters is the kind of movie that even starting to discuss the plot will spoil too much. Let’s just say that a man and a woman meet, they go to her apartment, and things happen from there. Sisters isn’t specifically a horror film, it’s really more of a thriller, but it would be wrong to completely discount it from the genre. The Hitchcock influence is abundant and overflowing, but it’s all by way of a much trashier, exploitation-esque vibe. Sisters is definitely not an exploitation film, but Hitchcock would have never dealt with such lurid subject matter as the central story of Sisters does. Nor would he have shown violence this visceral and intense. The blood may not flow freely throughout Sisters, but when it does it makes you jump back and wince in pain.