DVD Artwork
I saw my first real horror film, saw it at the Showcase Nine. Yawned because nobody bled. It was the summer of ’79.
Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is looking forward to an easy evening, babysitting a doctor’s children… and the kids are already asleep. This is a care taking cakewalk. Until the phone rings. It’s one of her friends, basically coming right out and saying that she’s going to ball Jill’s ex-boyfriend. Jill tells her friend to give that naughty man the phone number at the doctor’s house so she can set him straight. A few minutes later, the phone rings again. Jill picks up. Nobody speaks. She hangs up the phone. A few more minutes go by. Ring, ring! Jill picks up and the voice on the other end asks, “Have you checked the children?” Jill thinks it’s the doctor. This whole cat-and-mouse phone-tag game continues. Jill still hasn’t checked the children. The caller wants to know if she’s checked the children.
Finally, Jill calls the cops, who tell her there’s really nothing they can do because the caller isn’t threatening or obscene. They do, however, contact the phone company so a trace can be made on the next call.
When the call is traced, the police frantically dial Jill, who receives the news that the calls are coming from inside the house. As she unlocks the front door, Jill can see a widening band of light on the stairs as an upstairs door opens and a man’s head peeks out. She opens the door and runs right into… Charles Durning! Good Christ! That’s scary.
Durning, of course, is a cop. The police are too late. The children are dead, crushed beyond recognition by a British psycho named Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley). Babysitter Jill is traumatized. And from here the movie takes off.
I’m sorry. Did I say ‘takes off?’ I meant, ‘dozes off.’
I remember… (clouds form around Jeff’s head and violins play pizzicato rhythms as he has another goddamn flashback)… when this movie came out, the commercial was the scariest thing I had seen up to that point. What nobody realized was that the commercials for When A Stranger Calls were the only scary part of the movie! That twenty minute long opening gambit is the best part of the movie.
After that, When A Stranger Calls degenerates into unadulterated ferret crap.
We move forward seven years. Durning is now a private investigator. Duncan has escaped from the mental hospital. The father of the children Duncan killed the cool first twenty minutes hires Durning to find the psycho. Durning agrees, under one condition.
He wants to kill Duncan himself. With lock needles.
Yeah. He wants to kill the bad guy with a lock pick kit.
In the meantime, Duncan has been hanging out at Torchy’s Bar, trying to pick up Colleen Dewhurst. Apparently it doesn’t matter that Duncan’s character has already established himself as having a thing for youngsters; he’s trying to pick up Colleen Dewhurst. She was at least 55 years old when the movie was made. Not incredibly attractive, God rest her soul. But Duncan even follows her back to her apartment.
During his investigation, Durning catches up with her and she agrees to be the bait for his search and destroy mission. Did I mention that she isn’t really all that pretty and there’s really no reason for Duncan to be after her? Okay. Because it doesn’t work.
And when Duncan shows back up at her place, with Charles Durning lying in wait, we get set up for the worst chase scene ever. Duncan has been staying at the local homeless shelter. Durning goes in to the male sleeping quarters after hours with a flashlight, shining it in each individual indigent’s face, looking for his lock-pickable quarry. Duncan, who can’t sleep, slips out a side door.
So Durning, packing a giant gut and an awe-inspiring comb over, chases scrawny Tony Beckley through the mission. Every time, every single goddamned time, Durning gets close enough to grab the bad guy’s shoulder. Then he stops. And yells the guy’s name. And the bad guy gets fifty yards ahead. Durning gets frustrated and start waddling after the villain again. Folks, if I didn’t know it was a movie, I’d swear it was performance art. Or at the least, an episode of Jackass. Which is performance art.
Anyway, blah blah blah and a plot contrivance later, Curt Duncan has found Jill, the babysitter, all grown up with kids of her own. Will he seek revenge? Duh. Will it be a stupid, inept and incomplete revenge? You betcha!
The first twenty minutes of When A Stranger Calls is kick-ass, if you can overlook the fact that Carol Kane is years out of high school and sounds like a recently emigrated Bosnian with braces and a fresh tongue piercing. After that initial shock, there was really nowhere to go. This movie can’t decide if it is a police procedural, a feminine empowerment movie or a rejected episode of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.
If you decide to watch this before you go see the remake, take my advice.
Drink.
Drink a lot.
Drink the most horrible cheap sewer dreg fluids you can find.
You’ll need it.
How this got chosen as the next victim for the Hollywood Wicker Man of remakes I’ll never know. It’s a tepid water balloon that pops itself after the opening, making it prime material for the Lifetime Movie Network. All it’s missing is Valerie Bertinelli.
When a stranger calls, use your caller ID and don’t pick up the phone.
