EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on October 29, 2021.

Brian De Palma was inspired to make Sisters after reading an article in Life magazine about how Soviet conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova were separated. A photo at the end of the article — along with a mention that the girls were developing psychological problems — struck him, as one twin looked happy and the other appeared to be deranged. And, as always, Hitchcock loomed large, as the script that DePalma wrote with Louisa Rose was directly inspired by his films Rope — the tracking shot that follows the murder of Phillip — and Psycho, as the main character shifts during the movie. He even got Bernard Hermann to come out of retirement and record the music for the movie.

In fact, DePalma had cut his movie to another Hermann score. When he showed it to the composer, he answered back, “Young man, I cannot watch your film while I’m listening to Marnie.”

The film has since influenced countless others. I can see echoes of the documentary within this film on the film within Get Out that details another sinister operation.

An operation is behind much of the horror in this film, as Danielle Breton and Dominique Blanchion (Margot Kidder, as always perfect) were separated and perhaps one of the two did not survive. Then there’s Emil Breton (William Finley, the literal Phantom of the Paradise), who is either Danielle’s ex-husband or the doctor who helped take the twins apart or both. And an investigation into the murder that starts the film and the hypnotic suggestions that perhaps there was no real murder at all.

DePalma has a career that some would say is filmed with misogynistic films, but here, this is the rare slasher with female killers and male victims. Of course, you can also read into this that women’s liberation — somewhat literally — has caused all of these issues.

This is the film where DePalma found his way. Of course, he found it by following in the footsteps of someone else, but if anyone could be the next Hitchcock, he made the best attempt.

The first time I saw this, I was knocked out by the first kill and how it comes out of nowhere and how much De Palma tells us of the plot just through dialogue.

Playing the same role from Greetings, Robert De Niro is Vietnam veteran and aspiring filmmaker Jon Rubin, who has been hired by producer Joe Banner (Allen Garfield) to make an adult film. Rubin uses this to take advantage of his crush on neighbor Joey (Jennifer Salt), wooing her and having sex with her on hidden camera. The problem is that the camera misses most of the action and Banner decides not to hire him.

Rubin follows that by being part of a confrontational theater group led by Gerrit Wood (Gerrit Graham) whose latest play, Be Black Baby! has the audience forced to wear blackface and be abused by the African-American actors who all are wearing white paint on their faces. Rubin’s part is to play a cop who arrests members of the white audience because they are black. Of course, the audience loves the show and decrees it an artistic success. Rubin gets back together with Judy, marrying her and then blowing up their apartment building.

Plenty of actors who would work again with director and writer Brian De Palma appear in this, including Charles Durning, Salt (they’re both in Sisters) and Graham. It also has roles for Paul Bartel and Lara Parker, who was Angelique on Dark Shadows. De Niro and De Palma would, of course, work together again on The Untouchables.

De Palma was still finding his way here and often, he struggles with comedy. There are still some wild moments as the audience is attacked, however.

The Wedding Party has an interesting story behind it. It was a joint effort between Sarah Lawrence theater professor Wilford Leach and two of his students, Brian De Palma and Cynthia Monroe. Stanley Borden, owner of American Films, as well as De Palma’s mentor and employer, let the young director make the movie on company time.

It was actually made in 1963, but Borden and De Palma fought over the film, as Borden believed that it was not ready for release. It came out in 1969 after the success of Greetings.

Charlie (Charles Pfluger) and Josephine (Jill Clayburgh) are getting married just in time for Charlie to start to realize that he dislikes her family as much as he loves her. They never think he’s good enough and constantly treat him like trash, like how her cousins Cecil (Robert De Niro) and Alistair (William Finley) invite him to his bachelor party and don’t bring him.

He decides to run and leave her behind on the wedding day — dealing with her cousin (Judy Thomas) trying to seduce him, the stress of her mother (Valda Setterfield) and the weirdness of her dad (Raymond McNally) is all too much. But how far can he go when he’s trapped on an island?

