Sisters (1973)
I don't know the boundary between humor and stupidity, but this teeters more toward stupidity. There's no way you can take it seriously, so it's not like an actual horror film where twin sisters do the usual good sister bad sister thing. It's some kind of distanced parody of it, but the acting is stiff, and the plot stiff, and the whole thing filmed with a professional capability that goes nowhere special, but makes you take it seriously.
I have to admit, de Palma has never worked for me--he's either so sexist, or abusive, or violent, or indulgent it just gets irritating. Yes, Knife in the Water has its chilling moments, and here there is some intelligence, for sure, like when the split screen effect reaches a point where the two viewpoints merge at the doorway (really nice). But it's a cheesy 1970s flick that pushes buttons and is, if you are insensitive, a fun ride.
The inevitable comparison to Hitchcock makes the differences more salient than similarities--though Bernard Hermann does the score here (as in Psycho and other Hitchcock gems), and so the movie sounds like Hitch. But the themes and how they develop are divergent. For one thing, Hitchcock never seems to enjoy cruelty--he turns to humor, or to the artificial, to avoid actual conscious meanness. De Palma, here and elsewhere, uses nastiness for his own end, like Serrano uses shock, to get attention. One way to show this is to notice that there isn't a classic Hitchcock device--the innocent accused of the crime. We are mostly just drawn to the crime, and the criminal. The one outsider, the investigating columnist, is a device for the filmmaker to explore his theme--the conjoined twin idea in particular.
Is this a dud or a failure. Not at all. There's a raw, 1970s frankness to it all, and a kind of fast, uncomplicated development of plot, that is gripping, if you let it be. But be prepared. If you aren't predisposed to enjoy an over the top, highly deliberate film that leaves you outside the drama, you might find it slightly ridiculous. With enough sense of humor, you might find it hilarious, or, like Blue Velvet, campy and "fun." But it's not my kind of joy ride.
