‘I saw a murder, and I’m going to prove it…’
While Brian De Palma has excelled across a number of genres, he is perhaps best known for his gritty, tormented horror films. Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out… these are daring, often terrifying entries into the horror genre but before all of them came Sisters – and it is possibly the most disturbing of all of them…
Sisters begins with an unlikely meet-cute between young, French-Canadian model Danielle (Margot Kidder) and advertising salesman Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson). Things take a dark turn when Danielle’s twin sister Dominque shows up (also played by Kidder) and promptly murders her sister’s lover in cold blood. Dominque flees the scene and Danielle’s ex-husband Emil (Willam Finley) arrives to help his former wife hide the body, Meanwhile, Danielle’s intrepid journalist neighbour Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) witnesses some of the murder and calls the police for help.
De Palma is the most committed of all the Hitchcock disciples and his first foray into the horror genre contains direct references to Psycho, Vertigo and others (he also employed frequent Hitch collaborator Bernard Hermann to write the score). Instead of just aping Hitchcock, however, De Palma builds on what the Master of Suspense had already created in his own work. By introducing director trademarks such as voyeurism, loss of identity and the use of split screen, De Palma announced himself as an auteur director with a singular vision. This film also provided the launchpad for Kidder to go on to star in Black Christmas and eventually become Lois Lane.
Sisters is a nasty, gnarly horror film that is still effective even decades later mainly due to De Palma’s unique ability to get under the skin of his audience. This is not his best horror film, but it is the one that started it all.
