TCM ran two Bette Davis movies yesterday in which she played a twin who takes the place of her identical sister. In DEAD RINGER (1964, pictured below), she’s the poor sister who murders her rich twin and makes it look like the poor one had committed suicide and then takes the rich twin’s place. In A STOLEN LIFE (1946), she plays the good sister who takes the place of the scandal-plagued one after an accident in a stormy sea takes the latter’s life. In each film, the dead twin had stolen the man that the other loved. In each film someone eventually figures out who the living twin really is. And in each film the twin doing the replacing finds out something even worse about the dead twin than she’d ever known which made the replacement a very bad idea indeed.

It makes me curious what other movies have been made about one twin taking the identity of the other one and how they eventually get discovered. What kind of blunders would they make that they could not foresee? What I’d really like to see is a movie about a lost twin who was separated at birth from her twin and suffers hardship while the other becomes rich and beloved and no one knows about the separated twin so she plots to take over the other’s life and learns everything about her and watches film/video footage of her and listens to her voice and practices writing her signature, etc. and then when she finally murders her twin and takes her place she finds there was something she didn’t figure on which gives her away very quickly. Any films like that or episodes of TV shows? There must have been an EC Comics story like that that might have been adapted for "Tales from the Crypt" or something.

The Parent Trap (either the 1961 or the 1998 one) immediately comes to mind. Not as dark as the Bette Davis film you referenced... but meets some of the criteria.

One of the other movies that I dearly love has a set of twins in it but they are both aware of each other's existence and the hidden one sacrifices themself for their twin's happiness... of course I'm talking about...



It Takes Two

Features the Olsen twins, Steve Guttenberg, and Kirstie Alley. I was a child in the 90s and loved Full House, so this was a fun film for me back then.

You forgot the granddaddy of them all

Deleted. Sorry to those who waited over 20 years to watch this iconic Nolan film.

I just came here to post this and you beat me to it. I watched this a lot on VHS with my sister and its a surprisingly good flick.

Double Impact (1991) with Van Damme.

It was part of the plot of Glass Onion from last year

There’s a virtually forgotten Richard Pryor movie called Moving where his twin sons switched places to comedic effect.

^ ha I remember that. During the marathon.

I was just coming in here to post a certain Christopher Nolan film (with a spoiler tag) ...

Grr, *I* was just a out to post that!

I've always loved that moment in the trailer when the guy says, "There's TWO of them!"

I guess you get to decide for everybody.

TWIN DRAGONS from 1992 has the protagonists switching roles (street racer / orchestra conductor) at one point in the film.

The Prince and the Pauper aren’t twins, but they’re lookalikes who swap places.

That opens it up to SO MANY movies that use that plot device, like The Great Race with Jack Lemmon.

See also the French Revolution segment of History Of The World Part 1 ... as well as the J.L. Gotrocks episode of The Flintstones.

Apparently no one reads these threads thoroughly before replying anymore.
Thus my spoiler tag in the second post.

JACK’S BACK from 1987 also had some twisty twin stuff in it. It’s no classic, but worth a watch.

Yeah, I totally missed that lol. Nicely done, Goldberg ...

David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" (1988) with Jeremy Irons playing twins who share the same woman.

What Happened to Monday has a set of septuplets all sharing the same identity.

The 2014 Austrian thriller GOODNIGHT MOMMY from has a really twisted pair of young twin boys in it, who refuse to believe that their mom is really their mom after she comes home from a plastic surgery operation covered in bandages, and subject her to some pretty intense torture to make her confess. As in most ‘twin’ movies, they do share a weird sort of “connection”, although they don’t really switch identities.

An of course there’s the BASKET CASE movies, and THE DARK HALF, and MALIGNANT . . .

Not to be confused with the MCU series

Charles Busch did a satire of this premise (playing both twins himself) in Die, Mommie, Die!