Die Sister, Die! (1978)

Absolutely Fantastic

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

CAUTION: Plot spoilers present.Rich siblings Edward & Amanda are feuding over their late father's estate. Amanda is also suicidal since she is grief-stricken over her involvement in the death of her father & the disappearance of her sister. Edward hires Esther, a former nurse who has some dark secrets of her own, in order to watch over Amanda – and to ensure that if Amanda, who has a history of suicide attempts, tries to kill herself again, that she must succeed. As Edward secretly tries to kill Amanda due to her knowledge of their family's ill fortune, Esther discovers that the pair have been responsible for the fate of their family members.This B-grade mystery thriller was notable for being released with a lurid poster which featured a woman in red negligee being pursued by hands that come from walls around her. The reality is that the film is nothing more than an average mystery thriller with some reasonably good acting.Director Randall Hood did not live to see his film being released – he died of cancer while the film was still in post-production & a long-running rumour has it that Clint Eastwood had stepped in to oversee the production as a favour for actor Jack Ging.As far as mystery thrillers go, Die Sister, Die! is okay, although not good enough to warrant more than one viewing. The actors do their roles professionally – Jack Ging has some fun in his role as the sinister brother who tries to get his fortune by killing his suicidal sister – and the production values are okay. But in saying that, Die Sister, Die! has nothing to say about the thriller genre other than to use the old 'feuding siblings' plot that has been around for a while. Inexplicably, the film was remade in 2013.

Conniving wealthy heel Edward Price (a deliciously smarmy portrayal by Jack Ging) hires nurse Esther Harper (a solid and credible performance by the attractive Antoinette Bower) to take care of his sickly, but mean and snippy sister Amanda (adroitly played with spot-on snarky bitchiness by Edith Atwater). However, Edward really wants Esther to help him kill Amanda so he can inherit the family fortune all for himself. Although director Randall Hood does an adequate job of crafting a brooding gloom-doom Gothic mood and makes the most out of the opulent mansion setting, both the sluggish pacing and Tony Sawyer's overly talky and uneventful script ensure that this movie is quite a heavy and rather tedious slog to sit through. Fortunately, the sound acting by the sturdy cast keeps this picture watchable: The three leads all do commendable work, with fine support from Kent Smith as kindly and concerned family physician Dr. Thorne, Robert Emhardt as domineering patriarch James Lendon Price, Rita Conde as friendly housekeeper Mrs. Gonzalez, and Peg Shirley as sneaky missing sister Nell. Moreover, there's a few decent twists and turns in the narrative along the way, plus a truly spooky dream sequence and a perfectly macabre conclusion. Both Michael Lonzo's sharp cinematography and Hugo Friedhofer's spirited shuddery score are up to speed. An acceptable time-waster.

A registered nurse named Esther (Antoinette Bower) is summoned to an eerie Gothic mansion and feels a lurking menace in the place, as if it bears a terrible secret. When she meets Edward (Jack Ging), he tells her that he wants to hire her to care for his difficult, ailing sister Amanda (Edith Atwater). She does not realize his true intent.Produced and directed by Randall Hood, who has done little else in his career. Jack Ging gets top billing in this film, with his name prominently on the cover of the DVD. Who is Jack Ging? A television actor, who also appeared in a couple early 1970s Clint Eastwood films.The Treasure Box Collection features the film in full frame with decent video quality for the time period. No extra measure was given to spruce up the picture, and there are no features at all (not even subtitles), but for watching the film it works fine. (The film is also only 84 minutes, not the 88 that the box says.) As far as horror films go, this one is pretty light. More like a slightly tense thriller, as there is not much blood and an extremely low body count. Horror films can be successful on atmosphere rather than gore, certainly, but this one relies very heavily on an atmosphere I do not know if it can deliver.

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.