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.
Review of Die Sister, Die!
