Sisters (1972)
Brian De Palma's career is one of the more fascinating long games in American cinema. He spent the late 1960s making low-budget, countercultural oddities before pivoting, almost instinctively, towards the kind of suspense-driven genre work that would come to define him. Sisters, released in 1972, sits right at that turning point: a lean, low-budget psychological thriller produced by Pressman-Williams and distributed by American International Pictures, the studio that had spent the previous decade cheerfully feeding drive-in audiences everything from Roger Corman shockers to blaxploitation pictures. AIP were not in the business of prestige, but they were very much in the business of getting films made, and for a young director looking to sharpen his instincts on a tight leash, that arrangement suited De Palma well. This was his first proper genre feature, and looking back, it reads almost like a statement of intent from someone who had identified exactly what kind of filmmaker he wanted to be. Those who've followed his subsequent work (including his later collaborations with Al Pacino across Scarface and Carlito's Way) will find the seeds of a very particular sensibility planted here.
The film's premise draws on real-life cases involving conjoined twins and puts them through the blender of a particularly queasy voyeuristic thriller. De Palma co-wrote the screenplay with Louisa Rose, and it carries the rough, improvisational energy you might expect from an independent production working on a shoestring. Bernard Herrmann, who had spent a considerable portion of his career scoring Hitchcock films (including Psycho and Vertigo), provides the music here, which is a rather pointed piece of casting in its own right. His score gives the film a weight and atmosphere that its budget might not otherwise have afforded. De Palma was clearly not shy about wearing his influences on his sleeve, and the Hitchcock connection is one the film neither hides nor apologises for. For another horror film from roughly the same period that uses low-budget production to its atmospheric advantage, it's worth a look at our review of Shivers.
The principal cast is anchored by Margot Kidder, a few years before she became a household name as Lois Lane, playing Danielle Breton, a French-Canadian fashion model with a troubling history. Kidder had an edgy, unpredictable quality that made her difficult to pin down as an actor, and that restless energy serves the role well. Jennifer Salt plays Grace Collier, the journalist whose instincts land her in far more trouble than a straightforward police report ever would, and she brings a grounded, sceptical intelligence to the part that keeps the film credible even when the plot is pushing against plausibility. Charles Durning, always reliable in precisely this kind of morally ambiguous institutional role, turns up as the detective whose lack of interest in Grace's account drives much of the film's tension. William Finley, a regular De Palma collaborator from his early years, rounds out the key players in a role that is best described without further elaboration here. It is a cast that suits the material: a bit rougher around the edges than Hollywood polish, which, for this particular kind of thriller, is exactly right. For another De Palma feature where the cast does much of the heavy atmospheric lifting, our review of Carrie is worth your time.
Brian De Palma has directed some of my absolute favourite films over the years. Absolute classics like Scarface, Carlito's Way, The Untouchables, and the legendary horror masterpiece Carrie. So, when I finally sat down to watch his 1972 breakout feature, Sisters, I was genuinely curious, having heard surprisingly little about it beforehand.
The premise is a brilliant hook: an inquisitive journalist, Grace Collier, is horrified when she witnesses her neighbour, fashion model Danielle Breton, violently murder a man. But when the police arrive and find absolutely nothing amiss, she’s forced to take matters into her own hands, eventually teaming up with private investigator Joseph Larch to uncover a deeply unsettling secret about Danielle’s past.
It’s impossible to watch Sisters without immediately spotting the DNA of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but De Palma injects the voyeuristic thrills with a distinct, bloody sprinkle of Italian Giallo. What really caught me off guard, though, was the film's surprisingly sharp relationship with law enforcement. It acts as a rather biting social commentary on police partiality and institutional incompetence at the time, adding a layer of gritty, cynical realism to the otherwise stylised suspense. The story unfolds incredibly well, keeping you properly hooked from the opening scenes, even if the low-budget indie roots mean the production is undeniably a little rough around the edges in places.
When it comes to the cast, Margot Kidder does a genuinely good job in the lead dual role, completely anchoring the film with a captivating, unhinged performance that keeps you guessing. The horror elements and the gore are surprisingly impressive for the time, delivering some genuinely tense, innovative split-screen sequences that showcase De Palma’s flair for visual storytelling right from the very beginning of his career. Overall, it’s a cracking, highly enjoyable horror film that proves the master of the American thriller had his sights set on the macabre long before he made his biggest splashes.
Sisters is a brilliant, bloody good time that deserves its place in the horror hall of fame.
Sisters occupies an interesting corner of the early 1970s American genre landscape, a period when horror and thriller filmmaking was genuinely exploratory, willing to borrow from European traditions, pick fights with social institutions, and operate outside the safety net of studio formula. Taken on its own terms, it is a polished but rough-edged calling card from a director who clearly had a precise and idiosyncratic vision from very early on. Whether it stands alongside De Palma's later and better-known work is a question this review addresses directly, but as an artefact of a particular moment in American independent cinema, and as a window into a filmmaker finding his feet in the genre he would go on to make his own, it is well worth ninety-three minutes of anyone's evening. Some directors announce themselves quietly; De Palma, it turns out, announced himself with a knife.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1972 | Watched: 2026-06-30
Trailer
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