Thursday, December 16, 2010

SISTERS (1973)


Brian De Palma made some of the smashing psychological thrillers in the early phase of his career much before he made those commercial crime thrillers with Hollywood biggies that churned him name and fame. ‘Sisters’ is one of his quite off beat psychological thrillers that remain underrated for many of De Palma fans. One can easily guess the De Palma’s Hitchcock influence as soon as the film begins. Hitchcock’s long collaborator composer Bernard Herrmann’s scored the background of De Palma’s this film with same jarring opening score as ‘Psycho’.

The plot is about Siamese twin sisters, a murder, an intruding stranger who claimed to be a husband and investigation by one of witness lady reporter. The diabolic split personality of one of the twin is quite usual De Palma trait heightened in another fine thriller ‘Carrie’. The tension of dead body, voyeuristic peeping shots from apartment windows is again Hitchcockian but then De Palma has brilliant sense of camera; watch his split screen technique when the screen is divided in two parts during murder and we witness simultaneous intriguing action in two different windows on screen for few minutes. Quite unusual to De Palma films it has bizarre climax left open ending. Is dead body still in the couch???

More than mystery it’s a well made psychological thriller. Interested fellows should also checkout De Palma’s other equally entertaining thrillers like ‘Blow Out’, ‘Body Double’, ‘Carrie’ to name a few I managed to watch.

Ratings-7.5/10

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