Horror Grab Bag Week: Sisters of Death

Welcome to Horror Grab Bag Week and I hope we have something more than a poke and a tickle for you.  Perhaps a spine tingling cinematic macabre that leaves you bewildered and your pulse quickened.  First American Films seemed to be a production company trying for thrillers and chillers.  Action and Horror was their bread and butter and boy their spread does not seem too thick as it would seem most of the Horror films feel like something out of the 1950’s via plot.   So grab yourself some jammy dodgers, a glass of milk and put on your slippers.  This is Sisters of Death.

 

Shrouds of rawr!

Spoilers won’t get next to me…

We open with our feature in what can only be described as any given low budget Hammer Film dungeon set.  The Secret Society of Sisters are initiating two new pledges that have been deemed worthy of joining the ranks but they must pass one final test.  A test of courage…with a derringer placed to their forehead?   Sheesh frats don’t get this shuddersome.    The echo reverb around the chambers is distorting the hell out of the young women’s voices but I am not certain if that was for an eerie effect or if their boom mic lacked a sock.    Well as you can very well guess pranks with a firearm end badly on one of the pledges gets a .38 right through the noodle.   ENTER OUR TITLE CARD!!!

Hmm why does he have a portrait of Mimi Van Doren?

Yes four minutes in and we have a decent headshot effect.   7 years later…  Our surviving sisters each get an envelope consisting of an invitation and over a thousand dollars for travel expenses to a reunion at a lavish estate.  Two of the girls accuse each other of the invitations only to find neither of them had anything to do with it and then question why wait so long to reconnect. 

  What is waiting for the girls at this estate and do they dare be seen with each other?  It is only until after the girls arrive at this compound that is has barred windows and an electric fence that the girls realize they are captured by the father of the late girl who claims that one of the girls murdered his daughter and he will have the guilty party’s head.  He proceeds to let them sweat it out and eventually turn on each other for their own lives.

Alright! Alright! You don't have to eat green beans!

Yeah you know the drill so I will just get to it.   The only actors I even recognized in this flick is character actor Arthur Franz (Sands of Iwo Jima, Invaders from Mars, The Caine Mutiny and The Atomic Submarine) and the late Playmate of 1969 and Playmate of the Year 1970 Claudia Jennings (The Stepmother, The Unholy Rollers, Willy& Scratch, The Single Girls, Gator Bait and Deathsport) so you know full well I have stepped in a mine field and must make the best of it.  Shot in 35mm Spherical but alas recorded in mono you get to see the boom mic make a few appearances.

Our main composure sounds like a strangled Harry Manfredini but I cannot even find out who did the work.  The print is so grainy I could barely scope out the names of the production and crew.   IMDB had literally no idea at all.  For a title as Sisters of Death you almost go into this film treating it like the high school/college revenge reunion like Slaughter High or The Final when in fact there is very little violence, loads of scene chewing via dialogue and the girls are not flashing the cameras every 20 minutes.  Not a brilliant film but not a bad one off hand.  I was pleasantly surprised.