Sisters (1973 Film)



Sisters (released as Blood Sisters in the United Kingdom) is a 1972 American psychological 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

Plot
Advertising salesman Philip Woode is the victim of a prank on a Candid Camera-style television show and wins a dinner for two at a Manhattan restaurant. He takes with him Danielle Breton, a young French Canadian model and aspiring actress who was part of the prank. At dinner, they are interrupted by Danielle's ex-husband, Emil, who also follows them to Danielle's Staten Island apartment. Philip and Danielle make love on the sofa. There is huge scar on her side.

They spend the night on the fold-out bed. Danielle wakes in pain. In the bathroom, she empties a bottle of pills into her hand. There are four. She takes one and leaves two on the sink. Her sister calls from the bedroom in French (subtitled). They argue. We learn that after they were "separated," Dominique was put in a hospital "full of lunatics."

The argument wakes Philip, who dresses in the bathroom, where he unwittingly knocks the pills down the drain. Danielle explains to Philip that her twin sister Dominique has come to celebrate their birthday. She asks him to go to the drug store to refill her prescription. He does so, but stops to buys a birthday cake for the sisters, asking to have "Happy Birthday Dominique and Danielle" written on the cake. It takes a long time for the inexperienced baker to do this, and back in the apartment, Danielle, in agony, calls Emil for help. When Philip returns, Emil is watching. Philip brings the cake and a large knife to the woman lying on the sofa bed and is stabbed repeatedly by a crazed Dominique. He drags himself to a window and dies.

Grace Collier, a reporter living in an apartment across the way, sees Philip and calls the police. A split screen shows her waiting for the police and Emil helping Danielle to clean up and hide Philip's body in the sleeper sofa. Grace accompanies the police on a search through Danielle's apartment. Danielle insists that she has been alone; they find no evidence. Grace does find the cake, but trips and destroys it before Kelly can see. Later, she goes to the bakery, where Louise Wilanski (Olympia Dukakis) and Elaine D'Anna (Justine Johnson) remember Philip and the cake.

Certain that Danielle is hiding the murderer, Grace persuades her editor to let her investigate the story, on the basis that the police are ignoring her because Philip was African American. She hires Larch, a private investigator, who gets into the apartment. He is certain that the body is hidden inside the too-heavy couch. When it is hauled away, Larch pursues the truck. He also finds a thick file from the Loisel Institute on the Blanchion Twins, Canada's first conjoined twins, which leads Grace to Life magazine reporter Arthur McLennen. He tells her that the twins were separated only recently. Dominique died during the operation.

Grace tails Emil and Danielle to a mental hospital. When she is caught. Emil, convinces the staff that she is a new patient. He sedates and hypnotizes her, conditioning her to say "There was no body, because there was no murder." He promises to reveal everything, placing Danielle on the bed beside her. Grace has a bizarre dream about the twins' past and their separation where she herself is Dominique, while Emil reminds Danielle that the separation was necessary because Dominique stabbed the pregnant Danielle with garden shears.

He reminds Danielle that she now dissociates to a violent "Dominique" personality whenever she makes love. Emil kisses her passionately, bringing "Dominique" out so he can question her about the murder. She slashes him in the groin with a scalpel, and he bleeds to death, controlling her. Their bodies pin Grace to the bed. Grace awakens to find Danielle tenderly holding Emil's bloody body. She screams in horror. Detective Kelly arrests Danielle, who denies knowledge of the murders and says that her sister is dead.

When Kelly interviews Grace, she is still under Emil's hypnotic spell, repeating the lines he fed her. Meanwhile, Larch has followed the sofa to a remote train station in Canada. The film ends with a shot of him training his binoculars on it from his perch on a utility pole.