TWISTED SISTERS

HORSEY KEEP YOUR TAIL UP, KEEP THE SPOILERS FROM MY EYES

This is the third of Wolfgang Buld's low-rent semi-British sleaze videos (they're NOT films) and it's probably the best of them: it doesn't have the jaw-dropping stupidity of Penetration Angst and it's more fun than the grim Lovesick: Sick Love. Like those two films (both of which also starred Fiona Horsey, last seen playing a nun in a Colombian soap opera, if we take the IMDb's word for anything), it still suffers from the same poor level of production values and performances, and this one also has a curious location disjunct: it's quite obviously set in England (everyone speaks English and has English names and police ranks) yet is blatantly shot in Germany.

Big spoiler here: in 1928 SS Van Dine came up with Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories and they include things like: the detective should not be the killer, methods should be rational and not paranormal, and the plot must not use hoary old devices such as identical twins to get round the pesky problems of visual identity and (these days) DNA evidence. Twisted Sisters technically slips through this last one as it pretty well gives it away in the title. Jennifer is a Greenpeace worker, happy, well-balanced - but she also appears to be a serial killer who likes to castrate her victims. And worse - if nothing else this film must win some kind of award for Most Revolting Use Of A Firework. (Use your imagination.) Could it possibly be that Jennifer was adopted and had a twin sister who was horribly abused and went psycho as a result? And is seeking to punish Jennifer for having had a good life and everything she every wanted?

Sisters is the clue. This movie so desperately wants to be a Brian De Palma movie, but it simply hasn't got a chance when it's shot on video by Wolfgang Buld and the whole budget wouldn't run to hiring a Steadicam for twenty minutes. If it had had more money and some decent actors they could have had a fair stab at Hitchcock pastiche, which would have been fine - what are films like Dressed To Kill, Final Analysis or Basic Instinct if not derivations from Hitch? But there comes a point where ambition outstretches ability and resource and we're well past that point here. Also, it runs out at the end with an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion.

That said, there's the occasional moment of nasty leg-crossing fun to be had, and the scenes in which the enthusiastic Fiona Horsey acts against herself are nicely done, as they're achieved through editing rather than optical effects. It's not great, it's not even very good, but I wasn't bored and I never felt like cutting my losses and switching it off after half an hour. Which, given some of the stuff I've bailed on recently, is some kind of result. Approach with great caution nonetheless.

**