Not a great or even a good movie, but it’s worth seeing as it’s the first credit for both De Palma and De Niro.

The first American film to receive an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), this may have not been the first movie Robert De Niro was in — that would be an earlier film by director Brian De Palma, The Wedding Party — but it is one of the first.

This is a movie about three men: Jon Rubin (De Niro), who spies on women and also captures people with his camera. Paul Shaw (Jonathan Warden), a shy romantic. And Lloyd Clay (Gerrit Graham) who is obsessed with conspiracy theory.

It’s ramshackle and episodic, but you can tell it’s also a movie made by young people who were excited to create something. Most of those young people grew up to do major things in entertainment, so this is a chance to see them before they knew what it was like to be known or famous.

Today, they’d probably just make YouTube videos or a podcast.

Brian De Palma’s first released movie as a director and writer, this movie is all about models, murder and multiple points of view. Sure, it doesn’t all work, but it’s a first try for a creative of staggering genius that would soon be regularly making suspense magic throughout the 70s and 80s.

It’s about a prankster named Otto (William Finley) who is making an adult movie.

It’s also about Chris (Jared Martin, The Lonely Lady), who is in love with Karen (Margo Norton) but can’t marry her until he can pay for his divorce. That’s why he’s making the movie with Otto.

But where it gets weird is that the murders may start as jokes, but suddenly become real. Or maybe they don’t. In fact, you can’t even trust who you think may have been killed.

So while it seems like Karen has stolen money from her friend Tracy (Andra Akers) and come on set to deliver it to Chris, only to be stabbed in the eye with an ice pick in a scene right out of a giallo. Chris finds her body and starts tracking down the killer but then we start to see things from multiple perspectives.

A young De Palma may not have been fully ready to make such a complex film but you have to credit him for trying. The themes in this movie and the style that he employs to show them to the viewer would become the very things that would soon make him a success.

June 20: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Also known as Sopravvissuti della città morta (Survivors of the Dead City), this was directed by Antonio Margheriti and written by Giovanni Paolucci (who worked with Bruno Mattei* on his late career movies like The Tomb and Island of the Living Dead) and Giovanni Simonelli (Hansel e Gretel, Jungle Raiders).

Instead of Indiana Jones, we get Rick Spear (David Warbeck), a safecracker who travels to Istanbul to steal the spear of Gilgamesh from a cult. He brings along his girlfriend Carol, who he calls “Pussycat,” (Susie Sudlow in her only movie) and his buddies Mohammed (Ricardo Palacios) and Bettle (Luciano Pigozzi) to accomplish the impossible — breaking into the tomb and getting away in one piece — for the man who hired him, Lord Dean (John Steiner).

The miniatures are the real stars of this movie, as Margheriti somehow gets you to believe that Rick is driving a Trans Am around these ancient structures and that he’s not just shooting toy cars on miniature sets.

Rick also says, “Why didn’t you tell me this job called for Roger Moore!” at one point, which is funny, as at one point Warbeck was considered to play James Bond.

Nearly everyone in front of and behind the camera — Margheriti, Warbeck, Steiner, Pigozzi, cinematographer Sandro Mancori, editor Alberto Moriani, assistant director Edoardo Margheriti and voice/dubbing editor Nick Alexander — had already made another Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, 1982s The Hunters of the Golden Cobra. As far as I’m concerned, they could have just kept making them because I’d watch them all.

That set at the end, with all the red light and shaking camera and dry ice? That’s why I keep coming back to Italian movies.

*Speaking of Bruno Mattei, he totally stole scenes from this movie and used them in his 1988 Namsploitation movie Cop Game.

Patrick Lussier directed The Prophecy 3: The Ascent, Dracula 2000 (and two sequels), My Bloody Valentine 3D, Drive Angry, Trick and now this movie, which explains why it looks so engaging and feels miles beyond most streaming horror as of late.

Written by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, this film kicks into high gear pretty fast. Chloe (Bailee Madison, The Strangers: Prey at Night) is trying to go to school to be a criminologist, but is dealing with foreclosure on the home left to her by her father and the criminal life that her brother TJ (Anthony Turpel) is living.

