Sisters (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection)

Director Brian De Palma made a name for himself with this twisty shocker starring a pre-SUPERMAN Margot Kidder as the mysterious Danielle. A French-Canadian model, Danielle may be covering up a murder to protect her recently separated homicidal Siamese twin--or maybe not. Plucky female reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) witnessed the killing from her apartment window but can't convince some clueless cops to investigate, so she hires a private detective (Charles Durning) to help her solve the case. Eventually she winds up at a mysterious sanitarium in the clutches of Danielle's creepy psychiatrist husband, Emil (William Finley), and begins to unravel the shocking truth.

Scary, funny, clever, and firmly rooted in a Hitchcockian universe, SISTERS set the tone for many of De Palma's future works, including DRESSED TO KILL and RAISING CAIN. Bernard Herrmann's score even recalls his work on PSYCHO--only this time he's spruced things up with bizarre electronic effects. However, not all of De Palma's work pays debt to the master of suspense. An innovative use of split-screen techniques to heighten the suspense is distinctly his own, as is a memorably twisted black-and-white hallucination sequence.