Brian de Palma Started His Horror Career With This Hitchockian Thriller

The 1970s saw the emergence of many directors within the “New Hollywood” movement that changed the industry through their subversive and challenging filmmaking style. Chief among them was Brian De Palma, a filmmaker whose aptitude for violence and sexual extremism struck a bold contrast against mainstream American suspense cinema. While he proved that both crime and war films were within his wheelhouse, De Palma had a lasting impact on the horror and thriller genres thanks to films like Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise. De Palma’s influence was not immediately evident, as he spent the first few years of his career developing dark comedies that only somewhat resembled his eventual masterpieces. While his farcical films The Wedding Party and Hi, Mom! showed his aptitude for black humor, De Palma proved his merits as an auteur director with his 1972 mystery-thriller Sisters. Sisters is a shocking, depraved, and stylistically unique entry in De Palma’s canon that laid the groundwork for the rest of his career.

What Is ‘Sisters’ About?

Set within the world of New York City advertising, Sisters is a suspense thriller about a case of mistaken identity. Margot Kidder stars as Danielle Breton, a model and actress who takes part in a series of salacious pranks as part of a sexually explicit television reality show. While Danielle plans to spend the night with the advertising salesman Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson), he is graphically stabbed to death by a mysterious woman named “Dominique.” The local detectives Kelly (Dolph Sweet) and Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) are skeptical about Danielle’s profuse innocence, even though she claims to have been alone on the night of the crime. Grace pries further into the investigation and discovers that Dominique and Danielle were Canada’s first conjoined twins; however, reports indicate that Dominique died in childbirth, suggesting that Danielle was responsible for the death of Phillip.

De Palma creates suspense by constantly uprooting the characters’ assumed truths. Even though Grace comes to believe that Danielle is the real killer, she realizes that the model may not have complete autonomy over her decisions; Dominique may be a subdued, dark half of her personality that is only unleashed during stressful moments. The confusion over who is really to blame escalates when Danielle’s husband Emil Breton (William Finley) kidnaps Grace and forces her to undergo treatment at a mental facility. This was a creative narrative choice that inverts the audience’s perspective of who the protagonist is; while initially Grace is the one trying to hold Danielle accountable, they both become victims of a malicious conspiracy intended to subjugate women.

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De Palma perfectly intertwines eroticism with violence to heighten the level of suspense. The suggestion that Danielle could be violent means that any sexual encounters feature an undercurrent of anxiety, as “Dominique” could potentially take over. As graphic as the sexual scenes are, De Palma uses the film’s conspiracy storyline to critique toxic masculinity. Grace’s efforts to pry into Emil’s research are thwarted because the facility fears a woman in power. Danielle has her memories subverted so that she can’t expose the hospital’s malicious practices. De Palma allows his two most pivotal female characters to share qualities with both a “final girl” of a slasher movie and a “femme fatale” of a noir thriller.

Hitchcock’s Influence on De Palma Is Felt in ‘Sisters’

As game-changing as De Palma’s style was, Sisters is deeply indebted to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Vertigo and Rear Window composer Bernard Hermann contributed a piano-centric score that uses sharp notes to indicate moments of action; De Palma also incorporates many of Hitchcock’s trademark camera movements, including shots from the victims’ point-of-view and dolly tracking shots reminiscent of his classic film Rope. However, De Palma also proves that he is not merely stealing from Hitchcock’s style; Sisters introduced original directorial trademarks that De Palma is now known for, including split-screen images and voyeuristic footage of the characters’ lives before a striking moment of violence.

As loving as his homages are, De Palma subverts Hitchcock’s style by incorporating more graphic content. Hitchcock was limited by the constraints of the rating system, and often alluded to more disturbing content than he could actually show on screen. The Psycho shower scene is famous for deceiving viewers into thinking they saw more nudity and blood than Hitchcock actually included. De Palma did not work within the same parameters, as Sisters features extensive nudity and highly graphic murder scenes; the sequence of Danielle’s torture may be enough to disturb even the most hard-shelled horror movie buff. This served as De Palma’s way of showing the universality of Hitchcock’s skills, as they were applicable to films of a completely different context.

‘Sisters’ Laid the Groundwork for Brian De Palma’s Horror Films

While it has many allusions to the noir genre, Sisters established De Palma’s interest in horror cinema. The murder sequences are incorporated to disturb the audience, showing that De Palma could make his viewers scared of the characters that they had come to accept as the protagonists. This trademark became particularly influential in his adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Carrie; while Carrie (Sissy Spacek) initially inspires empathy from the viewer due to the bullying she experiences, that doesn’t make her bloody rampage in the film’s climax any less upsetting. Sisters suggested that there is a darkness within even the most seemingly docile characters; they just might respond violently if you threaten them — or pour pig blood on them.

De Palma developed stylistic tendencies in Sisters that added terror to even his non-horror movies. While films like The Untouchables and Carlito’s Way are broadly characterized as crime thrillers, they include shocking moments of intimate violence that resemble the body horror moments of Sisters. De Palma’s highest-grossing films to date have all managed to draw from the horror genre in order to constantly keep the audience on their toes. Despite his many achievements, Sisters is still the skeleton key to his merits as a filmmaker.

Sisters is streaming on Max in the U.S.

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