SISTERS

US, 1972, 92 minutes, Colour.
Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning.
Directed by Brian De Palma.

Former student and experimental film?maker, Brian De Palma, said in a 1969 interview that he would like to make a Hitchcock-Psycho? homage thriller. Here it is, with the trick of double identity, now familiar to us, but still puzzling. De Palma reminds us of Rear Window reporters, Psycho mansions and Spellbound doctors, out-psychoing Hitchcock in the sudden goriness of the murder. Margot Kidder is convincingly bizarre as the mad twin and Jennifer Salt is exasperatingly pushy as the investigating reporter, sparring with the police. Perhaps a take-it-or-leave-it derivative tribute, but a reasonable thriller highlighting the styles of the horror genre in our time. Obsession and Carrie followed.

1. Was this good entertainment? Good horror, shocking, mystery entertainment? Why? Why was it so popular on its first release?

2. Why do audiences respond to horror? Is this too morbid or is it a legitimate response? Did this film balance the morbid and the horror?

3. Comment on the irony of the title: the relation between Daniel and Dominique, the fact that there was no Dominique, the ending when Grace became Danielle's sister? Comment on the use of Hitchcock techniques and background, the homage to Hitchcock, the Psycho mystery? Did it matter if audiences were aware of the trick or not? what difference in response did this make?

4. Should the film have used the Siamese twin background for such a horror thriller? How important was the background information? The credit titles, the 'Life' magazine documentary about Siamese twins? The use of this documentary for the horror dream sequence?

5. How well was the technical information and background used for horror, Danielle's hip,its use in the dream sequences?

6. How well did the film use backgrounds of other genres? The comedy of the film, the TV parody with which it began, the romantic film, the knife murder films, the detection by Grace and the police, the horror fantasy in the house and the asylum? Were these well?blended together?

7. What was our emotional response to the black man and his going home with Danielle? His night with her, the buying of the cake, the sudden death? How did this alter our response to Danielle?

8. What was the initial response to Danielle on the television programme, at home, her not having her pills, her relationship to Dominique? The audience response to Dominique at the murder? Did audience response change during the cleaning-up of the room with the doctor? How important was the revelation of the truth that Dominique was dead? That Danielle loved the doctor, that she needed to be exorcised from the spell of Dominique? Her murder of the doctor?

9. Audience response to Grace? Her looking out the window, her calling the police, her reputation as a journalist and police disbelief, the comedy sequences with her mother? Her persistence, curiosity? That she was so common?sensed compared with Danielle? The frustration in the asylum? Her being used by the doctor? The quality of the dream sequences and her hypnotism, that she became identified with Dominique and Danielle? The horror of the nightmare? The irony of her normality and the effect of the hypnotism with the doctor dead? How interesting a heroine was she?

10. How well did the film communicate the sinister nature of the doctor, his relationship with Danielle, protection, cleaning the room, removing the body, running the asylum, the truth about his relationship with Danielle, the irony of his death?

11. How important was the picturing of the police in this film?

12. Comment on the way that the dream sequence was put together cinematically, and its effect.

13. Was this exploitive of horror? Or does it show the value of horror films? (The irony of the ending, with the man still watching the trunk with the body?)