Sisters (1973)

During the finale of Brian De Palma’s “Sisters,” a bloody schizoid mind fuck love letter to Hitchcock, my jaw hung open. This riffs on Siamese sisters -- one alive, the other not quite, and both played by Margot Kidder –- and doesn’t just drive off the cliff. It launches off the road at rocket speed and explodes in a splatter of gore and brain pulp. We follow, as with any good Hitchcock film, a guy (Lisle Wilson) and a gal (Kidder) attracted to each other after a bizarre appearance on a TV game show that has unsuspecting men watching woman strip bare, with the latter in on the gag. The couple’s date goes bad fast: Her ex-husband (William Finley) prowls crazy and stalks the couple to her apartment, where things get icky and –- no spoiler –- bloody. De Palma then switches gears to a writer (Jennifer Salt) who sees the crazy deeds, before slamming back into drive, then reverse, then circles, burning out the engine for a finale that hit me far different than any plot synopsis I read. I loved every whacked red-soaked second. I still don’t know how to grasp it all, but obsess nonetheless. That’s addictive filmmaking. A