Along with her ex-boyfriend Ross (Chris Lee), he tries to steal the money to save their house. The bungled robbery gets Ross killed. Because they planned the crime by text, the phone on the dead body implicated TJ. Chloe has to figure out how to save her brother. That means faking her death and being taken into the morgue where she’ll soon revive, take the phone and get out of there.

There’s just one problem. The Coroner (Jerry O’Connell) is already faking deaths and using still living bodies to harvest organs.

So yeah. The whole idea of the movie is rather silly — don’t take drugs that make your brain slow down and give off the impression of death, friend — but it also feels like something you’d rent when video stores were still a thing and come away with at least being happy that there’s a scene where half of Jerry O’Connell’s face gets shattered off.

Every single person in this movie is a moron and you know, that’s exactly what I wanted from it. Bonus points for O’Connell’s character taking a phone call from his daughter while he’s sawing his way into a corpse.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Made in Victoria, Australia, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism is about a young married couple named Lara (Georgia Eyers) and Ron (Dan Ewing). In some ways, you can see the way that she’s acting — nude dancing under the moon, violent behavior and mood swings — as a mental health issue. Or maybe she’s possessed. That’s the way her husband is leaning and he’s nearly begging Dr. Walsh (Eliza Matengu) to sign off on an exorcism. He’s so devoted to getting one, he even gets an unsanctioned exorcist and that’s when things go off the rails.

The man who Ron gets to exorcise his wife is Daniel (Tim Pocock). He tells Ron not to give his wife any food or drink and not to believe anything she tells him, because she’s no longer his wife. She’s of the Devil. Then they invite members of his church to scream at Lara and attempt to physically beat the demon out of her.

This movie is based on the real case of Joan Vollmer, a Victoria woman whose husband Ralph claimed would take on the shape of animals and act like a wanton woman, as well as speaking in demonic voices. Over a four-day period, assisted by a neighbor and phone instructions from his pastor, she was tied to a chair and prayed over while being denied food and water. Other church members soon visited and held her down while her eyes were kept open to witness the prayers. After days of slapping Joan in the face, two demons remained. Matthew Nuske joined the group and he led the group in destroying Joan’s greenhouse, all of her flower beds and wrapping the house seven times in clear wrap. Then, he smashed Joan’s head into walls before having five people sit on her body for hours, crushing her internal organs and giving her a heart attack. The pastor came at this point, as a message from God told him that he could just lay hands on the dead Joan and bring. her back to life. Two days later, she was still dead.

Neighbor Leanne Reichenbach got four months for manslaughter and false imprisonment. Church member David Klingner received three months, exorcist Matthew Nuske was found guilty of false imprisonment and received a suspended sentence and Ralph Vollmer was convicted of false imprisonment and reckless injury. He served no jail time, moved to Queensland and remarried.

Not only could this movie happen, it already has.

Directed by Nick Kozakis and written by Alexander Angliss-Wilson and Sarah Baker, this isn’t the movie for you if you’re looking for stuttery editing, herky jerky mannerisms and spinning heads. This is a more psychological exploration of how demonic man and religious belief can be.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and co-written (with Geoffrey Mead, who plays Kid Curry) by Anthony C. Ferrante, Butch vs. Sundance is the sequel to another Tubi Original, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. This time, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid become enemies when Sundance is offered a deal to betray Cassidy in order to have his crimes erased.

Bruce Dern returns as Mike Cassidy and — the highlight for me — is the returning villain Pinkerton Detective Charles Siringo, who is played by Jeffrey Combs. The woman who is coming between the former partners, Etta Place, is played by Nikki Leigh.

Shot in New Mexico at the same time as the first film, this certainly won’t replace any of the Sergio Leone or Sergio Corbucci movies in my heart, but it certainly moves quickly and has some thrilling train-based robbery scenes. There are also enough double, triple and maybe even quadruple crosses in this to keep you guessing right until the end.

You can watch this on Tubi.