Watch Die Sister, Die! For Free

That was an excellent one.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

A troubled old woman is saved from suicide by her brother and the family doctor. Her brother's concern is purely for show though and he hires a nurse with a shady past to 'look after' his sister, i.e. to ensure she definitely dies next time she tries to kill herself. But once the nurse begins work things change.This psychological thriller has the definite feel of a TV movie. I can find no definitive evidence that it is but I would not be surprised in the least to discover it is one. It seems to have been promoted as a horror movie. The title is quite in-your-face and the poster art is somewhat misleading. It shows a nubile scantily dressed young woman running away from an ominous house while being terrorised by several brutish hands that reach out to grab her from crumbling walls. It combines imagery of Gothic horror with Roman Polanski's Repulsion. It's a great poster! But, it's hardly accurate in terms of describing the actual content. First and foremost, this is not a horror film. It's pretty solidly a thriller. It's about family secrets and greed within a Gothic setting. It has occasional spooky moments such as nightmarish dream sequences and secrets in the basement.Despite some of the negativity directed at it, I found Die Sister, Die! to be perfectly enjoyable. It's well acted, including a turn from Kent Smith who starred in the classic Cat People (1942). It's just probably not going to appeal to people who get their expectations up by checking out that cool poster in advance of watching it.

Really a nice little surprise we have here, despite the little attention it was given and the mediocre to bad reviews I've read pretty much everywhere. Edith Atwater stars as Amanda Price, a troubled, depressed old spinster who's just attempted her second unsuccessful suicide ("I'm alive... Oh damn!"), but was saved in the nick of time by the family doctor (Kent Smith). It turns out that Amanda has an even worse enemy than herself to deal with as her outwardly caring sibling Edward (Jack Ging) is conspiring against her. While at a bar, Ed meets Esther (Antoinette Bower), a desperate, discredited nurse now working as a waitress because she was cheated out of a load of money after her 90-year-old sugar daddy died. Edward offers her 25,000 dollars to 'keep Amanda company' (i.e. speed along her death so he can get the inheritance) in a large mansion home full of locked cupboards and doors. Once Esther is hired on as the nurse, she starts to appreciate and enjoy the company of the eccentric Amanda, and refuses to continue conspiring against her. But by the time she has a change of heart, she discovers there's more than one skeleton hidden inside this families closet... and one is behind a cracked wall in the basement! The screenplay (by Tony Sawyer, from a William Hersey story) has its share of twists and turns and most of the acting (especially the amusingly self-deprecating Atwater) is good. There's also an effectively nasty flashback and a great nightmare sequence involving birds, incest, severed limbs and a decapitation. If you don't mind slower paced thrillers, you can do much worse than this one.

Other than a mundane performance by Antoinette Bower, this made for TV suspense melodrama has a lot going for it. It's definitely a made for TV movie of the week which was so popular in the 70s, and from which many good films come. This is obvious in the way everything is shot, meaning a lot of close ups for the smaller screen and framing for the old style TV ratio - no widescreen or pan and scan here. The other giveaway is the moody music, just right and not intrusive, and done in 70s TV style. I know, I've seen many dozens of these 70s TV flicks and they have a definite pattern. Of course, most of these got foreign theatrical release, so there's a few well-placed curse words. The whole setup is such that there's not much to make for surprises but there's a nice twist at the end. I just wish that Ms Bower had used a few more expressions than her constant forlorn look. She really is able to do that as she's shown on her hundreds of TV show appearances.

It is amazing that the people behind this film haven't gone on to make many more films, they did well.It has a good story, interesting characters, and they did a pretty convincing job of pulling it off.It is refreshing to see characters in a film who are intelligent enough to figure out what is going on as it happens, and confronting each other with their knowledge. It seems they all have their secrets but not for long... and yet there are still some surprises at the end. I'm not talking the obvious.Wonderfully gothic with good performances. Maybe todays horror films could learn some small lessons from this. Horror films can still work without a sexy young cast of TV stars.